Perspective: Rivalries pepper the Minors
I relocated here to become the beat writer for the Class A Prince William Cannons, a New York Yankees farm team in the Carolina League. (They're now the Potomac Nationals.)
Being a New Yorker and a baseball fan, I had at least a passing familiarity with that little thing called "baseball rivalries." Hey, I was a transplanted New Yorker who went to college in Massachusetts in the late 1970s, how could I not?
But when I started spending the bulk of my time at Prince William County Stadium in Woodbridge, Va., and taking the "road trips" an hour north to see the Cannons take on their Northern Division rivals, the Frederick Keys, the concept of "local rivalry" took on a whole new meaning.
If the players on the two teams had any bad blood between them, it wasn't evident. There was no "history" there, since Frederick had only joined the league during that 1989 season, relocating from Hagerstown, Md.
But the Booster Clubs HATED each other. As a beat writer, I covered all of the Cannons' home games, as well as all of their games in Frederick, since it was so close. I got to see up close and personal the utter distaste and disdain the folks had, not just for the opposing teams, but for the opposing teams' fans.
It was like being thrown into a Hatfields-McCoys real life scenario but with hot dog vendors and dizzy bat races.
At the time, both cities were sleepy outer bedroom communities of Washington D.C. Neither had the éclat or panache of, say, a Bethesda, Md., or a McLean, Va. Both were just starting to feel the boom, as city and government employees tried to find more affordable housing within driving distance of downtown.
The two communities, about an hour apart barring Beltway traffic, duked it out vicariously whenever their teams vied for Northern Division supremacy in the Carolina League in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They probably still do, though I am no longer a daily eyewitness to the madness.
But I have to admit that after I moved from Virginia to Maryland in 1994, and the Keys all of a sudden became my "home team," it took some time before I didn't feel guilty about claiming them as my homeboys.
So yes, Virginia (and Maryland), there are rivalries in the Minors.
Occasionally they're even generated by existing Major League rivalries.
For example, rumor has it that whenever a Yankees affiliate plays a Red Sox affiliate, the game has just a little more meaning to all involved, from the fans to the front office to the players themselves. And with the two organizations having five of their six farm teams in the same leagues, those matchups happen quite often.
Current Cleveland Indians Minor League pitcher Randy Newsom came over to his new organization from the Red Sox last summer in the Coco Crisp deal, so he remembers facing the Yankees back in the Gulf Coast League playoffs in 2004.
"There were 10 people there and the electricity was still there, just because it was the Yankees and the Red Sox," recalled Newsom, who currently closes for the Double-A Akron Aeros in the Eastern League. "That's how they viewed a Gulf Coast League Red Sox-Yankees matchup. It still has significance."
But just as often, rivalries can emanate from a more local form of civic pride.
"For the most part, from year to year the teams are completely different, so the fans are the ones that keep the rivalries going, and that's what makes it more exciting," posited Akron manager Tim Bogar, who remembered a similar rivalry with Richmond, Va., back when he played for the Mets' Triple-A farm team in Norfolk. "I think because you move so often as a player, sometimes you don't grasp the rivalries in the Minors. It has a lot more to do with the citizens of those towns and the pride about where they live, and that's important. It's their team."
But finally, as in life, it often comes down to history. Not necessarily ancient history, even. Five years can do a lot for a budding rivalry.
Just ask the folks in Akron and Altoona. They have a lot more in common than nearly adjacent slots on the alphabetical list of all Minor League teams (and it might be a good thing that Albuquerque interposes).
For the past five years, either Akron or Altoona has won the Eastern League's Southern Division title. In four of those five years, the winner has been Akron and in three of those four years, Akron has beaten runner-up Altoona in the first round of the playoffs, sending the Curve home while the Aeros moved on to the finals.
Even newcomers to the teams hear about the recent history pretty quickly.
To help the club in its postseason quest last year, the Pirates promoted two top prospects -- catcher Neil Walker and center fielder Andrew McCutchen, the top picks in 2004 and 2005 respectively -- to Altoona.
"From the time I got called up last year, we had like six regular-season games left against Akron and then ended up facing them in the playoffs," Walker recalled. "I didn't know the history when I got there, but it only took a couple of days to figure out how intense it was. It was definitely something where you could tell the difference, and you knew you had to step up your game."
Factor in that the Cleveland Indians (Akron's parent club) and Pittsburgh Pirates (Altoona's parent club) also both have teams in the Class A Advanced Carolina League, Class A South Atlantic League and Class A Short-Season New York-Penn League, and it's pretty much inevitable that even before they've gotten to the Eastern League, a lot of the players have faced each other many times already.
But that familiarity has actually bred a lot more mutual respect than it has contempt or animosity among the guys in uniform.
For the players, "Akron-Altoona" doesn't quite have that "Hatfield-McCoy" or even "Yankees-Red Sox" ring to it, where you know they just want to beat the tar out of each other every time they play.
Take, for example, the two teams' All-Star first basemen, Altoona's Steven Pearce and Akron's Jordan Brown. Pearce, who was promoted to Triple-A Indianapolis July 29, was leading the Minors with 96 RBIs, and between Lynchburg and Altoona had combined to hit .336 with 25 homers. Brown, the 2006 Carolina League MVP at Kinston, was hitting .324 with nine homers and 62 RBIs for the Aeros.
The two are close friends, and when the teams were playing each other, you'd generally find them hanging out together after the game, as well (at least up until Pearce's promotion).
And it's not even like they went to college together, or faced each other in Little League, or have any kind of history outside of simply facing each other as they moved up the ladder.
"This guy destroys Pirates pitching everywhere he goes, so I knew of him and knew he was a great ballplayer," Pearce said of Brown, though he had to get in a good-natured barb or two. "Being a first baseman, since he doesn't hit for that much power, I see him all the time, so we got to know each other very well over there."
"It's easy to say 'I really want to beat these guys,' and I do, don't get me wrong. I hate to lose," Brown said. "But, you know, when you play 140 games a year, you're just trying to go out and do your best and help your team win regardless of who you're playing. I think if there's no bad blood, then you just want to win. And there's no bad blood here."
Even if not all the players on Akron and Altoona are going to hold hands and sing "Kumbaya," the respect and admiration between the clubs far outweighs the killer instinct. At least, before the first pitch and after the last out. But don't get the idea that when one team wins, the other is standing on the top step of the dugout applauding.
"It's kind of a love-hate thing, for sure," said Walker, who has been facing these players for the last three seasons. "It's nice when you beat 'em, because you feel like you've won like when you play a brother. You want to beat each other so badly that the competition is more fun than the outcome, at times."
But even the mutual respect and admiration can sometimes get lost in the heat of battle, as happened last Saturday, in the third game of the final four-game, regular-season series between the clubs.
In that game, there was a bit of a beanball war. Coincidentally or not, both pitchers were brand new to their respective organizations, with no history lessons learned, but also no friendships developed between the opponents.
Perhaps that incident, which resulted in the rare spectacle of two managers actually jawing at each other, helped wake up what had been a somnolent Akron club, which finally salvaged the last game of the series the next afternoon.
"I think what happened was that we were going through the motions the first part of that series and that situation kind of woke everybody up a little bit," Bogar said. "Especially against a team like that where it matters [because] they're chasing us."
As of July 30, both teams were very much alive in the postseason chase, with just over a month to go and having completed their 17-game regular-season schedule against one another. Altoona not only took the season series, 10-7, but won three of the last four games, knocking the Aeros out of first place for the first time this season, as the Erie SeaWolves slipped into the top slot.
Now, for the two teams to meet again in the playoffs, they will have to combine to dispatch Erie. Between them, they face the SeaWolves 13 times down the stretch, with Altoona having 10 of those games.
Who do you think will be rooting for whom?
Lisa Winston is a reporter for MLB.com.