{"id":43743,"date":"2020-07-25T01:13:26","date_gmt":"2020-07-25T01:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=43743"},"modified":"2020-07-25T01:13:26","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T01:13:26","slug":"theyre-playing-ball-in-hodgetown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=43743","title":{"rendered":"They&#8217;re playing ball in Hodgetown!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=Hodgetown%20%23SodPoodles%20%23SodSquad%20%23MLB%20%23minorleaguebaseball&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/baseball-pic.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-12082\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/baseball-pic-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/baseball-pic-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/baseball-pic.jpg 650w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I have to say good word or three to my friends up yonder in Amarillo.<\/p>\n<p>Minor league baseball &#8212; the organized version of it affiliated with <em>Major League Baseball<\/em> &#8212; is on the shelf for this season. That dang pandemic has scuttled minor league ball in cities all across the nation.<\/p>\n<p>But in Amarillo, they have cobbled together a &#8220;league&#8221; with college players suiting up to play in the city&#8217;s shiny new ballpark named Hodgetown.<\/p>\n<p>Amarillo has a couple of teams: Sod Dogs and Sod Squad. The name of the city&#8217;s AA baseball team is the Sod Poodles, and are affiliated with the National League&#8217;s San Diego Padres. The Sod Poodles are on the bench this season, which denies the Sod Poodles the chance to defend the Texas League championship they won in 2019 &#8230; in their <em>first year of existence!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Not to be denied baseball, they put together a season featuring these young men. What&#8217;s cool &#8212; and which might not be getting the attention it deserves &#8212; is that the college players are swinging <em>wooden<\/em> bats. Yep, they aren&#8217;t wielding those metal instruments when they stride to the plate to take their cuts.<\/p>\n<p>The NCAA plays baseball with those metal bats, which makes that annoying tinny sound when players hit a baseball with them.<\/p>\n<p>I presume they&#8217;re sitting at an appropriate &#8220;social distancing&#8221; fashion at Hodgetown. Keep it up, friends.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m glad and happy for you that you are enjoying some hardball at the downtown Amarillo ballpark.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=Hodgetown%20%23SodPoodles%20%23SodSquad%20%23MLB%20%23minorleaguebaseball&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have to say good word or three to my friends up yonder in Amarillo. Minor league baseball &#8212; the organized version of it affiliated with Major League Baseball &#8212; is on the shelf for this season. That dang pandemic has scuttled minor league ball in cities all across the nation. But in Amarillo, they &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=43743\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">They&#8217;re playing ball in Hodgetown!<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[8347,7816,9461],"class_list":["post-43743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news","tag-hodgetown","tag-sod-poodles","tag-sod-squad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43744,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43743\/revisions\/43744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}