Thoughts and pictures of my local minor league baseball team the New York Penn League Connecticut Tigers; a Detriot farm team. We'll still be looking at former Navigators/Defenders players along the way....

Friday, March 31, 2006

Another Defender blog....

Garrett Broshuis, a Giant farmhand, is blogging for the Sporting News and may end up with the Defenders shortly. A link to Garrett's blog is on the right. Thanks to BruteSentiment of the great SFDugout.com site (link also on the right) for this find and info. So we stand to have perhaps four Defender blogs--Dave Mac's, Garrett's, Will's and mine!

Thursday, March 30, 2006

The wait has gone from 7 months to 7 days


until Opening Day at Dodd. My main focus now is the look of the roster that takes the field next Thursday. Reading skipper Dave Mac's weekly New London Day blog offers a few hints. Guys like Tim Hutting, Randy Walter, James Garcia and Matt Palmer and others provide a link to the Navigator past. In fact a lot of "old" Navigators might populate the roster. Not a lot of clues as to the pitching staff. Mac is raving about newcomer pitcher Jonathan Sanchez however (Opening Day pitcher?). There will be an open practice Wednesday to meet the team; I have to work and will miss it.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Cap History 101, part 8 of an occasional series


This entry is a 1996 Sunday only cap worn by outfielder Troy Hughes. It's fitted, of course, size 7 and three eights (perfect fit for me), 100% wool and signed. Got it from Troy himself at the end of his only season with the Navs. He was an Atlanta Braves farmhand and came to the Yanks in exchange for Louis Polina at the end of the 1995 season. He ended up in the indy Northern League. A great looking cap that I've worn as a streak buster from time to time in a season. The green grass in the background is driving me crazy.

Friday, March 17, 2006

WOW! Thank you Defenders, Triple A and..

Defenders again. Someone must be reading this humble blog. After I lamented the deaths of Markdown Monday and the the Triple A discount offer earlier in this week-- BOTH are back! The Triple A deal returned yesterday when I got emails from both parties that the discount was back on and indeed it had already been posted on the Defenders website and today when I went back to double check it, lo and behold Markdown Monday had returned! Also a new deal with Mohegan Sun player club card holders that gets you two dollars off any ticket is also posted.
Really great to see the response from the team. 20 days and counting...can't wait.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Goodbye Triple A discount....

I contacted the team via e-mail to see if the Triple A deal of buy one get one on general admission tickets was still in effect and it isn't. They suggested I contact Triple A about it which I have. Too bad...that was a handy deal and along with the death of markdown Monday it's a bummer. I wonder what kind of fan reaction (if any) there will be? When I checked out the Triple A website I noticed they still offer discounts to the New Britain RockCats, Hartford Wolf Pack and the Waterford SpeedBowl.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Just for the record...

I had my first sighting of someone wearing a Defenders cap today. It was the road "CD" version (fitted), on a 20 something guy.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Good news and bad news on the promo..




schedule today. Stopped by Dodd quickly today. As seen on the team website the gift shop, named Cutter's Corner, and scoreboard remodels are in full swing. Also took some pics of the new van fan. Went to the ticket office and asked if the pocket schedules now included the promotion schedule and they don't. I did get what I thought was the promo schedule for the season handled to me on two white pieces of paper but it turned out to be two page ones so I don't know about the back half of the season yet. For what I read, some observations: There is some new stuff--70's night, C&W night, Yankees rivalry Day, Mother's Day diamond giveaway and Cutter the mascot's birthday is May 30th. The only new sponsor I can see is Overhead Door. So I'm a little disappointed there are not more new sponsors but like I said I only have the first half of the season and not the summer months.
The good news is there will be five bobblehead giveaways; four of them Yankees who rehabed with the Navigators and one of Cutter. They had two bobblehead giveaways last season, one of Norwich native Benedict Arnold and one of ex-Gator Alfonso Soriano and I sold three of them for $15 each on eBay. So with five givaways this year; that could be $75 of the $144 I've laid out already.
The bad news is Markdown Monday ($5 general admission) is gone because the new company running the food concessions isn't down with it. Markdown Monday featured in addition to the lowered ticket price, $1 dollar hot dogs, drinks and pizza. Why the team can't just have the lowered ticket price as a promo isn't clear. That throws my preseason voucher purchase plan out of whack because I was counting on the $5 tickets on Monday. If I knew they were killing Markdown Monday that I would have bought another 6 pack of vouchers at $6 each. I now see myself running out of vouchers mid August. I hate buying full price. At least Big Y Sunday lives on at $4 a ticket!

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Brad Vericker, pictured below, has signed with...

the Fargoo-Moorhead Redhawks of the indy Northern League. Good luck Brad and hope you get picked up by MLBB again.

There was an article in today's Bulletin re: the Defenders

in the wake of their meeting Wednesday with the town's sports authority. The article does mention that they have already doubled their group ticket sales from last year and authority members urged them to bring back the booster club. The rest of the article mentions the new scoreboard and gift shop and the ongoing outreach to the community.

Friday, March 03, 2006

Four ex-Defenders(Navs) assigned to Giant's minor league..


camp yesterday. From the 2004 team: pitcher Joe Bateman and infielder Jake Wald and from the 2005 team third baseman Brian Buscher and catcher Guillermo Rodriquez.