Originally written July 1, 2011

A part of me thinks I may have set myself up for future failure, by making Aberdeen my first ever venture into the hierarchy of developmental baseball, beneath the minor leagues.  After visiting the Ripken Family Baseball Academy, I think it’s going to be hard-pressed to find anywhere that’s more of a pure baseball heaven than Aberdeen, Maryland.

What was originally a trip to see a game at a new park, ended up being a revealing experience in seeing what a real baseball heaven looks like.  “Amazing” is a simple adjective to describe the baseball culture being cultivated in Aberdeen, which is about an hour north, outside of Baltimore.  What’s known as the home of the greatest Ripken of them all, in Cal Jr., is now harvesting grounds for what I am expecting will become one of the country’s next hot-beds of future baseball talent.

Since I arrived at the park before the gates were open, I was free to walk around the premises of the rest of the academy.  The first thing that gets your attention is the adjacent hotel to the park, that was obviously designed in the fashion to mimic the B&O Warehouse that sits in the skyline of Camden Yards.  Beyond the warehouse/hotel, opens up to practically a distant planet where baseball is the only thing on it.

Numerous baseball fields, all created in the vein of iconic baseball parks are scattered throughout a wide stretch of land.  Fields mimicking Fenway, Wrigley, Memorial, (Old) Yankee, among others, were constantly filled with kids of all ages and brackets playing competitive games.  All while other kids were in batting cages, or side fields, practicing their swinging, hitting, fielding and throwing.  All while parents and siblings watched and cheered for their sons and brothers.  It’s was a truly amazing sight to see so much baseball development going on, all at once, in one centralized location.

Throughout the country, there are regions that are known for churning out baseball talent.  East Cobb County, Georgia, the Tidewater/Newport News area in Virginia, Long Island baseball camp, and various parts of Southern California, come to mind.  Guys like Jason Heyward, David Wright, the Upton brothers, and so on have come from these supposed hot-beds.  Considering the Ripken Academy was more or less established in 2001, it’s safe to say that simply enough time hasn’t passed for some products of Ripken Baseball to have fully grown into potential future MLB talent, but if I’m a betting man, I’m believing that in more time, there’s a hot-bed brewing in Aberdeen.

As for Ripken Stadium, the chief reason for going to Aberdeen in the first place, it would downright uncharacteristic if the home of the short-season A-ball IronBirds weren’t up to the standards set by the rest of the Academy.  But to no surprise, it lives up to the expectations set by its surroundings.  The park is easy to get to, has free parking, and is an overall clean and pleasant place to watch developmental baseball.
The walkways are spacious, and the staff is plentiful and polite.  The fields are well-groomed, and maintained, and it doesn’t hurt that my seats for the night were excellent.

One thing that stood out to me, was that compared to, well, all of the other minor league parks that I’d been to in my travels, Ripken Stadium had virtually no advertising on its outfield walls.  I’m used to the wallpapering of outfield walls, full of local businesses and local affiliates of larger conglomerates, pasted all over the walls, leaving nothing but the batters’ eye as the only dark space.  Outfielders are supposed to be difficult to differentiate from the cornucopia of colors from all the ads.  But Ripken Stadium had very little advertising at all.

The experience as a whole was a very positive one, and as I mentioned above, I may have set myself up for future failure, for when my travels eventually lead me into other venues of short-season, or rookie-level baseball.  I don’t think many places are going to be even close to competing with Ripken Stadium, and I may as well accept that notion now, to prevent future disappointment.  But in the even grander spectrum, Ripken Stadium itself is kind of a second thought, compared to the surrounding Ripken Academy that is an impressive establishment as a whole.

Notable Performance(s):  Given the level of talent at short-season A-ball, it’s kind of a crap shoot typically to find any one person to wow me.  Great bats but poor gloves, great gloves, but poor bats, etc, etc.  The one guy who really did have a good day would be Brooklyn’s Eduardo Aldama, who pitched 5.2 innings of no-hit baseball, before losing the no-hit bid on a very questionable scorer’s decision (should have been a fielder’s choice).  Granted, he gave up a hit to the very next batter, but we’re often left with the “what if he was still pitching a no-hitter at the time,” theoreticals, but it’s all in the past now.  Aldama’s only drawback?  He’s 21 years old, which for short-season, may as well be on AARP.  But a no-no flirtation is still impressive.

Game Result:  Often, I forget that my track record for minor league games is nowhere near as fruitful as it for the home team as it is at the major league level.  Still, most people understand that minor league baseball isn’t about teams winning so much as it is about player development, so in the grander perspective, it doesn’t really matter.  Regardless, the Brooklyn Cyclones defeat the Aberdeen IronBirds, 5-2, which really wasn’t much of a contest overall.

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