My son Jude and I are headed out on a three-ballpark-three-day tour of the Northwest League, which is a six-team High-A league in Oregon, Washington and Vancouver. Since we’re hitting Tri-Cities, Spokane and Vancouver, we’ll have seen all six teams in the league by the end of the weekend.

Tri-Cities is home to the Dust Devils and is the most low-key of the three ballparks we’re seeing on this trip. The three Southeastern Washington cities that make up the ‘tri’ are Pasco, Richland and Kennewick, and it’s admittedly a part of the country I’ve never explored before.

There are two bobbleheads in the ballpark’s entrance area: one for former minor leaguer Russell Wilson and one for Erik the Peanut Guy, a cool dude in fun socks who roams around the grandstand with a wireless microphone, pumping up the crowd. This is one of those things I love about minor league baseball: Erik seems like he’s just a big fan and he can pretty much tell whatever corny dad jokes he wants. Kind of a dream job, I’d say. I mean…he’s got his own life-sized bobblehead, and I’m not sure how many people can say that.

The Northwest league undoubtedly has some future major leaguers in its midst, perhaps none so promising as Harry Ford, a catcher for Everett who was the Mariners first round pick in 2021 and crushed a three-run homer for Great Britain against Canada in the World Baseball Classic. He was 0-4 in this game, a 7-2 victory for the home team Dust Devils over the visiting Aqua Sox in front of 2,388 fans.

We also lucked out because tonight, my friends, is two-dollar hot dog night! Woo hoo! Jude and I put away a fair number of them. I’m not sure I would have paid $6.50 for these, but at two bucks they’re definitely worth it.

The evening featured some interesting weather as well; it was pretty hot, in the mid 80s, at game time but rain threatened throughout and some pretty cool clouds floated through. Then it rained for a bit. We also were treated to a really nice sunset…but only if you climbed to the top of the grandstand and looked backward over the parking lot. Not as aesthetic a ‘ballpark sunset’ as you might dream up, but pretty nonetheless.