Proof perhaps of the old adage that someone's good luck is often another's misfortune, a few days ago the New York Yankees announced that beginning in 2021, their Double-A affiliate shall no longer be the Trenton Thunder. The Bronx Bombers shall continue to have a Double-A affiliate that calls the Jersey side of the Hudson River home but, beginning in 2021, the affiliate shall be the Somerset Patriots.
The Patriots, a charter member of the independent Atlantic League, have called Somerset Ballpark in Bridgewater, New Jersey home since the Atlantic League's inception in 1998. In the past (almost) quarter century, I have made the ten-minute trip to Somerset Ballpark four times, one of which was to attend the Big Apple Circus with the Missus. While the ballpark is beautiful and it is incredibly close to my home, nothing about independent minor league baseball ever really grabbed me. Rob and I went once when former Yankees Tim Raines and Pat Kelly were playing for the Pats in an effort to make the U.S. Olympic Baseball Team. We also went once when Jose Canseco and his brother (Ozzie, I think) came to town as members of the Pats' Atlantic League rivals, the Newark Bears. My only other trip to Somerset Ballpark was with Margaret and Joe when we attended a game as part of a fundraiser for a cancer charity.
I do not know how long the marriage between Yankees and Patriots shall last, although one thinks at least until the parent franchise has wrung every makeable dollar out of jingoistic giveaway days and marketing campaigns. I do know that having a Yankees affiliate playing practically next door will increase the likelihood of me taking in a game with a great frequency than the one game every eight year pace I have been straining to keep up since 1998.
Unless they raise the ticket prices to ridiculous levels, it should not be too hard.
-AK
Trenton ballpark opened the same year ours did in Norwich CT, both for the Eastern League. Ours was built as an incentive for the new owners of the Albany Colonie Yankees to move the team to CT (they did) and four years later the Yankees switched their PDA from Norwich to Trenton. Lost in the noise of the 2020 Pandemic was the disappearance of the entire minor league baseball season and now what will prove to be the radical reconstruction of minor league baseball, period. For us fans, it's a love affair but what we forget is for owners and operators of teams and leagues, it's a business. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29795127/why-mlb-minor-leagues-know-end-sept-30
ReplyDeleteI feel badly for the folks in Trenton and I must admit - since I've only been to the Somerset Ballpark on an infrequent basis since it first opened - I was surprised to see that its seating capacity is adequate for Double-A baseball.
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