Recently, I decided to make it a personal goal of mine to visit every Midwest League park before the end of the season. And why not? Most of them are within reasonable driving distance, tickets are cheap, and the parks typically have a lot of stuff for little kids to do. I've been to a few Wisconsin Timber Rattlers games, which I really enjoy...it's great to have a Brewers affiliate within driving distance again. Last Saturday, I saw that there were two more games reasonably close - Peoria and Quad Cities were both playing within 3 hours from me. Randomly, I picked Quad Cities. We bought tickets online, hopped in the car, and made our way.

Davenport, IA was hosting what appeared to be a music festival downtown, so most of the streets leading toward Modern Woodmen Park were blocked off. We eventually made our way around it, and arrived at the park about two hours before game time. There was an older gentleman sitting at the parking lot entrance, who was there to inform us that parking was free...excellent. Even though we were there early, there were still a lot of cars there, and even a few tailgaters. Lots of fans were wearing Hawaiian shirts - turned out to be Jimmy Buffett Night*. The stadium was situated along the Mississippi River, and waterfront stadia always score points with me. On the outside, I thought the brick façade made the stadium look much larger than most single-A facilities.

* is there some requirement that every minor league baseball team has to have a Jimmy Buffett Night?

Around one and one-half hours before game time, the gates opened. Interestingly, there was a long, steep stairway that went up from the main gate to the grandstand. I suspect that this was done to protect the seating area from flooding, though I'm not sure how useful that is if the parking lot/entrance is underwater. Inside the park, you will see box seating extended down to the end of each dugout. Beyond that, the 1st base side has stairs leading to a large picnic area. On the 3rd base side, bleacher seating extends much further into the outfield. Like many parks built around this time (1931, in this case), the L-shaped seating configuration leads me to believe that it was built with both baseball and football in mind. Despite this, it feels very much baseball-only. Great sightlines - I watched bits of the game from just about everywhere in the park, never had any bad views, and you can get very close to the action.

As someone who almost always purchases a general admission ticket to minor league games, I really enjoyed this park. This is one of the parks I've visited that allows you to walk all the way around the playing field in a complete loop. This is good for one year old boys who always need to be running someplace, as well as dads who like to take pictures from various spots. Leaving the complex after the game was easy, even with a large music festival going on nearby - traffic was still very light. I'll definitely look forward to returning.

The rest of my photos from the day can be found here

This weekend, I updated this site to Drupal 6. Many important modules that some of my other sites use are not yet working on 6, but everything I actively use here is. So far, so good. My new theme looks a bit too much like Microsoft's site circa 2004, but thats fine.

But, the real reason I'm posting this article:
Fat Jared's Treats

Today the little guy had a GIANT poop. We felt the need to give him a bath. He loves baths!

Afterwards, he got to hold his very first teddy bear. It is extra special because it was dad's first teddy bear too.

We've been wanting to get a digital SLR camera for some time now. While browsing at Best Buy tonight, we impulsively grabbed a Nikon D40. Certainly not the greatest, but I liked it a little better than the similarly-priced Canon model. I am now inspired to go to lots of sporting events. In the meantime, I intend to test the camera's functionality on little guys and smallpuppies.