The Bridgeport Bluefish vs. The Nashua Pride, A Real Pennant Race
Published on June 23, 2005 under Atlantic League (AtL)
Bridgeport Bluefish News Release
We're in a pennant race! With 18 games left in the first half, we're only one game behind the Nashua Pride in the race for the Northern Division championship of the Atlantic League. Moreover, we play the Pride here next week in three crucial games. The dates are June 27th, June 28th and June 29th here at the Ballpark at Harbor Yard, all home games at 7:05 PM. On those three nights, we are giving every child who presents a report card to the box office a free ticket to one of those games. A perfect way to celebrate the end of another school year! This editor actually drove up to Historic Holman Stadium in Nashua last evening with my 12- and 11-year old sons and broke a longstanding personal jinx. In seven prior seasons, I had journeyed up to Holman (a.k.a. the "House of Horrors") and watched our beloved Bluefish lose ten games to the Pride. Not one victory... until last night. Our 5-0 victory up there, led by Tim Cain's 6-inning one-hit performance, was probably our best victory of the year so far. For the record, Holman is a perfectly beautiful ballpark, the only "old" ballpark in our Atlantic League. It is set amidst a larger public park that was humming with activity, including little league baseball and pick-up basketball games. It was a long but delightful evening. We didn't even mind the 300-mile roundtrip.
E-Bay and the Atlantic League: Our friend Michael Ashmore (www.atlanticleaguebaseball.com) let us know that 2000 Atlantic League MVP Ozzie Canseco was trying to auction on E-Bay his MVP trophy, his 1990 American League Championship ring and the autographed baseball representing his first major league hit. So we checked it out and sure enough, "Twintower 7264" from Davie, FL was indeed attempting to auction these aforementioned items, with a minimum bid of $5,500. However, the auction period ended today and there were zero bids. So it just looks like Ozzie will be holding on to his baseball memorabilia for awhile longer. By the way, we also noticed that there was an autographed baseball signed by Long Island Ducks reliever John Rocker which sold last week on E-Bay. The seller was located in Fairfield, the minimum opening bid was $10.00, there were three bids, and the winner got the ball for a whopping $10.50! In the E-Bay description of the baseball, the seller indicated that "I met him (John Rocker) at a Bridgeport Bluefish game". Seems like the seller went to a lot of trouble basically to get back the price of a ticket to the Ballpark at Harbor Yard, almost certainly that Opening Day weekend when the Ducks were here for four games.
If you have been a regular reader of "Mickey's Mail" since last fall, you know that the Bluefish went through a rather lengthy lease renewal with the City of Bridgeport here for our Ballpark at Harbor Yard. In essence, we were able to obtain an amended lease that helps assure our ability to play here for years to come. This week the City of Norwich, CT essentially approved lease amendments for the Norwich Navigators that extends their lease at Dodd Stadium through March, 2013, although the team ahs the ability to move elsewhere after the 2009 season by paying a lease termination fee of $140,000. What is interesting is a comparison of our rent here at the Ballpark at Harbor Yard to the Dodd Stadium lease. For 2005, our base lease is $150,000 per year while the Dodd lease is $140,000 per year. However, the Navigators are allowed to deduct the cost of police staffing which it estimates will lead to a $40,000 to $54,000 reduction in base rent. Also, the City of Norwich has been paying utility costs at the stadium whereas the Bluefish pay all utilities at the Ballpark at Harbor Yard. Under the new agreement at Dodd, the Navigators will agree to pay utilities if they exceed $71,000 per year, and the team estimates it will now pick up about $24,000 in utility bills. The Bluefish have been paying in excess of $100,000 per year every year for electricity costs alone. All this is by way of saying that it is very difficult to compare minor league leases unless you have complete information about all the costs that are involved in leasing a ballpark!
If you go to the Atlantic League website, you notice that there is a release about the Somerset Patriots setting a league record with 22,175 fans over the past weekend. It's a great accomplishment for which the Patriots are to be congratulated. We also need to acknowledge that the Bluefish did "three fives" this past weekend for a total of 16,124 fans. That's nearly three sellouts in our smaller ballpark (than Somerset's Commerce Bank Ballpark). It was a boffo weekend for us even though we dropped two of the three games to the Long Island Ducks. Frankly, it was a genuine rebuttal to the lead article in the June 5 sports section of the Connecticut Post, entitled "Fanny Shortage" which made a big deal of our lower attendance this spring. A spring whereby we had to endure the coldest and wettest we have ever had in the first six weeks of the season. Now that summer is finally here, we look to have much bigger crowds going forward than we had in April and May. We have now passed the Newark Bears in average attendance for the year (2,926 per game vs. 2,753 per game). Editor's note: the Connecticut Post should at least acknowledge our outstanding crowds now that the weather is better.
Bridgeport Bluefish league Leaders through last night: Corey Hart leads the lead in On-Base Percentage (.466); Michael Coleman is 3rd in Home Runs with 11 and 2nd in Extra-base hits with 23; D.J. Boston is 3rd in RBI's with 34, 4th in Hits with 57 and tied for 3rd in Runs Scored with 31. Josh Miller is 10th in Earned Run Average at 3.09, and Pat Ahearne is 5th in Innings Pitched with 67. Our team batting is second best in the league at .276, and our team pitching is 4th best with an ERA of 4.11.
One of the huge challenges for a General Manager of any minor league baseball team is how to deal with all the changes precipitated by the movement of players throughout the ball season. For instance, we lost our best pitcher (Brady Raggio with a 5-1 record) this season this past week to Campeche, a team in the Mexican League. We also lost one of our middle relievers, Hector Mercado, to the Texas Rangers organization (the AA Frisco Roughriders). Moreover, there is now the likelihood that we will be losing two more key players this week. Fortunately, we have gotten back Gustavo Escobar, our jack-of-all-trades player who played three infield positions and all three outfield positions for us last year. Gustavo was released this week by the Tulsa Drillers, the AA affiliate of the Colorado Rockies. We are also looking to get Robert Person, a 35-year old right-handed hurler who has pitched with four different Major League clubs, most recently the 2003 Boston Red Sox. We actually expect him to start one of our games against the Barnstormers in Lancaster, PA this weekend.
Atlantic League Stories from June 23, 2005
- Somerset tops Long Island - Long Island Ducks
- Castillo's complete game leads Bears to 7-2 win - Newark Bears
- Pride outlast Surf 15-10 - American Defenders of New Hampshire
- The Bridgeport Bluefish vs. The Nashua Pride, A Real Pennant Race - Bridgeport Bluefish
- Lancaster Barnstormers notebook - Lancaster Stormers
- Former 'Fish Gustavo Escobar returns - Bridgeport Bluefish
The opinions expressed in this release are those of the organization issuing it, and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.
