Game 4 June 5, 2010 West Michigan Whitecaps

The next morning we worked our way up along the Lake Michigan shore to Grand Rapids.  If you have never been to Grand Rapids before it is a surprisingly large city with a very impressive sky line.  We stayed in a hotel in downtown, but the ball park is well north of the city. 

We got to Grand Rapids early and actually went to an outdoor fun park.  Due to the nature of the game that evening, I think this was probably the highlight of the day for us as we enjoyed the arcade, putt-putt and go carts.

This is one of the first cities I have seen that did not use the ballpark to enhance their downtown.  Instead they put it in a suburb next to a waterpark.  For this reason, their was no real outfield view of which to speak. This is one of the more unique (not sure if good) parks we have seen.  It obviously had some age, but had a different type of architecture.  Actually kind of reminded me of an old horse racetrack.   The vendors were also set up as carts all along the concourse.  This seemed to provide a lot of options, but also made walking difficult. 

As a testament to community support the game seemed to be almost sold out.  We had bought our tickets very early and actually got front row, next to the dugout.  We didn't realize how next to the dugout we would be.  The height of the dugout so badly blocked our view of the diamond that we actually moved well up and ended up sitting in the high left field seats.  This is the last time we decided to buy front row tickets as they seem to always lacked perspective.

This game was a first for us, our first rain out.  The game started under a light rain (which we did come prepared).  Like most of the crowd we were soaked by the 3rd inning and left shortly after before they officially called the game.  The kids didn't mind, the bad seats, coupled with poor kids facilities didn't heighten their interest in the park.   Grandpa and I were also more then happy to skip the rain for the warm hotel room.   We headed back to the hotel and I think we enjoyed the boys favorite trip activity, swimming in the hotel pools! 

We still got our mini-bat, even though it was an untraditionally sized navy blue.