The Year of Jim: New York Instead of New England

Going to a baseball game on the Fourth of July was fun, but watching the way the Dodgers played that day was not. I saw the Dodgers lose on July 3 and 4. I definitely didn’t want those to be my last two games of the season. Even before seeing them lose, I wanted to make sure I got to more games before the end of the season. Of course, the season was only about halfway over at that point. But once we get to September, I’m very unlikely to go to any games with school and college football starting. I didn’t want to travel during the Olympics so that I could watch as much as possible. And I have another trip coming up that will not involve sports at all so I didn’t have that much time left in the summer to go to games. I also wanted to get to Boston this summer. I remember being in Boston shortly after the Celtics lost the 2010 Finals and thinking how much more fun it would have been if the Celtics had won. So I wanted to go to a game at Fenway Park and wear my Celtics 2024 NBA Champions shirt. And I still have a lot of New England where I haven’t seen sports. So the plan was to go see the New Hampshire Fisher Cats on July 9 and the Red Sox on July 10. John was going to meet me in New Hampshire and go to that game. That didn’t happen.

I was supposed to take the bus up to Manchester, New Hampshire, on July 9. On July 7 (the day after I got back from my trip out west), I started feeling a sore throat. It wasn’t too bad so I was hoping it was nothing serious and I would wake up feeling better the next day. I did not feel better the next day. When I had covid, it started with a sore throat and then I felt miserable the next day. I didn’t feel as bad as I did when I had covid, but I definitely felt worse on July 8 than I did on July 7. I took two covid tests (the first one was expired, that’s why I took a second one) and they were both negative, but I didn’t feel good. I texted John and told him that I wasn’t going to make it. As it turned out, I felt okay on July 9 when I was supposed to be taking the bus to New Hampshire. But I felt pretty bad for the rest of the week. I was very sick for a good five days and it took almost two weeks to be feeling back to normal. So not going was a good decision, but it was a disappointing one. My schedule and the baseball schedules didn’t line up for me to do this same trip later in the summer. So hopefully I’ll be able to do it next summer and wear a Celtics 2025 NBA Champions shirt to a game at Fenway Park. I also have to get to sporting events in Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island. So I could possibly combine any of those states with Boston. New Hampshire and Maine would probably be the easiest for a summer trip because of their minor league baseball teams. I might go to a Providence basketball game at some point to cross off Rhode Island. Vermont is a tough one. My ideal scenario would be going to see some wiffle ball at Little Fenway.

Even though there was a lot of baseball left, I would have been okay with my last baseball game of the season being July 10 at Fenway Park. I would have been okay with my last baseball game of the season being July 4 at Dodger Stadium if the Dodgers had won. But I didn’t get to see either of those things so I wanted to make sure I got to at least one more baseball game this season. I ended up going to two games on consecutive days in New York instead of New England.

I’ve been around for 40 years and I’ve lived my whole life on Long Island (my first two years were in Queens, but that is on Long Island). As far as I know, I had never been to Grand Central Terminal. I ended up going there two straight days. If I wanted to get to a minor league game before the end of the summer and I wasn’t going to get to one in New England, the easiest option for a game in a stadium that I hadn’t been to yet was the Hudson Valley Renegades. So I took the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central and then I took Metro North to Beacon. It was the first time I had ever taken Metro North. The train ride was pretty much along the Hudson River the whole time. I saw West Point on the other side of the river so that was cool. It was about an hour and a half to Beacon and then I took a Lyft to Heritage Financial Park in Wappingers Falls for a Sunday afternoon game. The Renegades are a high-A affiliate of the Yankees. They were playing the Rome Emperors, a Braves’ affiliate.

I had definitely seen pictures of Grand Central before, but I don't think I had ever been there before since the Long Island Railroad didn't go there until 2023.

Hudson Valley got out to a 3-0 lead with a home run in the first and an RBI double and RBI single in the second. They gave up a run on a single in the fifth. And that was the scoring for the game. Both teams’ starters went five innings. I looked up the Yankees’ top 30 prospects and I saw a couple of them in the game. Roc Riggio played second base and led off. He was 1 for 3 with a walk. And Cam Schlitter was the starting pitcher (one run, three hits, four walks, and five strikeouts in five innings). I had a southwestern dog to eat. They didn’t have chipotle mayo so they asked if I wanted to replace it with mustard. They had real mustard so the answer was yes. And to drink I had a Renegades Lager from the Sloop Brewing Company in Hopewell Junction, New York. Both were good. It was pretty hot with the game starting at 2:10. It was 86° and it was sunny so I found some seats in the shade. Heritage FInancial Park was definitely a single-A stadium. Some of the seats were metal bleachers and there was no 360° concourse. Capacity is 4,494 (attendance for this game was 2,708). But it was a pretty nice stadium. The setting was pretty cool. As you look out to the outfield, you see lots and lots of trees and then off in the distance beyond right field you can see some big hills/small mountains. Since they’re a Yankees’ affiliate, they played Frank Sinatra at the end of the game so that was cool. But the big negative was artificial turf. Baseball should be played on grass. This game lasted two hours and 21 minutes and I was back home to see the end of the Dodgers beating the Red Sox on Sunday Night Baseball.

There were definitely good things about the stadium, but baseball (and football) should not be played on artificial turf.

Since I missed out on seeing the Red Sox, I decided I wanted to get to a Yankee game. I hadn’t been to Fenway Park since 2019, but that was more recent than I had been to Yankee Stadium. My last time at Yankee Stadium was for Notre Dame-Syracuse in 2018. The last baseball game I went to at Yankee Stadium was Dodgers-Yankees in 2016. The Dodgers played there this year, but ticket prices were ridiculous so I didn’t go. I decided during the All Star break that I wanted to get to a weekday afternoon game and I checked the schedule and they had one the Monday after the All Star break as they were finishing a wraparound series with the Rays. I got a standing room ticket for $7 (I probably would have had to pay at least 10 times that much to see them play the Dodgers). So for the second straight day, I took the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central, but this time I took the subway to Yankee Stadium.

When I got to Yankee Stadium, my mission was to find good beer. I’ve seen Yankee Stadium ranked the worst Major League stadium for craft beer. And that ranking is deserved. The craft beer situation was dire. I walked all over the stadium before the game started and I finally found a bar out by the bleachers that had a decent selection on tap (emphasis on decent, it definitely wasn’t great). I had a Blue Point Toasted Lager. If Blue Point was still owned by Anheuser Busch, I would refuse to drink it, but it’s not anymore. I had a pulled brisket sandwich to eat. It was fine, but underwhelming and I definitely wouldn’t pay what I paid for it again.

As for the game, it was Carlos Rodon for the Yankees against Zack Littell for the Rays. The Yankees got out to a fast start. Austin Wells and Anthony Volpe hit back to back home runs in the second. Oswaldo Cabrera had a two run single in the fourth to make it 4-0 and the Yankees were in control. DJ LaMahieu homered in the fifth and Juan Soto homered in the seventh and eighth. Rodon had a no-hitter into the fifth, but then he gave up a home run to Jose Siri with one out in the fifth. That was all the scoring for the Rays and the Yankees won 9-1. Of the six home runs in the game, Juan Soto’s first was the only one that went over 400 feet. It was into the luxury boxes down the right field line. His second one actually had a higher exit velocity, but it was a line drive so it didn’t go as far. Rodon ended up pitching seven innings. He struck out ten and only allowed one run on two hits and two walks. Attendance was 40,824. It was 82°, but it was cloudy so it didn’t feel hot at all. It actually was drizzling when I got off the subway, but that didn’t last long so the weather wasn’t an issue at all. I had a standing room ticket, but I sat up high in some empty seats that were covered in case there were any weather issues. The game lasted two hours and 41 minutes.

I had a couple of final thoughts about this game. Like Kansas City last year, they showed the vertical and horizontal break of each pitch and the numbers didn't make sense. There were four seem fastballs with 16 inches of vertical break and sliders with two inches of vertical break. Those numbers might sound right if they were reversed. There were cutters that had negative vertical break. I don't know what that means. Were they rising? And looking at the lineups and batting averages made me sad. At the end of the game, the Rays had one player in their starting lineup with a batting average over .252 (Amed Rosario who was later traded to the Dodgers and then designated for assignment by the Dodgers). The Yankees had two players with batting averages over .251 (Juan Soto and Aaron Judge). I love baseball, but they still need to find ways to increase batting averages. Limiting the shift was good, but it's not enough. Also, I looked at the Yankees' 40 man roster and their uniform numbers. Nine of the ten numbers from 90-99 were used. It was the 40 man and not the active roster, but I looked it up because the Yankees had three players in their lineup wearing numbers in the 90s (Ben Rice-93, Aaron Judge-99, and Oswaldo Cabrera-95). I know they're the Yankees and they have like 50 retired numbers, but it was still weird to see players wear numbers in the 90s other than 99. So that was my first trip to Yankee Stadium in almost six years. I’ll be back in November for Notre Dame-Army.

I hope it won't take me eight years to get to my next baseball game at Yankee Stadium.

I’ll finish with my updated minor league stadium rankings. These are getting to be very unofficial as it’s harder for me to remember each one individually since I’ve only been to almost all of them only one time and it’s not like I’m seeing them on TV all the time to remind me of what they’re like. But anyway, here we go:

29. Arm & Hammer Park in Trenton

28. Dehler Park in Billings

27. Arvest Ballpark in Springdale

26. Autozone Park in Memphis

25. TD Bank Ballpark in Bridgewater, New Jersey

24. Heritage Financial Park

23. Memorial Stadium in Boise

22. KeySpan Park in Brooklyn

21. Newman Outdoor Field in Fargo

20. Isotopes Park in Albuquerque

19. TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha

18. Daniel S. Frawley Stadium in Wilmington