Midland, TX

Park # 21

What I Remember

I remember Tim Salmon. The Midland Angels outfielder had the trifecta that night – He had a memorable name, pretty obvious baseball ability and he hit a home run. It wasn’t just any home run. It was the stuff of backyard wiffleball legends. Midland trailed rival San Antonio by two runs heading into the bottom of the 9th and there were two outs. Then, after a walk and three straight hits tied the game, Salmon sent the ball out among the oil derricks beyond the outfield wall and the Angels won 10-7. It was the most exciting game we saw on the trip for exactly one night but more on that tomorrow.

I also remember Monty Hoppel, the team’s GM, being very kind to us. I think it was the first time any of the teams gave us hats and we wore our Midland Angels hats on the video we shot that night. Finally, I remember a promotion that ended up on our MLB Magazine segment.

The Angels had a recliner they must have worked with a local furniture company to produce and they put it behind the plate and next to the press box for a promotion they called “The Best Seat in the House.” Every night, early in the game, one fan was selected to sit there and I tried it out in the postgame glow of Salmon’s homer….a clever idea in a summer of inventive promotions .

The Game(s)

Midland Angels 10 San Antonio Missions 7

The Box (Click on the arrows to see more images)

My scorecard was a mess that night, it comes from getting up to go shoot video and then trying to piece together what had happened in the game. You will also note that I never even wrote down Salmon’s homer on the scorecard. In an era in which the term “walk off” is even used to describe games won on sacrifice flies, this really was a walk off and I dropped the scorecard and picked up the video camera.

The Trip

Midland began the fourth week of our Excellent Adventure and I got a nice note on Facebook recently from a gentleman who said he had spent summers at Angels Stadium scooping ice cream in high school. So – spurred on by James Crabtree, next Friday I will restart a series of videos on the Low Mileage Tour channel on YouTube. I hope to produce one a week with the highlights of each stop that week. I can’t do one every day and still get the book finished but I am hopeful this will be a fun once-a-week look back at a magical season. In the meantime, you will find some videos I produced last summer at the PFA Channel homepage.