Tuesday Afternoon in T-Town

Went to Cheney Stadium today for a media event that coincided with the Rainiers' first team workout (as we munched on chicken sandwiches, they were getting their uniforms for the first time).

I hadn't been to Cheney Stadium in about 15 years and if I'd come two years ago I wouldn't have seen many changes. But since Schlegel Sports (and their mostly silent partner Nick Lachey) bought the franchise a couple of years ago, there have been.

1) A party deck down the leftfield line went in last year and replaced a bank of bleachers. There are five levels, letting them host a party as big as 500, or a few small parties.

2) The Venture Gold Club. You pay a little extra for season tix, and you can hang out in this structure behind the home plate grandstand and watch the Mariners game. All beer, soda and snacks are included in the price.

3) Instead of 500 little ads on the outfield walls, there are more like 6 large ones.

The Rainiers don't do many of the wacky promotions you see from other minor league clubs, they let the product speak for itself.

And the product is happy to define itself: "Our job down here is to get guys ready to help the big club," says manager Daren Brown in his Texas twang. Notice the absence of the word "win." Brown's careful not to get the media's hopes up--his job is player development, not a PCL pennant.

Toward that end, Brown addressed the issue of players like R.A. Dickey and Greg Norton, who expected to stick with the big club but didn't make it.

"I understand their disappointment, but you have to get your head on straight as quick as you can."

Fair enough. That's the kind of straight talk you expect from a Texas guy.

Opening Night is Thursday at 7pm against the hated (they're the A's affiliate) Sacramento River Cats. Ryan Feierabend gets the opening day call for the Rainiers, with knuckleballer R.A. Dickey going on Friday.

For more Rainiers news than you can shake a stick at, try No Rhubarb, run by Rainiers fan Justin Carleton. The Tacoma Daily Index interviewed Carleton for their most recent issue. "It was just sort of a nice circumstance that I was able to find a baseball team nobody else was blogging about," he tells them.