This is what I did on my summer vacation; or, more accurately, this is what I did from the end of February to Labor Day weekend.  That’s 39 tickets to baseball games, right there; a stack thicker than the base of my laptop. (#40 is missing, alas.)

We saw games on four levels (we missed Rookie League/Short Season A, AA and the actualfax MLB, despite the NC having a Short Season A team — the Burlington Royals — and a AA team — the Carolina Mudcats, the Reds’ AA affiliate; we just ran out of season-time): college, Low-A, High-A, and AAA.  We watched affiliates of the Rays, the Orioles, the Yankees (two levels), the Indians, the Red Sox (two levels), the White Sox (two levels, and why do the White Sox have three minor league teams in North Carolina?), the Marlins and the Nationals. 

I saw Scott Kazmir and Clay Buchholz “duel” (by which I mean Kazmir was awesome and Buchholz got knocked around), I saw Jake Peavy and the Nats’ top prospect (pre-Strasburg) and Kei Igawa (on a day off; I mean I literally saw him hanging out in the bullpen, looking doofy), I got to watch Chad Bradford rehab and Andy Sonnanstine try to relocate the strike zone, I finally got to see Wade Davis (who made his MLB debut for Tampa Bay yesterday) in late August, I saw Matt Wieters in his second to last month in the minors and Nolan Reimold in his last, I spent three and a half months watching the #2 pick in the MLB Draft play first base and knock in runs like he could do it in his sleep, I sat 10 feet from the #15 pick throwing warm-ups during a wild and lengthy bottom of the seventh against Miami.  Late in August we almost drove to Georgia just to see Jake Peavy throw rehab against Timmy Hudson throwing rehab.  (We didn’t.  You’d have heard about it before this if we had.) I saw the Carolina baseball team play most, followed by the Bulls, followed by the Norfolk Tides (Orioles’ AAA; they share a division with the Bulls and so are in town a lot) and then, weirdly, the Kinston Indians (Indians’ High-A; … there’s an excuse for that, and he’s 22 years old).

And I really mean it when I say: who needs the MLB when almost everybody I’d want to see comes through Durham, anyway?  I saw more baseball in North Carolina this year, within two hours of our house, than I would have if I lived in an MLB town. I think the most we paid for a ticket was twelve bucks, to the NCAA Regional games.  I can’t complain.  And next year I’m gonna do it all over again.

But for now, you get a reprieve on the baseball talk until pitchers and catchers report in February. Aren’t you lucky?