Season’s End, Part 1: The Tickets That Keep Giving

A September sunset at UPMC Park, home of the Erie Seawolves.

While AAA baseball is in the midst of what they’re calling the Final Stretch, while the lower minor teams are wrapping up their league championship best-of-five series, and while the final pieces of the playoffs in the big leagues are falling into place, my thoughts are focused on closing out my blog for the season. I have no tickets for any games the rest of the way, but you never know with me. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over, right?

It was a good, long season for me and it ended with a great baseball trip with four games over a span of five days in four cities across three states. Two of the ballparks were new to me, so I should be posting at least two reports. The problem is the four games all part of the same tale and I’m having trouble sorting things into their separate and proper compartments. So here we go with one big, season-ending, back to the ballpark blowout, part 1. 

We have to go back to May when I bought two tickets to a Seawolves game on a tag-along business trip with my niece to Erie, Pa. Then her meeting was cancelled and so was the baseball trip. It looked like I would end up losing the ticket investment, so I decided to call and offer the tickets as a donation so a couple of kids might get to see a game. I got lucky when the right person answered the phone and said I could use my tickets for another game. 

The first thing I had to do was decide when I could get back to Erie and use the tickets. Maybe it could be part of a trip to western Pennsylvania coupled with more baseball in Altoona or Pittsburgh. Or I could stop for a game on my way to Cleveland to see my friends there and to see more baseball in Ohio. 

I always ask a few questions when I’m picking a date for baseball tickets. Are there other nearby teams playing at home? Who are they playing? Is there a special event like Bark in the Park? And then there’s the big question: What are they giving away? 

Oops. A mixup over bobbleheads. Wait 'til next year.

It turns out the Seawolves had two bobblehead giveaway dates on September 15 and 18, a Wednesday and Saturday. Saturday’s bobblehead would be Matt Manning, the rookie pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, who was named Eastern League Pitcher of the Year in 2019. Wednesday’s offering was a piñata bobblehead, specifically a bull piñata, the mascot for Las Piñatas de Erie, the alter ego of the Seawolves in baseball’s Copa de la Diversión series. 

One serious giveaway and one silly was OK by me. I penciled the two games into my calendar and moved on. These games were months away in the last week of the regular season and I could make the exchange closer to the dates. It’s a good thing I waited, because I would later pick up two free tickets to see the Yankees, thanks to my association with the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Railriders.

Once again, I went through the process to find a good date for the Yankee game and hit the jackpot. On Sept. 18, they would be giving away a Don Mattingly bobblehead at their game with the Cleveland Indians. As much as I hated to give up the Matt Manning bobble, there’s no way I could miss out on Don Mattingly, the manager of my favorite team, the Miami Marlins.

Bubblegum and Stardust hurry to the starting line for the unicorn race
across the outfield between innings, "the fastest 20 seconds in all of sports."

This also meant I’d probably miss out on the piñata bobblehead too, because it would be sandwiched between a Tuesday night game in Allentown and Saturday’s game in New York. Then I got a crazy idea. I could drive to Cleveland, take my friends Paul and Sally to the Seawolves on Wednesday and maybe go to another game on Thursday. Then Paul and I would drive back to my home in northeastern Pennsylvania on Friday so we could go to the Yankees-Indians game on Saturday. From there Paul would fly home to Cleveland.

Paul was on board, but with one small change. It would be me flying to Cleveland and Paul and Sally would do the round-trip drive. There’s icing on this sweet cake. On Thursday, the Lake County Captains, who play just east of Cleveland, were scheduled to play the Beloit Snappers, the High-A team of my Miami Marlins, in the final week of their farewell season before re-branding as the Beloit something or others next year.

Waiting to board the bus for the "flight" to Newark and on to Cleveland.

Adding to the wackiness of this trip is that the first leg of my flight from Allentown is a bus ride at 6 a.m. to Newark Liberty International where I get on a plane to Cleveland. Did I mention I went to an Iron Pigs game in Allentown the night before? (The Railriders beat the Pigs 4-2.) It was a short night’s sleep at another niece’s house near the airport before the flight, and an ill-fated ride to drop me off. I made it to the bus with plenty of time, but her car broke down after dropping me off. This is just the latest in a series of car mishaps the two of us have had involved with sporting events. At least she had the use of my car while I was gone.

At the Iron Pigs '90s Night, Mitch Williams was on hand to sign his bobblehead box.

I arrived in Cleveland on schedule and even had time for a short nap before we headed for Erie, an hour and a half away. UPMC Park, where the Seawolves play, is named for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Erie. It might be the most unusual baseball stadium I’ve seen, and I’ve been to at least 100. It has two separate grandstands, one on the first base side and the other on third. There’s a high gray wall in left field where the stadium butts up against the arena.

Erie’s previous baseball team, the Sailors, moved to New York in a dispute over stadium improvement issues and became the Hudson Valley Renegades. Not long after that, Erie’s city government was able to get help from the state to build a new ballpark, and the Welland Pirates moved from Ontario, Canada, and became the Erie Seawolves.

The team is no longer affiliated with the Pittsburgh Pirates, but it has kept its piratical identity even though it’s one of the Detroit Tigers’ teams. Give them a call some time and go through their automated menu until you get to the last option. “Press 7 to hear a pirate joke.” 

There's a hot dog underneath the rest ot the Cuban dog ingredients.

There are good food offerings at the ballpark. I had a Cuban dog that was a challenge to eat on it’s tiny, regular hot dog bun. A Cuban roll would have made it a lot easier. Another option was a basket of French fries covered with the ingredients you’d normally find on super nachos. I forget what they called it, but it sure looked good.

Pepperoni balls, two per order, are the specialty of the house. They’re filling, so consider sharing with someone if you want to have room for some of the other tasty offerings. Hand scooped ice cream is particularly good at UPMC Park.

Imagine a filled doughnut, but without the sugar coating
and stuffed with pepperoni instead of jelly.

It was a big disappointment that the piñata bobblehead giveaway was postponed until next season. The good news is that our tickets will be honored next year when the bobblehead game is rescheduled. Looks like it’s back to the ballpark next year thanks to the tickets that keep giving.

The Piñatas on the ball field took the lead early in their game with the Richmond Flying Squirrels. Erie answered back with 2 runs in the bottom of the fifth inning after Richmond tied the game at 2 apiece in the top half. Both teams added a run in the eighth, but Erie held on to win. Final: Piñatas de Erie 5, Richmond Flying Squirrels 3.

Next: Season’s End, Part 2. More minor league baseball and back to Yankee Stadium.