On the Road With the Hartford Yard Goats

Binghamton, NY - An unusual occurrence in baseball happened Wednesday night, when a visiting team player hit a grand slam home run and nearly every fan in the ballpark cheered.

Of course, for the Hartford Yard Goats, 2016 has been nothing but unusual.

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When Xorge Carrillo of the Binghamton Mets crashed a bases-loaded roundtripper off Hartford's Sam Howard in the third inning, giving the Mets the lead for good in an eventual 11-5 victory, every one of the 502 announced fans applauded the catcher as he neared home.

Home is something the Yard Goats have not seen all season, and won't until sometime in 2017.

Problems with the construction of Dunkin' Donuts Park in downtown Hartford have forced the Double-A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies to play all 88 games in other stadiums. The closest games to the capital city were several series in Dodd Stadium in Norwich in late May and early June.

The remaining 54 games, plus playoffs if the team can improve its current third-place standing, will be played in the scheduled visitors' ballparks, with Hartford acting as the home team.

"It's obviously not an ideal situation, it's not something you'd want to do every year, but if we had to pick a partner with which to do it, the Rockies have been great," said Jeff Dooley, director of broadcasting and media relations. "We've leaned on a lot of our league partners as well, like this series in Binghamton where they've had to add staff. We're trying to make the best of a tough situation."

Trying to schedule games on short notice has led to some odd situations, including several "closed games" played with no spectators in attendance.

"It's up to the discretion of the host team whether they want to open the gates," Dooley said. "Some have done night games, some have done day games, some have been closed. We are asking a lot of them to staff the games, so whatever works for them will certainly work for us."

Among the rare circumstances coming up are an off-day Sunday and a midweek three-game "home" series jammed into a 27-hour stretch July 19-20 in Altoona, Pa.

Pat Valaika, an infielder who is one of five Yard Goats traveling to Akron, Ohio for the July 13 Eastern League All-Star Game, says the players have developed closer bonds than would normally be expected on a minor league team, where players come and go all the time.

"It's definitely not an ideal situation but there's nothing we can do about it," he said. "Either we can complain about it and make it affect what we do during the game, or we can just move on and take it as it comes. I've played in games where there's not many fans, so you just have to bring your own energy. It has brought us together, we've gotten a lot closer and can lean on each other during hard times."

Dooley, in his 19th season with the franchise, added, "The kids have been wonderful. You'd love to have some familiarity with a place, but it's all about development and there's constant movement in the minor leagues. When the Yard Goats are the home team, they get the field early in the day. That's what's important to the Rockies: making sure they're getting their hitting in and their fielding in."

Despite the lack of stability and constant travel, the Yard Goats have performed well, standing third in the league's Eastern Division with a 48-40 record through Saturday. Hartford stands six and a half games behind second-place Trenton, and another seven games back of the frontrunning Reading Fightin' Phils, who are blazing away at a .697 clip.

Photo credits: Alex Jensen and Tim Jensen