Baseball Review // The New Hampshire Newts Come To Town
Additional photos for the Newts in New Haven can be found here :::
Additional photos for the Newts in Bristol can be found here :::
As I make my way to the visiting team dugout, I inquire about merch for the New Hampshire Newts as I say that the Sandlot Baseball teams feel more like bands going on tour than baseball teams in this way. Sure, you can go to a baseball game and buy a hat or shirt for the home team, but when has the visiting team ever been able to sell things to support their team, much less when were fans interested in it?
For me, it's that idea of wearing a hat to support the New Hampshire Newts but then having someone outside of the game ask me what it means. It's easy enough to tell people it's a minor league team or a collegiate level league, but to explain the Sandlot to them just feels like a whole new beast. It's this whole new level of baseball that they might not think is possible because I didn't think it was possible until some time this year.
Per the older generation who played Sandlot ball (such as my dad) you'd get those neighborhood kids together and play a game. Yet, here we have a group of people from New Hampshire coming down for the weekend to play baseball simply because they love the game. I imagine trying to explain it to a family member who simply doesn't understand or support the idea of it somehow.
"So you're getting paid to go to Connecticut, right?"
"Actually, no, with gas and everything I'm probably losing money"
"Well, you're going to at least have the satisfaction of winning then? You'll come home with a trophy or something?"
"No, that doesn't really matter either"
It's difficult for people to understand why you would do something for free that other people out there are getting paid to do, but it is also growing more difficult every day to find people who do things simply because they are passionate about them and not because they hope to make some sort of money off of them to help guide them through a life of capitalism that we may not agree with but yet still have to be a part of somehow.
Not to get too off topic, but there are likely people out there who used to play guitar and make music because they liked it, but then when they realized there wasn't really any money in it for them they stopped. The same is likely true for a lot of art forms- the writer, the painter, etc. And I feel like that's one of those things which is slowly dying off and soon there will be a generation of kids who are only doing what they can to make money and not because it makes them happy.
While the games on Saturday were at Amrhyn Field in New Haven, the Sunday game against the Hartford Dark Twains took us to a field in Bristol that I can't think of why I had ever been there before but still kind of feel like maybe I had. It just had that warm and welcoming feeling, I guess. But discovering these new places, these new fields and parts of CT, is also in many ways why I love following baseball around this state.
The baseball this weekend was all around fun, and rightfully so, but the one thing I remember the most from these three games that the Newts played came during their game against the Hartford Dark Twains. A Newt was sliding into third and the Twain was said to have tagged him out, but then someone had it on video where the tag wasn't there in time. This created a scene with all sorts of players on the field discussing whether or not to let the play stand as an out or overturn it and he's safe.
By the end of the talks (which did not go on nearly as long as they would've in the majors) it was decided that the runner and the third baseman would do rock, paper, scissors to see what the call was going to be. They did just that, the runner put up scissors and beat the third baseman's paper and that was how the call was decided. It was just one of those gentle reminders that, yes, this is a game that can be serious but it doesn't always have to be that serious.
Comments
Post a Comment