‘Hartford’ Blue Jays for COVID season?
Imagine a slight head bob as a small amount of drool escapes your lips as you drift away during a company Zoom meeting, fantasizing that the scorching late July summer sun is beating the back of your neck. In your mind, you’re casually strolling barefoot, the cool Kentucky Bluegrass spiking between your toes, along the left-field line at the meticulously manicured Dunkin’ Donuts Park in Hartford.
The taxpayer-funded, $71 million-plus complex, finished prior to the 2017 season, is the home of the Colorado Rockies Double-A affiliate Hartford Yard Goats. The stadium sits in eerie silence per the directive of Major League Baseball canceling the 2020 Minor League Baseball season.
Your mid-morning delusion finds you weaving back and forth from fair territory to foul, your peripheral vision is cognizant of “The Insurance Capital of the World’s” cityscape visible over the rightfield bleachers, but all your focus is on a windblown discarded Dunkin wrapper, presumably from the 2019 season, hugging the third baseline like a perfectly placed Rod Carew bunt. Nonchalantly, you bend over to pick up the refuse…
“Hey!” says the boss, her Zoomed image glaring at you.
You quickly bounce back to reality, realizing you’re lacking the information she requires about the company’s current debt-to-service coverage ratio.
Baseball, we’ve missed it. But Major League Baseball is set to open up an abbreviated season today, with each big league team playing a 60-game schedule, 40 against opponents from its division, plus 20 more spread amongst teams from the opposite league’s corresponding geographical division. American League East playing National League East and so on.
It makes sense: Baseball is limiting travel to minimize personal contact with COVID-19. An unexpected hiccup in MLB’s intricate restart plan comes via our friends from the Great White North. Canadian Government’s Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said Saturday the federal government had denied the Toronto Blue Jays’ request to play at the Rogers Centre, which has been the team’s home since 1989. The Blue Jays now face playing their 2020 home games at potential alternate locations, including their minor league complex in Dunedin, Fla. — a virus hotspot — or Sahlen Field in Buffalo, N.Y., home to Toronto’s Triple-A affiliate (but which has what many consider some of the worst lighting in baseball). There’s also discussion that PNC Park in Pittsburgh and/or Camden Yards in Baltimore could host Blue Jays home games.
No player wants to play home games in another team’s facility. That’s the main reason the New York Jets have hovered below putrid since moving from Shea Stadium in 1983, becoming the red-headed stepsister of “Big Blue,” occupying space and paying rent at Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands. Teams need to master their own destiny and surroundings.
Why is this even remotely important to us here in Connecticut? This could prove to be the perfect opportunity for Gov. Ned Lamont to spearhead a charge to bring Major League Baseball to Connecticut. Hartford could host the Blue Jays’ 30 home games, providing a slight boost to the local economy and elevating the Nutmeg State into the upper echelon of the sports universe.
Of all the possibilities discussed, Hartford makes the most sense, considering its location, COVID-friendly environment and the almost-new Dunkin’ Donuts Park. Of course, the ballpark would remain mostly empty, but the activity will generate some commerce. And, maybe by mid-September, some fans might actually be allowed to sit in the seats for meaningful baseball.
Not everyone thinks it would be as easy as my fantasy. Todd Donovan, former East Lyme standout and current scout with the Philadelphia Phillies, told me, “Major League Baseball standards are very strict, and stadium protocol is 150 pages long. Many minor league stadiums don’t have adequate infrastructure to support radio and television broadcasts. It would be a daunting task for any minor league facility to turn this around in such a short period of time.”
Blue Jays pitching coach and former big leaguer Pete Walker, another East Lyme baseball legend, said, “Ideally, I’d want a major league ballpark, but from what I hear Hartford is first class. I’d be open (to it) and excited to be closer to home.”
The Blue Jays are a multi-talented young offensive juggernaut and, by the way, my pick to upset the New York Yankees in the American League East. It might be fun for the state to potentially host playoff and World Series games. Any risk the state takes is far surpassed by the long-range rewards that may come our way.
What say you, governor? Pick up the phone and make that call to Toronto ownership and do what politicians do best.
“Play Ball!”