Saturday, July 5, 2014

Grading the circuit-Frederick Keys

Today is the start of an occasional series that will look at what I like and dislike on the various stops on my travels on the minor league baseball circuit.
Future post will deal with Hagerstown,Harrisburg,Reading and Altoona along with possibly others,but today we will start with the Frederick Keys.

The Keys have usually been the gold standard in my experiences from top to bottom through the years and they continue to lead in most areas.
Frederick is easy to graph at,as I've noted in the past and the park offers easy access to the field at any spot on the concourse.
The park is beginning to show its age a bit,but still offers a close view to the field and was among the first of the 90's parks to offer a view of the game while waiting in line at a concession stand.
Now,many parks have more stands or have television's showing the game while you wait,but Frederick still has the advantage of simply turning around to watch the game.
The lines usually go slow as the team won't be able to add lines until the day comes that the team is able to add some areas for renovation to Harry Grove Stadium,but at least you can watch while you wait.

The Keys also get high marks for the lack of obnoxious games that used to be a staple in Hagerstown (More on them on the Suns post) and when they do play various on field games,the microphone isn't turned on high and drown out every persons conversations.
I understand that the casual fan is the fan that teams have to draw from to make money,but the Keys also seem to get that baseball is the draw and that leads to a toned down experience that allows everyone to enjoy the game and the entertainment surrounding it.

Harry Grove is a solid park to watch a game at,nothing spectacular,but solid.
I wish that the Grove had an outfield area to sit as stadiums that have that tend to spread the crowds out a bit,but it is what is and there really isn't what I would say is a bad seat in the place.
The sightlines are good and the seats are close to the field,so you'll enjoy your game viewing,but pay attention-foul balls tend to get to the stands FAST and more than once,I've seen fans get smoked by foul shots.
Two times,I've seen fans leave via ambulance so please pay attention to the game,even if just enough to know where the ball is going.

The Keys usually get top marks for customer service too.
The employees in the ticket office are quite accommodating and the front office folks are helpful as well.
I only added the word usually because of a bad experience with a Keys usher at a recent game was my first bad one ever in Frederick.
I'm not going to give play by play of this experience,but suffice it to say "Daniel" won't be winning any All-Usher team spots any time soon.
Frederick is not alone with this as one of the regular stops has constant issues with rude and downright mean ushers as we will discuss this when we reach that particular team.
I'll never understand why ,with the importance of customer service, that teams employ these types.
But it's just our opinion and if you have one problem over eight or nine years,that's a pretty good ratio for the Frederick Keys when you consider how many games I get to.

The Frederick Keys do a good job and I rank the Keys experience near or at the top of the teams that I see regularly.
I'll be ranking these in order as we go along so as you read a new post,I'll have the new rankings.

1) Frederick Keys

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