The Sean Widmer Summer Goals Involving The Spokane Indians

I am not a man of many goals. In fact I'm a man of very very few goals. My normal weekly goals include:
- Wake up on time at least 2 out of 5 of my work days
- Don't spend money eating out for one whole day during the week
- Brush my teeth before bed
- Make serious progress in my MLB The Show 13 dynasty
- Post a tweet that gets retweeted

PRETTY lofty goals if you ask me.... You hear it all the time growing up though, "You need to set goals to succeed in life." (And kids, judging where I am in life right now this actually may have been good advice that I should have listened to) So with the Spokane Indians season merely weeks away I've decided I need to make a checklist of goals that I want to accomplish on the blog this summer:

- Eat one of every item they sell in the ballpark

Yeah, completely non baseball related I know but it may just be the thing I'm most excited about. Ballpark food!!! My main concern here is to make sure I don't achieve this in one night...


- Find the fan who has been a season ticket holder the longest and watch a game with them

Really I just want to hear stories from years gone by and if this person is anything like the older people I currently know the "Indians of yesteryear" will be so so much better than the current Indians.


- Make friends with a Venezuelan ball player

Memo to the Texas Rangers. Please send a Venezuelan to Spokane. Please. I spent 12 years of my life there for Pete's sake. My brother is still technically a Venezuelan until he turns 18. I need a touch of "home" here in Spokane.


- Listen to a radio broadcast start to finish

There is something magical about baseball on the radio. It feels like it's the way the game is meant to be consumed outside of going to the game in person. My hopes are to get to know the team well enough that when I listen to a game I know how each player is walking to the plate and what their batting stance is as they eye each pitch that comes at them.


- Catch a foul ball

One time I caught two in one game at Avista. Since then it has never happened again. A 12 year drought that has made me wonder if I blew all my luck that one fateful night.

- Memorize the roster

I've gone to a lot of Spokane Indians game since I've been in Spokane. I used to work for the radio station that broadcast the games and hosted a sports show on that same station. Yet even then I didn't know the entire roster front to back. This season I want to know names, numbers, positions, schools attended, fortes, etc for the entire team. In years past I've know a bunch of the players names but have never been able to spout out the roster top to bottom.

- Find and interview Ken Harvey.

In the summer of 1999 I had just completed my junior year of high school and came up to Spokane from my home in Rubio, Venezuela to work for my grandpa. That summer I went to a fair share of Indians games and was completely captivated by big bad Ken Harvey. I felt like he was the Bo Jackson of the team in that he had the look of someone who was planning on destroying a ball that wouldn't stop until it hit the train tracks a few hundred feet past the center field wall. I also recall him getting a hit every time he stepped up to the plate (I cannot verify if he did this but I do recall him hitting somewhere around .400 for the season). Ken Harvey went on to play for the Kansas City Royals and made an All Star Appearance in 2004 (and also starred on my fantasy baseball team that year). Nothing would make me happier than finding out what my personal all time favorite Indian is up to these days. (Note: I think future MLB'er Mark Ellis was on that team also)


I figure that's a pretty good start as to some of the things I want to see happen the next couple of months while diving into some Spokane Indians baseball. If I missed some obvious stuff please let me know. The season start is days away and I'm starting to jones for some seeds and a spot in the left field bleachers watching some baseball while the sun sets behind the first base seats.

NOTE: The new Team Store opened today. Add "Get Some Cool Gear" to my list.

The first item ever sold in the Team Store. He made a good choice. #goindians #teamstore instagram.com/p/Z_C_kXs42t/
— Spokane Indians (@spokaneindians) May 31, 2013

Well That Was Unexpected

Sooner or later we all learn the lesson that things don't always happen the way you expect them to.  Sometimes that lesson is a hard one to learn, and sometimes it can be a great surprise. For instance...

Today Sean and I decided that we needed to take some photos of the new improvements at our new summer home, Avista Stadium. Some shots of the new Team Store, maybe a couple shots of the ongoing constructions,  post them on the blog and call it a day. Why both of us needed to be there I have no clue.  Lets get real here, it's not like we were showing up with some extravagant set up and a Cannon EOS 6D ready to capture a great moment in Indians history. No, we both show up with iPhones ready post to Instagram, but not before we threw cool filter over it. What can I say, we are excited! It didn't take long though for us to realize that our "Photo Shoot" was done in a matter of moments. So there we stand 21 days 4 hours and 27 minutes before opening day with nothing more than a few camera phone pictures to put into a blog post... But for us that was not enough.  We are outside of Avista Stadium pumped to get the season rolling.

Now up to this point we have had little to no contact with any member of the Indians organization, but not without some effort.  We had sent some emails, left a couple messages, but no response.  Rightfully so, due to the fact we are asking a Professional Sports Organization to get excited about a couple of ya-hoos doing an unheard of blog with weeks to go before the season.  Maybe our idea was a few months short of great?  But hey here we stand outside of Avista Stadium...What's left to do? Walk in the beautiful brand new Clubhouse doors? Sure why not? Well I'll tell you why not. As I said before it is only 21 days 4 hours and 24 minutes to go before opening day! Maybe they are a little too busy to deal with a guy looking like he should be on an international watch list (Sean's beard is getting unreal) and his clueless sidekick.  Not only will they be ringing in a new season with a new staff to train but they are also in the middle of a huge facelift. (If you haven't been following along with the changes to the ballpark you are in for quite a shock when you head to your first game this summer.) Needless to say the entire staff is a bit busy, but we decide strolling in uninvited was a good idea. As we walk in through the new glass doors with a special entrance for the kiddos, we are instantly amazed at the freaking awesome NEW front office (Goodbye cardboard box office of the past). Construction workers are still racing around putting the finishing touches on it,  but there are TVs everywhere, a new sleek look, with the subtle touch of Indians Blue and Red nostalgia. Absolutely beautiful. As we learned today though, sometimes when you are in awe of cool new flashy things, you tend to forget the things happening around you...like perhaps a staff meeting! Yeah that's right we stroll in, in all our glory, during a meeting.  We were met with a concerned and befuddled face as a member of the office asks if he could help us... Uhhh yeah we'd like full access to the organization all summer! Well that's not quite what we said but somehow we get the attention of Dustin (Dustin you don't know it but we are going to be great friends) and he hears our impromptu speech for our Summer plans. This very well thought out presentation ended up sounding a lot more like Chunk from the Goonies (provided below for your entertainment and understanding of how this process transpired) than the Abe Lincoln-esque speech we had played out in our minds.:

Our ramblings were obviously incoherent enough to collect the attention of "the" Otto Klein (the General Hawk of the Indians) And much to our surprise he met us with open ears and mind. Careful and controlled not to let his beloved Indians be represented by a couple doofuses he agreed to entertain the idea of our Summer Project covering the Spokane Indians. Now I'm still not quite sure what that means but needless to say I am as excited.

So like I said before, sometimes things don't go as you expect them to, but sometimes the unexpected is the best part.

Now here are the photos of Avista from our above mentioned Avista Photo shoot:

It is great to be a fan.

Last week I went to Silverwood and had a great time. Snagged an elephant ear, lost a couple carnival games, saw the magician illusionist, people watched, and of course, went on a bunch of rides. In the middle of trying to fake boredom for the camera on Tremors the realization hit me that a roller coaster is the perfect analogy to being a sports fan (it was also determined that a log ride/water ride classifies as a roller coaster). From the anticipation at the start, to the ups and downs, the twists and turns, to the feeling (good or bad) of needing to throw up a roller coaster and the life of a sports fan are one and the same. Shoot, the genius' that made these rides even accounted for the varying degree of fandom. They covered the label of "die hard fans" with the rollercoaster that hits 100mph and keeps you glued to your seat the entire time. A roller coaster you want to know everything about from top speed to height of the biggest drop to the height of the second biggest drop to the length of the ride and so on. On the opposite end they built a "coaster" representing the "laid back" fans with a good old fashioned log ride. A ride that floats along and allows you to stray away from the ride itself and enjoy the distraction of everything going on around you while you are still on a ride. It has it's one or two moments during the course of the entire journey but overall it's extremely tame. For those of you that aren't fans of a sports team and never have been please enjoy the ferris wheel.

Quick sidenote: I couldn't find a ride that covered Mike and Jimmy's level of fandom from the movie "Celtic Pride" and to that I say, "Get on the ball roller coaster makers".

Why in the world does this matter on a blog that says it's about the Spokane Indians? THAT is another paragraph in and of itself. Last summer my buddy Andy and I decided that we needed to fall in love with the Spokane Indians. We have our local football team to love in the fall, and our local basketball team to love into March but when the summer hits their was a major void in our sports life when it came to getting passionate about a local team. So last summer we went to a couple Indians games together and like every summer whenever we go we enjoy the heck out of the experience but again, we only went to a few games. Then football and basketball rolled around and we immersed ourselves in our teams and knew what classes Brandon Kaufman (thanks for leaving early...) was taking and who was teaching them, we knew what menu items Drew Barham was ordering at Chipotle, we knew that just like on the football field Beau Baldwin likes to gamble at the craps table and just like on the football field he's a winner, we could tell you the scores of all the league games that happened on a given day, we knew that if you needed to stay "warm" outside of Roos Field that you needed to find Rhett and borrow his thermos... Stats, check. Player bios, check. Coaching staff middle names, of course. Total fandom. Does it seem over the top? Absolutely. But is it what we like to do with our free time? Double Absolutely on the rocks. That last fact is the reason for this blog. Andy and I love our sports teams. We love to fill our free time pining over stats or arguing about strategy. We love learning about the players we root for and finding out about the people that make the teams we cheer for tick. This is why we needed a summer project.

Over the course of the summer we plan on diving head first into the Spokane Indians with an attempt to become super fans. This isn't about just finding out if the Indians win or lose and then just get ready for the next game. This is about immersing ourselves into this organization. Get to know the players and what life on a short season A team is like. Talk to the managers about spending a summer trying to keep the reigns around a bunch of college aged kids. It's about finding out why Avista Stadium is the best venue in the league and what it takes to maintain and improve on it's reputation. This is about filling our sports driven brains with everything we can get our hands on that has the words "Spokane Indians" attached to it. In other words we want to walk into the Indians amusement park and step on every roller coaster that they've got from "die hard" to "casual" and figure out why people have been enjoying this ride in Spokane for countless summers.

Over the next few weeks Andy and I hope to really get the blog rolling on this site. Look forward to some audio and video along with articles over the course of the summer. If you're looking for game by game analysis or up to the minute roster moves this probably isn't going to be the place to go for that and I'd direct you over the the Spokesman Review Indians Section. As of now we're still trying to get our foot in the door with the Indians to see how involved with the team they'll let us be (or if they even give us any access at all). Hopefully you'll enjoy all the randomness that comes out of our brains and maybe this will get you fired up about a team that we can't wait to learn more about. Go Indians.

Thanks to some random dude for supplying us with this shoddy video of the field that we will be dominating this summer: