This lost season has brought some actual good developments, among them Emily and I embracing the joys of “ambient baseball.” That’s baseball as an amiable companion, welcomed but not fussed over, and happening nearby as you have a conversation or eat something or just enjoy a peaceful moment.
You can make an MLB game into ambient baseball — I love a good baseball nap, when your eyes close on the couch and the middle innings of a weekend afternoon game melt away, to be reconstructed later if needed. I suppose the All-Star Game works too, though that’s due to its bedrock pointlessness. But ambient baseball really shines when watching minor-league ball — you’re not living and dying based on the scoreboard’s verdict, the players you’re watching are wayfarers whose ambitions lie elsewhere, and the people in charge of in-house entertainment don’t fight against this sense of passing through.
A while ago Emily and I earmarked this long weekend for the latest chapter in my quest to visit all 3,144 U.S. counties (this is a terrible idea [1]), targeting the last four Pennsylvania counties I needed and the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. That lent itself to baseball explorations as well — I designed a route that passed through Binghamton and Syracuse, two parks I’d never seen.
Binghamton was our first stop, where the Rumble Ponies were hosting the Akron RubberDucks, the Guardians’ Double-A club, at Mirabito Stadium. Binghamton is scuffed and scruffy, still searching for a new direction after being hollowed out as a manufacturing center, but it’s a place you instinctively root for, and the stands at Mirabito were full of Rumble Ponies gear in its various forms, of which there are a lot.
Binghamton has been a baseball town for a long time — the Mets have had their Double-A club here since the 1990s, and the Triplets were a Yankees farm team from the 1930s through the 1960s. So the stadium’s wall of fame includes the likes of Edgardo Alfonzo and Bobby Jones [2], as well as Whitey Ford [3], Lefty Gomez [4] and Ken Harrelson [5]. I was pleased to see a plaque for local legend Rob Gardner [6], he of the 15 shutout innings and phenomenal Game Score [7], and a portrait of Bud Fowler [8], a pioneer in baseball integration who played for the Binghamton Bingos in 1887. (Not mentioned: Fowler moved on, as he often had to, after white teammates refused to play alongside him.)
We were free to wander Mirabito as we liked, nearly tripping over a gigantic Chris Suero [9] as he left the batting cage down the right-field line shortly before the game. Rowdy and Ruby, the Rumble Ponies’ mascots, were much in evidence, as were more sessile carousel horses scattered around the ballpark. (That’s the source of the team nickname.) We bantered with our seatmates, ate hot dogs and soft serve (as one does), and enjoyed a lovely summer evening.
Another benefit of ambient baseball? You don’t feel any pain if the home team is getting absolutely shellacked, as the poor Rumble Ponies were. They’re in last place, with the IL full of names you vaguely know. R.J. Gordon [10] — whom we saw pitch last year as a Rumble Pony up in Portland, Me. — didn’t have it and none of his successors fared much better; we shook our heads at multiple fruitless ABs from Kevin Parada [11], whose once upon a time status as a top draft pick has proved a heck of an employment guarantee. With the Rumble Ponies down 11-0 in the top of the ninth we decided to put a bow on the evening and walk back to our hotel.
The Mets didn’t play that night; the next day we listened to a few innings of Met haplessness against the Phillies, some of it while parked at a Finger Lakes winery during a downpour too torrential for safe driving. The downpour took down our MLB Audio signal shortly before the same weather system forced a rain delay; we shrugged and got on with our drive when the skies cleared. Ambient baseball, y’all.
Sunday brought us to Syracuse and NBT Bank Stadium, home of the Triple-A Mets. Every member of the starting lineup was someone with big-league experience, a mix of recent Mets and quite possibly future Mets: Hello, Nick Morabito [12], MJ Melendez [13], Ronny Mauricio [14] and Hayden Senger [15]! So this is where you’ve gone, Christian Arroyo [16], Cristian Pache [17] and Christopher Morel [18]! Hello again, admirably cheerful momentary Met Robert Stock [19]!
(That must have been confusing when Morabito played at Mirabito. Sometimes a promotion is welcome for multiple reasons.)
NBT is a bigger park than Mirabito but has the same cheerful vibe, with decks in the outfield offering good vantage points and artificial-turf berms where kids can safely release their pent-up sugar-fueled energy. The park also showcases Syracuse-area favorites: I don’t recommend the coneys (at all, blecch) but the butter-dipped salt potatoes are sublime, a prime example of not complicating things unnecessarily.
Once again, the baseball proved less compelling than the atmosphere around it: Tobias Myers [20] elicited sighs in Syracuse just as he has in Flushing, though an Arroyo home run then tied the game. The Mets in waiting were tied with the Buffalo Bisons at three-all when we returned to our hotel, lured by the prospects of the World Cup final (Emily) and a nap (me), so we didn’t see things fall apart for the hometown nine in the ninth.
Also missing from Sunday’s experience: the actual Mets, though this was by design. I checked in on them from the NBT stands, registering with mild surprise that they were up 3-0 and then 5-0, and then got back to not really watching their organizational undercards.
The details, once filled in, were heartening [21]: Francisco Lindor [22] once again looked like the guy who put us on his back for the run to the 2024 postseason and not like the hobbled, weirdly befogged player he’s been this year, while Nolan McLean [23] continued to make the mental and strategic strides needed to take full advantage of his arsenal of cruel and unusual breaking balls. Holding the Phillies’ lineup in check on a summer day at Citizens Bank Park is no mean feat.
But as I said, these details were filled in later. The baseball was mostly ambient, and more pleasant for the lack of effort. I recommend it — particularly if it comes with a side of salt potatoes.