Yard Goats Are Latest Road Scholars

The Hartford Yard Goats, the new incarnation of the New Britain Rock Cats, began the Double-A Eastern League season on the road.

Dunkin’ Donuts Park wasn’t ready in time for Opening Day today, and might not be ready until the end of May. The team’s scheduled home opener is now on May 31, when Trenton treks to Connecticut’s capital. The Yard Goats made their debut Thursday at the Diamond in Richmond, Va., the home of the Richmond Flying Squirrels, and beat the Squirrels 5-4. The Yard Goats were the home team, despite being from far home. They’ll need to get used to it.

Unfortunately, snafus like this have been anything but rare in recent years in the minor leagues. The Biloxi Shuckers of the Southern League spent more than two months last year waiting for MGM Park to be completed. The year before, the El Paso Chihuahuas had to wait until late April to open Southwest University Park.

In 2012, renovation at PNC Field meant the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees shed their city, became the Empire State Yankees and spent the season without a home ballpark.

A silver lining, if there is such a thing in situations like these, is that the Yard Goats can lean on the staffs of the Chihuahuas, Shuckers and Yankees for ways to make a bad situation a little better.

Mike Vander Woude was the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre play-by-play voice for the 2012 season, and had been on the job for the four prior seasons as well. He’d seen a championship in 2008 and rehab appearances from the likes of Andy Pettitte and Alex Rodriguez, but very little could have prepared him for the reality of five-plus months on the road with only the all-star break as a brief respite.

The reality of the situation didn’t hit him, he recalls, until he was loaded on the team bus headed for the first of many road trips.

“The closest we got to PNC Field that season,” Vander Woude said, “was the opening trip when we left Rochester, drove to Lehigh Valley and had to drive right through Scranton on the highway and saw it from about 1,000 yards away on the bus. That was as close as we got.”

When it comes to preparing for extended time without a home park, one advantage is, well, time to prepare.

Officials with the Yankees and Scranton’s ownership knew well in advance the 2012 team was in for a lengthy sojourn throughout the Northeast. One proposal even had them without a home for two years. Another had them spending the year in Newark, N.J., but the Mets scuttled that over a territorial dispute.

Instead, the team spent the year alternating among Rochester, Batavia, Pawtucket, Buffalo and Lehigh Valley as their alternating “home” parks. Arrangements were made for the Yankees to have their own clubhouses at some of these sites so it wouldn’t be a wholly nomadic experience, but that’s about where the comforts ended.

“We got to wear white uniforms and hit last,” Vander Woude said, “but there was hardly anything that was a home game about it.”

Doing What We Can

The delay to the Dunkin’ Donuts Park’s opening wasn’t a surprise in Hartford. The squabbles between the contractor and the team’s ownership played out daily in the local media. It wasn’t a matter of if the park’s unveiling would be delayed, but rather how long the delay would last.

“I think it was right around the holidays that we found out that the ballpark was going to be a little delayed,” Yard Goats broadcaster Jeff Dooley said. “We’re just trying to make the best out of a bad situation. I think once everyone gets inside this beautiful new ballpark it’s just going to be a terrific thing. We’re just trying to get to that point.”

Like Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, all of the Goats’ originally scheduled home dates will be treated as such. The team will wear white jerseys, bat last and get the rare chance to walk off winners in another team’s park.

A small perk to that set-up is both obvious and essential: routine. Hartford will get to use the same clubhouses they would during a regularly scheduled road game, they’ll hit in the same cages and take infield at the same times as normal.

As important, however, is a coaching staff with a keen eye for fatigue. No matter what the Rockies or the Eastern League does to accommodate the players, this is still going to be two solid months bouncing up up and down the Northeast and mid-Atlantic while still trying to perform at their peak.

Off The Field

Beyond the travails of the players, there’s another group seriously affected by a prolonged road trip: the front office. Fans, especially season ticket-holders, expect the season to begin in April as it says on the schedule.

Fortunately, the front offices of these teams have been been very careful to avoid letting down their fans and selling tickets for games that eventually get scrapped.

“We were fortunate in the sales process in that the message was consistent from the start,” Biloxi director of sales Chris Birch said. “Should we be delayed in starting, our fans were protected with pro-rated ticket plans. Individual tickets were only put on sale once all parties were comfortable with a reasonable start date.

“While the Shuckers continued to win on the road, fans waited anxiously for the first game in MGM Park knowing their ticket investments were safe.”

The same is true for merchandise sales. Losing games leads to diminished foot traffic away from the stadium and its many merchandise shops. Even so, sometimes misfortune can lead to publicity. The Shuckers, for example, were featured on SportsCenter while they blazed trails through the Southern League. This earned the team a national following before they’d played a game in Biloxi.

“Merchandise sales never slowed,” Birch said. “As coverage of the new team brand and story went national, on-line merchandise sales increased, and as the Shuckers neared a homecoming, we saw an increase in sales locally as fans prepared for the opener.”

Hartford, for its part, has found ways to keep its brand on people’s minds. It introduced a theme song, which was met with plenty of media attention.

In November, the Yard Goats introduced their new mascots, a pair of purple and lime green goats named Chompers and Chew Chew, to a national audience on the Today Show with Al Roker. They also unveiled their new jerseys as part of a fashion show.

“We’ve opened the offices downtown and a store downtown and people are popping in,” Dooley said. “They’re just counting the days until they see baseball here.”

An Oasis Awaits

Unquestionably, these prolonged trips are uncomfortable for all parties involved. The players and coaches are unhappy, the team wants to begin streaming people through its turnstiles and fans want a day at the ballpark.

Those feelings are only amplified as the days become weeks and the weeks become months. Once the ordeal is over, however, the reward is usually a spectacular new home sure to make the team and its fans pleased and leave opposing players a little jealous.

Scranton’s new home featured a picturesque backdrop carved out of a mountain just beyond dead center field. El Paso’s Southwest University Park has drawn rave reviews and last year hosted the Triple-A Championship Game. Biloxi’s MGM Park was praised for its downtown setting and an atmosphere friendly to both natives and tourists alike.

So, what awaits the Yard Goats on May 31? Centered in downtown Hartford at the crossing of a pair of major highways, Dunkin’ Donuts Park will give fans a postcard-worthy snapshot of central Connecticut’s skyline.

“We’re excited,” Dooley said. “I just think when people see what this ballpark is going to look like and they have a chance to come here throughout the summer it’s just going to be great.”