Another post about my favorite pitcher-only pitcher in the big leagues right now, Kyle Freeland. As I was looking for Freeland cards to get for my 14 cards post I noticed that he was shown pitching in a lot of different ballparks. Then a question popped into my mind.
Has Freeland been shown pitching in all five NL West ballparks?
I know it's more natural to ask if he's been shown in all 30 ballparks but I also knew that that was out of the question given how Freeland has yet to pitch against some teams in general (for example he's yet to face the Detroit Tigers in his career as of the time this post was written).
They weren't always clear (as we'll see today) but join me in my findings.
Also, sports venues change names so often that I'm going to call all of these ballparks the parks their teams play in regardless of how secure the naming rights currently are.
The Colorado Rockies' Home Ballpark
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Freeland is depicted the most on cards taken at his home ballpark in Colorado. The biggest tell is if he's shown in pinstripes, which are the home unis. I specifically got this one because this one of the few Topps Now cards Freeland has.
The Los Angeles Dodgers' Home Ballpark
The Dodgers' ballpark holds the special honor of being where Freeland is shown pitching in his flagship rookie card. This was also the first card I saw that made me think "oh this is obviously Los Angeles" and inspired this whole post. The Rockies won this game 4-3 on April 18th, 2017.
The San Francisco Giants' Home Ballpark
This one was also a dead giveaway and helped me think I had a real shot at this. A brick wall and arch shape in the background? Yeah that's San Fran on June 27th, 2018 alright. The Rockies lost 0-1.
The San Diego Padres' Home Ballpark
Now we're getting into "I need to check Getty Images or else there's no way I'll know where this was" territory. The cropping and zoomed in photographs reduces the rest of the ballpark and surroundings to nothing. The fact that is a chrome parallel that's turned the crowd, which was originally just flesh colored blobs, to shattered glass doesn't help. The original blobs witnessed a 2-4 Rockies loss on July 9th, 2021.
The Arizona Diamondbacks' Home Ballpark
This one was hands down the hardest to find, because unlike LA and SF this wasn't obvious. In fact this search was a little interesting in that it was more obvious when the pictures weren't the D-Backs ballpark given how the roof and batters eye in that stadium often makes the photographs taken there look darker than other ballparks, certainly darker than the rest of the NL west stadiums.
It also didn't help that it was on one of Freeland's most heavily edited cards and the surroundings aren't even there are at all. But thankfully Getty Images confirmed that the picture was indeed taken at that ballpark in Arizona on August 20, 2019 . The Rockies lost 7-8.
So all in all the NL West is truly the Kyle Freeland division (suck it Steve Finley and Matt Herges) so therefore he rules.
One day I'll have to go through the rest of Freeland's cardography and see where else he's shown pitching in. Off the top of my head I know for sure that he's also been shown pitching in the Chicago Cubs' ballpark, the New York Mets' ballpark and the New York Yankees' ballpark.
As always thanks for stopping by and take care.
Cool experiment!
ReplyDeleteThanks, hopefully the backgrounds/stadiums will be easier to identify if I ever revisit this.
DeleteImpressive detective work!
ReplyDeleteAll I did was look up Kyle Freeland on Getty's site.
DeleteFun post!
ReplyDeleteIt was fun to put together but hopefully in the future the pictures will be more clear in terms of where it was taken. I'll have to revisit this in a few years.
Delete