THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Take me out to where the ballgame was supposed to be

3 Legends Field in Butte, Mont., had it all early last week.

Well, nearly all.

A nice little ballpark on the hill, with covered seating. And, if you peered hard enough through the smoky skies, a view of the mountains and the rest of the town in the distance.

The only thing missing was the actual game being played.

Sadly, the Mining City Tommyknockers — yes, the Mining City Tommyknockers — had shut down their season two days earlier, with only one week remaining in the regular season.

The Mining City players — college players competing in a summer wood-bat league — had had enough of the conditions they were forced to play under, and live under, according to an in-depth story at 406mtsports.com.

Because there weren't enough host families for all of the players, one of those conditions involved players sleeping on air mattresses, sometimes two to an air mattress.

NOW, IF you've ever slept on an air mattress, perhaps you've woken up in the middle of the night and realized the mattress had lost half its air. Now imagine two college-aged kids waking up to that same realization.

Anyway, other grievances were cited, including a slowly detected injury that would possibly require Tommy John surgery, and eventually the players called it quits.

But you wouldn't know it from visiting the ballpark two nights later, on a warm, smoky summer night.

No signs out front telling fans the season had prematurely ended, and there would be no game that night.

Not even a moose out front to tell fans the park was closed.

THAT WAS a bummer, in part because that was one of four baseball games we were scheduled to see last week. It was also a bummer because I wanted to say I'd seen a game played by Tommyknockers.

Oh well.

According to the internet — so it must be true — "The Knocker, Knacker, or Tommyknocker is a mythical, subterranean, gnome-like creature in Cornish and Devon folklore."

OK, then.

Fortunately, the Missoula Paddleheads and the Idaho Falls Chukars were still in business last week, so we were still able to get our small-stadium, close-to-the-action baseball fix.

Both the Paddleheads and the Chukars play in the Pioneer League, which used to be affiliated with Major League Baseball. But after MLB took out its machete last year, hacking several dozen minor-league teams, the Pioneer League is now what is called an "MLB partner league," whatever the hell that means.

What it means is players in the league are not assigned to teams by big-league clubs. Rather, some of the players in the league were recently released by major league teams (remember the machete), or were not selected in the MLB draft.

One of the cool things about watching baseball in the low minors is seeing players stand out and wondering if they'll someday make it to the big club, so you can say, "Hey, I remember watching that guy hit two homers in a game in Missoula," or something like that.

But with MLB teams having no vested interest in these players, that was way less likely here.

Still, it was entertaining ball from young men still chasing the dream, and both the Missoula and Idaho Falls parks provided a neat fan experience and nice ballparks.

Neither unleashed a sprinting dog from just past the first-base dugout that charged toward home plate and retrieved the bat after members of the home team hit, like in Boise, but that might have been the only advantage Boise's borderline decrepit stadium had on the others.

Neither Ogren Park in Missoula nor Melaleuca Field in Idaho Falls sported bat-fetching dogs (though it would have been entertaining to unleash a bison or two from Yellowstone National Park to accomplish the same thing), but both had far superior (and comfortable) seating.

In perhaps not an unrelated event, the Boise Hawks, who used to be in the same league as the now High-A West Spokane Indians, are also in the Pioneer League with the likes of Missoula and Idaho Falls, with no direct MLB affiliation.

Melaleuca Field, seemingly dropped into a neighborhood in Idaho Falls, sometimes hosts Idaho state high school baseball tournaments, which I'm sure is a treat for those kids to be able to play in such a nice park.

Ditto Ogren Park in Missoula, where the Coeur d'Alene American Legion team was able to play a few of its games earlier this summer at a tournament in Missoula.

One of the co-owners of the Mining City team said the Tommyknockers would be back in 2022, and for "decades" after that, the 406mtsports.com report said.

Let's hope so — minus the air mattresses.

WHAT ELSE happened while we were away?

• The Coeur d'Alene Lumbermen were hoping to advance to the American Legion Northwest Regional, but fell one game short of the championship round at state. The Idaho Falls Bandits won the Idaho state tournament, then won the regional in Gillette, Wyo., and are now playing at the American Legion World Series in Shelby, N.C., where the championship game is scheduled for Tuesday. The Bandits won the ALWS in 2019, the last year it was held.

• West Valley Little League, with players from Eagle, Star and Middleton, won Idaho state championships in all three divisions — beating Coeur d'Alene in the 10U and 11U playoffs, and Lewiston in the 12U (Majors) playoffs. The 12U team advanced to the Northwest Regional in San Bernardino, where it finished 1-2 in the six-team event.

Eastlake Little League of Sammammish, Wash., and Lake Oswego (Ore.) Little League advanced to Saturday's regional championship game. And since, because COVID-19, this year's Little League World Series will consist of all 16 teams from the U.S., instead of the usual eight from the U.S. and eight international teams, both Northwest Regional finalists move on to Williamsport, Pa., rather than just the regional champion. There, Brian Rounds of Rathdrum will umpire at the Little League World Series for the second time in three years.

• The Olympics were a hard watch this year, partly because of no fans, partly because most of it was tape delay due to the time difference in Japan — unless you just happened to be awake in the early morning hours to watch, say, the gold medal softball game (played on a baseball field).

Anyway, I always appreciated John Stockton in the 1996 Games with Dream Team II. That squad wasn't quite as dominant as the original Dream Team in 1992, but the U.S. winning the gold was still pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Maybe because of that, many of the U.S. players were seemingly going through the motions by the time the gold medal game rolled around, and the outcome was sort of in doubt for a while. But Stockton was one of the few who kept playing hard, and helped the Americans finish off the game. I'll never forget that.

With that type of service to country in mind, Americans should also thank Kevin Durant for this year's gold medal in hoops. The rest of the world has long since caught up to the U.S. in the sport, and gold is no longer a certainty for us. All of Team USA played hard to the end, but we REALLY needed Durant to play hard (and well) to help us hold off France (imagine saying that years ago) to secure the gold.

And finally, it felt like full circle, and a bit nostalgic, to watch the U.S. women's volleyball team win their first Olympic gold medal. Volleyball burst onto the Olympic scene in 1984 in Los Angeles. I lived in Sandpoint at that time, and it was very much a volleyball-rich town, and several folks from there mentioned heading down to SoCal to watch the Games. And ABC gave the matches ample airtime.

While the U.S. men took gold in 1988 and ’92 before beach volleyball started to become more popular, the U.S. women had been close, but had never won the gold before this year.

Beach volleyball has become the more sexy sport for many reasons — and a U.S. women's team won the gold there too — but there's still a soft spot for the indoor game, and it was pretty cool to watch the U.S. women finally bring home the gold. Especially since the U.S. women's coach, Karch Kiraly, was the face of U.S. volleyball in the 1980s and 90s.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @CdAPressSports.