Kate Hinds: This is All Of It. I'm Kate Hinds, in for Alison Stewart today. Just a quick reminder, WNYC is airing a Public Songs Project Special this Saturday. We will reveal the songs that won this year's contest and the people who submitted them, plus play some selections from the 130 or so songs that have been submitted. My All Of It teammates are behind it. Simon Close is hosting. Luke Green is producing. It is appointment radio. It is happening this Saturday night at 7:00 PM. If you miss that, which you shouldn't, we will also have a recap of it on All Of It on Monday, July 28th.

Another PSA for the moment that we're in. As you've probably heard, Congress has voted to end federal funding for public broadcasting. That means WNYC and WQXR will lose nearly $6 million over the next two years. We need listeners like you to help fill this funding gap. As always, you have as much a part as we do in keeping public radio strong. Please step up to the plate today to be the public in public radio. Start or increase your monthly donation at wnyc.org/donate, and thank you from everyone here at New York Public Radio for being there when we need you. All right, let's play ball.

[MUSIC - Frank Sinatra: Take Me Out To The Ball Game]

There's hardly a better way to spend a summer evening than catching a minor league baseball game. There are plenty of great options in the New York metro area. The Cyclones in Brooklyn, the FerryHawks on Staten Island, the Jackals in Paterson. Almost every city or region in America has some version of minor league baseball, and chances are, the team has a beloved wacky mascot. My personal favorite from our area, the Hartford Yard Goats. I just like the name. Joining me now to talk about this are two guests. Rex Doane is a WNYC senior producer who's responsible for the promos you hear on air. Take your complaints up with him directly.

More importantly, for the purposes today, he is also a minor league baseball fanatic who probably owns more minor league merch than anyone else in New York City. Also joining us is Ben Hill, a reporter for MLB.com who travels the country covering the minor leagues. Rex and Ben are with me now to talk about the culture and tradition of minor league baseball, and take your calls. Hi to you both.

Rex Doane: Hey, hey.

Ben Hill: Yes, thanks for having me.

Kate Hinds: Rex, I'm going to start off by just asking you to describe your hat.

Rex Doane: Today, I'm wearing a Somerset Patriots cap, but they have an alternate identity, which is the New Jersey Diners. As you see, there's a hunk of meat fashioned in the shape of New Jersey, so if New Jersey was meat, this is what it would look like. Somerset does a great job with stuff like this. They'll have a couple of Diner booths at their Diner games, and when there's a significant play in the field, you'll hear the orders at bill, and they'll play Diner Old East. Great place to see a ball game. They've got a couple Diner games left this year, so get on out there.

Kate Hinds: New Jersey, for people that don't know, is actually the home of the American Diner. We've had a conversation about this on All Of It. A very important piece of history, but let's get some nuts and bolts taken care of right away. Ben, for someone that really doesn't understand Minor League Baseball, can you explain the basic purpose of the minor leagues and how it relates to Major League Baseball?

Ben Hill: Yes. At its core, Minor League Baseball is, from a playing perspective, it's for player development. There's 30 major league teams, and they currently each have four minor league affiliates at Single-A, High-A, Double-A, and Triple-A. There's 120 affiliated minor league teams all over country. Rex is representing the Somerset Patriots or their Jersey Diners alter ego. State & Eggs is the name of that logo.

Kate Hinds: Taylor Ham and Eggs or Pork Roll?

Rex Doane: Oh, you don't want to get into the Taylor and Pork Roll debate.

Kate Hinds: Okay. Yes, it's too controversial.

Ben Hill: Yes, we have Pork Roll alternate identities in Minor League Baseball as well. We can go down a million rabbit holes, but there's 120 teams, four affiliates in each system. From a playing perspective, it's for prospects to work their way up to the major leagues, but from a fan perspective, it's more just a place that is fun for everyone. Of course, you're going to get baseball fans at the games, but the operating principle of the industry is more just entertainment for all.

If you work for a minor league team, you're essentially in the entertainment business because the major league clubs make all the player personnel decisions. If you're the general manager of a minor league team, it's just the proverbial butts-in-seats.

Kate Hinds: Not all minor league teams are affiliated with Major League Baseball, right?

Ben Hill: Yes, it gets complicated. There's capital M, Minor League Baseball, is that network of affiliated teams, but you can just call minor league in a general sense to also mean independent teams, meaning they don't have an affiliation. The Staten Island FerryHawks here in New York City--

Kate Hinds: Which I think of as Rex's personal team.

Ben Hill: Yes, he's there every night, right?

Rex Doane: Pretty much. Great place. Great views, folks. See you out there.

Ben Hill: Yes. You have summer collegiate teams as well. Those are for college players who are still in college, usually, or maybe about to get drafted. That is referred to all broadly as minor league baseball as well.

Kate Hinds: I want to talk about the experience of going to a minor league game because it is in many ways so different from going to a Major League Baseball game. Rex, when did you become a fan of minor league ball?

Rex Doane: I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, actually, and I'm old, so I actually went to minor league games in the dark ages in the '70s.

Kate Hinds: Did they have electricity?

Rex Doane: Yes, they did. As I got a little older, all I have to say is I was married in 1990, and on the first night of our honeymoon, we went to a Stockton Ports game, and we're still married.

Kate Hinds: She knew what she was getting into.

Rex Doane: Since then, I've seen over 200 different minor league teams. It's a great way to see America on kind of a locals-only basis. If you go into a little town, you get a real feel of that community. It's great too when these teams celebrate their regional idiosyncrasies, so you know you're in an actual place. It's an escape from monoculture that you might get from TV, because you can go upstate to Binghamton and see a Spiedie Chicken game or a Southern Tier Meatball game. There are alternate identities. Syracuse is the Salt Potatoes. Just, again, a celebration of those regional idiosyncrasies, and a big obsession with food, too.

Ben Hill: Yes, that's been a big one. The Salt Potatoes play against the Rochester Plates, meaning garbage plates. That's a regional battle every year. I think they call it the Battle for the Golden Fork there, for those New York teams--

Kate Hinds: Like the World Series.

Ben Hill: Yes, it pretty much is. That's been going for about a decade now. Alternate identities are huge. Almost every minor league team, in addition to their primary identity, has at least one, sometimes four, five, or six alternate identities. If you go see a team, if you go see the Brooklyn Cyclones or the Somerset Patriots, you're seeing that team no matter what, but they might be playing as someone else. The food really kicked off about a decade ago. First, the Lehigh Valley IronPigs had bacon uniforms.

Then that inspired the Fresno Grizzlies to then say, "We're not just going to have a food uniform. We're going to rebrand the whole team on certain nights." That was the Fresno Tacos. That really took off. Now, 10 years later, it's basically name a minor league team, and we could probably come up with at least one food-related alternate identity.

Kate Hinds: The merchandising opportunities are endless.

Ben Hill: That's a big part of it. You want to sell as much merch as you can and just create that sense of fun. So much of my job is learning these regional idiosyncrasies, and a lot of that is the food. I've learned so much of that just through this job. Rex went to that Stockton Ports game. They say they're the asparagus capital of the world, and they have asparagus when they do--

Rex Doane: AsparaGus is their mascot, too. Yes, you get to see a lot of anthropomorphized food, which is great.

Ben Hill: Yes, I use that word constantly in my writing. Anthropomorphic.

Rex Doane: Yes. Often, it's a smiling pig with a forkful of pork.

Kate Hinds: That's just cruel.

Rex Doane: Yes, it's inspiring for some.

Kate Hinds: We got a text that says, "I'm from Hartford and have been to some Yard Goat games, and it's a lot of fun. Minor leagues go out of their way to make these fun family events. I've had fun conversations on the subway when someone notices my Yard Goats hat, or I see someone with another great minor league hat. Listeners, we want to hear from you. You like going to minor league baseball games? Call us up and tell us why. 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. What's your favorite place to see a minor league game? What's your favorite mascot? What's the wackiest thing you've seen at a minor league baseball game? Let us know. 212-433-9692.

Oh, I especially want to know, who is the best player you've seen in the minor leagues before they were called up to the majors? 212-433-9692. Ben, you travel the country checking out minor league baseball games, am I correct?

Ben Hill: Yes, it's a job that started 20 years ago. I'll spare you the long evolution story, but started writing game recaps and then started to learn more about the minor leagues and eventually got a full-time job covering how the teams operate. Once it became full-time, I said, "I really need to learn about--" At that point, it was 160 teams. "I want to learn about all these teams all over the country," and started road trips in 2010. I've been doing that throughout the summer every year since 2010. This Saturday, I'm going to leave for Salt Lake, see the new ballpark for the Salt Lake City Bees, then go over to Washington State, the Tri-City Dust Devils in Pasco, Washington. They declared the game. I'm going to be at Ben Hill Night. It's a real low bar to be honored at a minor ball--

Kate Hinds: You have to show up now.

Ben Hill: Yes, I know. I was like, "What a coincidence." Then Spokane Indians, I'll be checking them out as well. I've spent, at this point, over a year of my life traveling to minor league ballparks. The new ballpark in Salt Lake will be my 190th, and that's going back to 2010.

Kate Hinds: Wow.

Rex Doane: I've been a big fan of Ben's writing for years, and I've run into him on the road, like Winston-Salem years ago.

Ben Hill: Yes, I saw you on Winston-Salem.

Rex Doane: We've crossed paths at minor league ballparks.

Ben Hill: Yes. You end up seeing the die-hards no matter where you go. It's a huge world and a small world at the same time.

Kate Hinds: I have read the minor league baseball road trip, where you just drive cross country and try to hit as many minor league stadiums as you can. Honestly, it sounds like a dream.

Ben Hill: It's a great thing to do. Yes, that's what I'm promoting all the time in my writing. Minor league baseball gives you the context to go to places in America that you might not think otherwise to go, but once you're there, you get to learn about the place. I think, in a lot of ways, it's more fun than a more typical tourist destination.

Rex Doane: There's a lot of corn dog consumption along the way.

Kate Hinds: Oh, I want to talk about food, but I also want to hear from Josh in Brooklyn. Hi, Josh. You're on the air.

Josh: Hi. Just a couple of things. First, I'm a big fan of the Brooklyn Cyclones. One reason, besides just want to go into the game and the fact that they have fireworks afterwards, is that I can afford to take my son there, and it doesn't cost a fortune like going to a Yankees game. The other question I had, though, is I was curious about what salaries are like for, say, Single-A players. Also, where do they afford to live when they're at home, like in Brooklyn, which is quite expensive? Where can Cyclone players live? That's my question.

Ben Hill: I don't know the specifics where they live, and you can go into the weeds with these kind of questions, but big picture, Minor League Baseball used to be a separate entity with a working relationship with Major League Baseball, and then Major League Baseball essentially runs it now. Once Major League Baseball started running the Minors, which started in 2021, there was an increase in salaries. It varies by level, but it's quite a bit more than it had been. There's also player housing stipulations and requirements.

The era, which was easy to romanticize but often not ideal of like host families, a lot of great stories came out of host families, but now the players are more provided for with their housing because it's very tough to live as a minor league baseball player because you don't know how long you're going to be in any given location in terms of being promoted or demoted or whatever might happen to you in your career, and no matter where you are, you're on the road half the time anyway. That is more taken care of than it used to be in the older days.

Kate Hinds: Let's take another call. Adam from Schenectady. Hi, Adam. You are on All Of It.

Adam: Good morning. Awesome. I live in Asheville, North Carolina, where the Asheville Tourists are the only game in town. It's packed, it's sold off the town every night. The streets were closed. Everybody walked. It was amazing.

Kate Hinds: Adam, what do you enjoy about going to an Asheville Tourists game?

Adam: It's small and intimate, and you know everybody there.

Kate Hinds: Sounds like a good reason to go. Listeners, we are taking your calls and experiences about minor league baseball. 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. I want to hear about a lot of things. I want to hear about your favorite mascot, your favorite alternate team name, the favorite thing you've eaten at a Minor League Baseball game, your favorite players. 212-433-9692. We got a text that says, "What about the Long Island Ducks? You mentioned many other teams, but not a local Long Island team."

Rex Doane: Oh, we're getting to it.

Kate Hinds: Should we just shout out some of the teams in our area, the Tri-State area?

Rex Doane: Yes, there are plenty of opportunities. We mentioned the FerryHawks and the great views from the ballpark there. Certainly, the Long Island Ducks, and then you could probably go up to the Hudson Valley Renegades and all the way down to the Jersey Shore.

Ben Hill: Yes. Jersey Shore BlueClaws.

Rex Doane: Yes.

Ben Hill: Somerset Patriots. Trenton Thunder.

Rex Doane: Trenton Thunder, yes. You can get into Connecticut, too. We mentioned the Yard Goats.

Ben Hill: Yes, Yard Goats. If you're a Yankees fan, their Triple-A is in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Their Double-A is in Binghamton, New York. You can head over to Pennsylvania, Lehigh Valley IronPigs, Reading Fightin Phils. There's a lot in the Tri-State area for sure.

Rex Doane: Beautiful old ballpark, too, in Reading. I love the older ballparks. You had the call from Asheville, and McCormick Park there just turned 100.

Ben Hill: Yes, one of the best.

Rex Doane: Yes, absolutely. There's a really cool book I wanted to mention by Ryan McGee called Welcome to the Circus of Baseball. It's about his year interning for the Asheville Tourists. There's some really great stories, especially a story involving a soft ice cream cone mishap.

Kate Hinds: Well, we'll have to hear--

Rex Doane: Soft serve ice cream cone, yes.

Kate Hinds: That sounds terrifying.

Rex Doane: No one will be seated during the soft serve ice cream cone scene.

Kate Hinds: I want to hear about this, but we have to take a quick break. I am speaking with Rex Doane and Ben Hill about Minor League Baseball. We'll have more with them right after this.

[MUSIC]

This is All Of It on WNYC. I am Kate Hinds, in for Alison Stewart, and we are talking Minor League Baseball with WNYC Senior Producer Rex Doane, and Ben Hill, a MLB.com reporter who covers Minor League Baseball. We are taking your calls. I want to hear now from Penny in Princeton. Hi, Penny. You're on All Of It.

Penny: Wow, how exciting. I am going to my first ever baseball game, minor league, between the Hartford Yard Goats, they are the visiting team, and the Somerset Patriots. I'm going on Friday. I need advice on how to have a good time, but also, what can I say that makes me sound semi-intelligent?

Kate Hinds: [laughter] Rex, take it away.

Rex Doane: Advice? Go early. Soak in all the ambiance. Make sure you have a chance to pick up a Diner's cap while you're there. They have some pretty good food samplings, which is a big part of the minor league experience.

Ben Hill: Yes, they have a Jersey Diner burger, which I believe is topped with pork roll. If you want to pork roll on a burger, you can get that there. Somerset Patriots are a great time. The Patriots' name comes from the Revolutionary War history around the area. There are some old houses just across the street from the ballpark that housed soldiers during the Revolutionary War. There's a lot of those backstories as well. Yes, Diners and American History.

Rex Doane: As a baseball purist, I love the fact that they have scorecards for those nerds who actually keep score during the game like I do.

Kate Hinds: I was going to say, not that you would be one of them. Are there any players Penny should be watching out for on either the Patriots or the Yard Goats?

Ben Hill: Oh, boy. I basically cover-- The players are kind of incidental for everything I cover. My colleagues at MLB Pipeline could, I'm sure, name a few. I was just there last month and we talked to guys, and I'm blanking.

Rex Doane: Double-A has become more significant in terms of moving up to the majors. In the past couple of years, they had Volpe, Anthony Volpe, and guys who were up on the Yankees.

Ben Hill: Oh, yes. You're likely to see in Double-A, that's often where the top prospects are, even opposed to Triple-A, which is one level up, which might be more veteran guys.

Kate Hinds: That's really interesting. Let's hear from Stephanie in North Plainfield. Hi, Stephanie, you are on All Of It.

Stephanie: Hi, there. Hello. I just wanted to call and share my experience at Somerset Patriots Stadium. It is a fantastic experience for people of all ages and abilities. Their mascot, Sparkee, is amazing. They do lots of different activities, and you will be in a gorgeous stadium with gorgeous-- It's just amazing. Everybody who's listening should make a day to go there.

Kate Hinds: I'm really desperate to go to the stadium now, I have to say.

Rex Doane: They do everything right. They are the model Minor League franchise, I think. By the way, Sparkee, the mascot, is named after Sparky Lyle, who is the former Yankee pitcher, sort of an ambassador there at the games. You can often see him with his handlebar mustache.

Kate Hinds: I was just going to say his mustache. That is awesome. I want to talk about another stadium in New Jersey that has a lot of history. Tell me about Hinchcliffe Stadium.

Rex Doane: It was recently restored. It is an Art Deco masterpiece. They actually had Negro League games there, meaning that Rickwood Field in Birmingham and now Hinchcliffe Stadium in Patterson are the only places that you can go to where they had Negro League games. They had concerts there and midget car races and everything else. It's a unique place to see a ball game. The New Jersey Jackals, they're playing in the Frontier League, which is an independent league. They're not affiliated, but I know that the tickets for people over 55 are $5. You can't beat that.

Kate Hinds: That's cheaper than the New Jersey transit fare to get you out there.

Rex Doane: You'll save enough money to go over to the Belmont Tavern afterwards and get a chicken savoy.

Kate Hinds: Ben, I'm not sure if you know this, but how do they honor that history at Hinchcliffe Stadium?

Ben Hill: That's one I haven't been to because it's not affiliated. I keep meaning to get out there--

Rex Doane: I beat him. I've been there.

Ben Hill: Yes. That's one. Rex got me on that one. I need to make it out. There's no excuse for me not to.

Rex Doane: There is also a Negro League Museum that's part of the ballpark there.

Kate Hinds: Wow.

Rex Doane: Yes. Absolutely a great place to go.

Kate Hinds: I want to talk a little bit more about mascots. We've mentioned some of them. You just saw a game, the Ghost Peppers?

Rex Doane: Yes. Where Peppy was there.

Kate Hinds: [unintelligible 00:20:29] Peppy.

Rex Doane: It was nice to see. My personal favorite mascot maybe is Mr. Celery. He's down in Wilmington. There's a lot of theories about Mr. Celery's backstory. The one that I invest in--

Kate Hinds: Witness protection program?

Rex Doane: Yes. That they bought some used equipment, like a used popcorn popper or cotton candy machine, and they found this costume stuffed in there. Celery has no relation to the Blue Rocks, which is the team. He comes out when they score a run.

Ben Hill: Yes, and only then. The Blue Rocks have a different mascot, who's a moose. Mr. Celery is a mysterious character who only emerges to the tune of Blur's Song 2, like, "Woohoo." Only when the team scores-

Rex Doane: Yes, it will run around--

Ben Hill: -he runs around, goes back in, but he is essentially the face of the Wilmington Blue Rocks.

Rex Doane: Mr. Celery.

Ben Hill: Yes.

Kate Hinds: Of course. Ben, any other mascots stand out for you?

Ben Hill: These questions always blur together for me, but I was just in one of the new teams this year is the Hub City Spartanburgers. Of course, they--

Kate Hinds: Spartanburgers?

Ben Hill: Yes. They play in Spartanburg. Hub City's a nickname for Spartanburg, so they kind of switched up the team name, Hub City Spartanburgers. Of course, they have a lot of burger-related branding. They have a burger mascot, characters named Flip and Chip, who are a spatula and a pickle, and they have a 102-topping burger bar as well.

Rex Doane: Years ago, Ben had a photo essay of forlorn mascots.

Kate Hinds: Forlorn?

Ben Hill: Wow. You remember that? Yes. That was a long time ago.

Kate Hinds: What made them forlorn?

Rex Doane: Like you capture the mascot in a down moment, like sweating in the costume alone.

Ben Hill: Yes. You see them, they're always happy, but every once in a while, you see them a little down, a little introspective.

Kate Hinds: I'm not going to ask a follow-up question to that. I'm just going to let it wash over me and talk about a text we got that says, "My friend from Huntsville, Alabama, told me a funny story about their team. It's a NASA center, so everything is rocket-themed. The city also has a lot of raccoons, so they pulled together, and now the team is the Rocket City Trash Pandas.

Ben Hill: Yes, that was a new team. I think they played their first season after the pandemic in 2021. I think they technically play in Madison, Alabama, but they represent the greater Huntsville region. That term trash panda, I guess, had been popularized to some extent in the movie Guardians of the Galaxy. They just were like, "All right. Space. Raccoons."

Rex Doane: Bring them all together.

Kate Hinds: "How can we merge them together?"

Ben Hill: Yes. The story behind it is like a raccoon with a lot of ingenuity who cobbled together his own trash can spaceship and took off.

Kate Hinds: It was perfect. Just absolutely perfect. I also want to think a little bit about theme nights because I was looking up tickets at a Brooklyn Cyclones game, and I saw that they're doing a bring your cat to the ballpark night, which, as a cat owner, seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

Ben Hill: In Omaha this year, I went to Take Meow't to the Ballgame.

Rex Doane: Get it? "Me out?"

Kate Hinds: Oh.

Ben Hill: Sometimes they're called Purr in the Park. You can switch it up. Bark in the Park is huge in Minor League Baseball. Often a weekly thing, or in some cases, daily. I think this became like, "Hey, well, why not bring cats to the game?" Usually--

Kate Hinds: Yes. What could go wrong?

Ben Hill: Yes. They come in carriers or on leashes as opposed to dogs, or a lot come out. There's usually, depending on the team, maybe between 6 and 25, depending on the team. The teams, they'll play, I guess, cat-related music. What's new? Pussycat is all I can think of. They try to theme it out with that sort of stuff, partner with a local animal shelter, and people like when cats are at the ballpark, even though I don't believe that cats like it when they're at the ballpark.

Kate Hinds: I feel quite certain that they don't.

Rex Doane: One of my favorite theme nights of all time, the Charleston River Dogs had Nobody Night, in which no fans were admitted to the ballpark to break a world record for fewest fans. Some fans brought ladders to look over the fence to watch the game. It was fully staffed, too. Every vendor was there, every usher, but no fans.

Ben Hill: They let them in after the game became official, I believe, but in order to set the attendance record, they didn't allow anyone in there.

Rex Doane: Up to the fifth inning or so.

Ben Hill: Yes. Charleston's one of those teams that does that kind of stuff. I was at their TP Night earlier this year, and the premise was that at the end of the game, every fan had a roll of toilet paper and they just threw it around the ballpark.

Kate Hinds: Was the toilet paper themed with anything, or was it just plain white toilet paper?

Ben Hill: It was just plain white, yes. It would have been--

Rex Doane: Double-ply.

Kate Hinds: It would have been awesome if it had the images of their rivals on it or something.

Ben Hill: Right. I remember years ago, teams did do that. I remember, I think it was the Inland Empire 66ers gave away some Rancho Cucamonga Quakes toilet paper, or maybe vice versa.

Rex Doane: Oh, and a shout out to the Staten Island FerryHawks, who play an Italian Heritage Night game as the Gabagools. Believe me, fans love yelling Gabagool.

Kate Hinds: I don't doubt it. Let's talk food, because part of your job, Ben, is checking out some of the food as you travel around the country, going to games. What stands out for you?

Ben Hill: We'll always highlight in the regional specialties. I have my own unique story with all that, in that I got diagnosed with celiac disease many years ago. Then I came up with the concept of having a designated eater at every ballpark I go to. I recruit a fan at every ballpark I go to to consume the ballpark cuisine that my gluten-free diet prohibits. I've been able to meet hundreds of people over the last decade plus who are just this special fraternity of designated eaters, but often it is, it's like, what's the local thing? You're going to get hot dogs and pretzels and nachos, whatever, at any park. What can you get here that you might not maybe get elsewhere?

I was in Peoria earlier this year. You can get a big pork tenderloin sandwich with the meat--

Rex Doane: Check the size of home plate.

Ben Hill: Yes. There's those stories all over the country. It's highlighting that kind of thing, or 102-topping burger bar in Spartanburg.

Rex Doane: A lot of novelty stuff, like hamburgers with donut buns. There's some food that's actually good. I actually like the barbecue nachos in Memphis.

Ben Hill: Oh, those are legendary.

Rex Doane: Yes.

Ben Hill: Rendezvous.

Rex Doane: With a dry rub.

Ben Hill: Yes, the Rendezvous BBQ rub.

Rex Doane: Charlie Vergos' magical dust on there.

Kate Hinds: If you're a vegetarian, what ballpark would you suggest visiting?

Rex Doane: Yes. Bring your own food.

Kate Hinds: Dead silence.

Ben Hill: Go hang out with Mr. Celery.

Kate Hinds: [laughs] Eat Mr. Celery.

Rex Doane: Come here, Mr. Celery.

Kate Hinds: We just have a couple of minutes left, so I'm going to throw you a final question. What is one thing someone might not expect or might underestimate about going to a Minor League Baseball game? Rex, you start.

Rex Doane: I guess the quality of play. You're going to see potentially some big stars tomorrow, major league stars. Man, if you've been going to Brooklyn Cyclones games, you've had a chance to see Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil, and Francisco Alvarez over these past few years. These are professional athletes, so there's some really great baseball. I've seen so many amazing plays over the years. What's so gratifying, too, is if you see a great catch from the opposing team, the hometown fans often clap for it, which is heartening.

Kate Hinds: I love that. What do you think people should be looking out for at a game?

Ben Hill: I think Rex made a great point with that, and tied in with that is just the two words I always use are intimacy and access. You are just much closer to the action, and everyone is so much more accessible. It's baseball where you just feel more connected, not just to the action on the field, but the fans around you and all the things going on at a ballpark. You're much more likely to participate in a between-inning contest or get to run the bases after the game. Cyclones seem to do that almost after every game.

Rex Doane: I think everyone leaves with a foul ball, practically.

Ben Hill: Yes, there's a lot of foul ball. Just think of all the things that might happen at a Major League game, and then you can just by a factor of many more or have it more likely to happen at a Minor League game. It's just that diversity of experience and a lot of fans don't necessarily know what the promo is going to be. They're like, "Wow, I ran the bases," or, "There was fireworks." "We did post-game launch a ball," or, "My kid got their face painted." It's just all things for all people all the time.

Kate Hinds: That's awesome. I have been speaking with Rex Doane, WNYC senior producer, and Ben Hill, an MLB.com reporter who covers the business and culture of Minor League Baseball. Thanks so much to both of you for coming in today.

Rex Doane: See you at the ballpark.