More Chiefs' Baseball

As mentioned in the previous post, the size of the minor league ballpark puts fans a lot closer to the action than you would be in a major league park. So close you can see the concentration on the faces, or see the tongue between the teeth almost like Michael Jordan.

Here we see two view of future Cub Josh Vitters at the Kane County Cougars stadium. On a different trip to the same ballpark, it was even close enough to hear the angry curse word a first baseman let fly after a throw went flying by him. As the saying goes, "you can't beat fun at the old ball park!"

Minor League Baseball

Forty minutes away from my house in the suburbs of Chicago, the Kane County Cougars are a highly-successful Midwest League franchise, a Class A farm team of the Oakland Athletics. Elfstrom Stadium in Geneva is a wonderful place to watch baseball and have a ton of fun. Since I am not an Oakland fan, I tend not to get out there very often.

But my spring training road trip in late March, logged here shortly thereafter, I enjoyed watching the four Cubs minor league teams work out, including the Peoria Chiefs. The Chiefs, the Cubs Midwest League entry, feature several young future Cubs, including former first-round draft choice Josh Vitters, a third baseman. In early April, this blog showed Vitters in Arizona in a standard photo as well as a polar coordinate semi-abstract shot. Liking the idea of seeing more of this young prospect, I went out to a Chiefs-Cougars game earlier this month.

The young future big-leaguer did not disappoint. For one thing, the size and scale of the stadium make it so much easier to see ballplayers than the bigger major league parks. For another, the atmosphere is more down-home, and several players spend more time on getting to talk to fans and signing autographs for kids. These photos, along with several others, will be favorites of mine, especially if Josh winds up manning third base for the Cubs in two or three years. Time will tell!

More Chiefs/Vitters images in the next post.