We Gather Every Summer to Celebrate Our Game

There was a TV commercial campaign years ago invoking All-American icons (they hoped), baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet. Thanks to some adroit negotiations, it looks like fans of The Boys of Summer will need to travel no farther than Senator Thomas Dodd Stadium for three out of four of them, as Dodd Stadium becomes the new home of an affiliate of the NY-Penn (Single A, Short Season) League. I’m thinking either this area has been incorporated into the Keystone State (those having a Keystone Kops idea right now, hold that thought) or the name of the league may be changing (I’m partial to “Bill”, if we’re shopping for suggestions, but I may be biased).

A schedule with thirty-eight home games will seem like a sprint in comparison to previous Double A home seasons with seventy-two, but it’s the hope and intention of the team’s owners (and minor league sports is a business first and foremost) that regional baseball fans will reward their willingness to start again by starting over at Dodd Stadium.

In a perfect world, with a small population sprawled across a large part of the state, a population with reduced discretionary income (usually called disposable because many of us are considered working class, undeserving of an uptown descriptive, I guess), we should be looking to Dodd Stadium as a value-added entertainment venue the way the fingers on the hand look to the thumb.
And, perhaps with the stability of a long-term contractual partner (an anchor store, so to speak) more community-based activities can and will be (I hope) offered at and through the stadium.

I'd point out (as someone who was on the Norwich Baseball Stadium Authority for close to a decade; many of my former colleagues probably felt it was a lot longer) there's been lot of community events at Dodd Stadium for the last decade and a half. High school playoff games as well as Atlantic Ten baseball tournaments, almost since Dodd Stadium opened have been held there, usually in conjunction with, and preceding, home games by the professional team. I assume we’ll see that not only continue but perhaps expand.

In addition to baseball, Dodd Stadium has seen everything from marching band competitions through SpongeBob Squarepants and Bob Dylan concerts (I don't remember who opened for whom; it was a woolly night all along the watchtower on the way to the Krusty Krab) to the annual auto show. All of that and more have been staged at Dodd Stadium to the delight of visitors all in a facility, first and foremost, designed and built for baseball (which just happens to be a great place to enjoy a game).

When nearly 300,000 people were attending Navigators' games in their early seasons at Dodd Stadium, no one seemed to have a problem finding the stadium or getting there, so complaints about location or access that have grown louder in the last half a decade as a reason and advanced as a reason to not attend a ballgame always unsettles me and, quite frankly, seems somewhat contrived. The same neighbors who complain about getting to Dodd Stadium have no qualms, as an example, about driving to the L. L. Bean outlet in Freeport, Maine. I guess clothing the naked is a powerful motivator, finishing far ahead of feeding the hungry.

For an extremely reasonable price (parking, tickets, beverages, and eats) a family or a feast of friends can have a cheap evening or afternoon out without breaking the bank. Admittedly, the hometown team does not have a Dustin Pedroia or a Derek Jeter on the roster (yet)- but the NEXT Dustin or Derek could be out there this season and we can say we saw him 'back in the day'.

Here in Norwich where the default mood is doom and gloom, we've elevated self-deprecation and navel-gazing to an art form. You do the math on this one: Exactly two other cities in Connecticut (New Britain and its Rockcats and Bridgeport with the Bluefish) have professional minor-league baseball teams. If you don't think fans across southern New England don't know and appreciate that factoid, then maybe it's time to wake up and smell the ballpark franks.

Congratulations to the Norwich Baseball Authority, and those in the city administration and elsewhere, who brought this episode to a far happier ending than appeared to be possible just a few months ago. Pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training camp in about two weeks. We've already had the shortest day of this winter and despite the outside weather, Spring is winning. The Boys of Summer will be here in a metaphorical moment and the crack of a baseball struck by a wooden bat will replace the sounds of silence on Stott Avenue in the business park. Minor League Baseball returns to Dodd Stadium, proving we are safe at home.
-bill kenny