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Pokemon and MLB drop the Pokeball

By Matt Churella 4 min read

Visiting Baltimore on Aug. 4 for Pokemon Go night at Oriole Park at Camden Yards made me feel somewhat appreciative of living in rural central Pennsylvania.

My plan originally involved traveling down there for only the game. But then I was thrown a curveball Monday when Pokemon Go announced its partnership with the LEGO Group would continue with a limited time stamp rally for trainers in the United States, United Kingdom, Poland, France, Germany and Australia.

Essentially, people who play Pokemon Go can visit a participating LEGO store and find designated Pokestops and gyms to collect in-game stamps, which lead to encounters with Pikachu that have a LEGO-themed special background.

You get one encounter per store through the stamp rally, but if you live close enough to a participating store, you can battle one Pikachu per day through raids until Sept. 30.

The closest store to Altoona is at the Ross Park Mall near Pittsburgh, but since there are two stores just south of Baltimore -- one in Hanover and one in Annapolis -- I decided to make the most of the trip while I was down there.

I lucked out with a 96 percent IV Pikachu from my first stamp rally at the Annapolis Mall, but I didn't get anything good at the Arundel Mills shopping center in Hanover. On the bright side, the couple with bad IVs can be traded to local friends so they don't have to travel across the land, searching far and wide for it.

Walking into a vibrant mall was nice, but the congestion of traffic to get in and out of each location is something I'm grateful I don't experience every day.

The baseball game itself was a fun time. The Orioles defeated the Los Angeles Angels, 3-1.

For the most part, I watched the game from monitors in the concourse area, where I was walking around in a continuous loop, battling Pikachu in raids in Pokemon Go.

I managed to capture two shiny Pikachu with the Camden Yards location card background, which is a special backdrop of the field on the Pokemon's summary page in the game.

While the background was guaranteed, the shiny rate was full odds, which are generally one in 64. Perhaps getting two from 41 raids is the result of "Oriole magic" because I'm sure there were a lot of people who left the game empty handed from the raids.

Last year, when I went to Cleveland for a Pokemon Go-themed baseball game, I lucked out with a single shiny. But now that I have a shiny from both of the two closest sponsored stadiums, there's really not much incentive for me to return to Cleveland or Baltimore next year.

If Pokemon Go and Major League Baseball hit it out of the park with their collaboration last year, they sort of dropped the ball with it this year by not including other stadiums or changing the featured Pokemon from Pikachu to literally anything else.

This year's event was a rinse and repeat of last year, with the same baseball teams getting the same Pokemon Go night treatment.

Pennsylvania is home to two MLB stadiums, and if they could give Pittsburgh or Philadelphia a chance to host a Pokemon Go-themed event, it would create more excitement for trainers like myself who've gone to multiple stadiums now, while also incentivizing more people to visit those cities.

If the collaboration is tied to specific stadiums through contracts, a simple solution is to feature a different Pokemon, like Eevee or the Kanto staters -- Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle -- to make next year more exciting, if the Pokemon Go and MLB collaboration continues in 2027.

It would make a potential trip to Baltimore, Cleveland or New York City -- all of which are within about a five-hour driving radius of Altoona -- more worthwhile.

Mirror Staff Writer Matt Churella is at 814-946-7520 and mchurella@altoonamirror.com

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