Upper Montclair

On… The Jackals

Yogi Berra Stadium, 2011

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Pittsfield Colonials vs. New Jersey Jackals

Yogi Berra Stadium

Can-Am League

Upper Montclair, New Jersey

6:45 PM

Outside of the Game:
I had been home from Japan for nearly a month, I didn’t have another ticket purchased for a game until August, and I was getting itchy for baseball. I also realized that while I had to gone to see every pro team in Japan, I had not yet seen every team in my state. So I started doing research to get together every active professional team in New Jersey.

I wasn’t feeling too ambitious this particular weekend, so I decided to go see the New Jersey Jackals in nearby Upper Montclair, New Jersey. I had visited them a couple of times years ago when they first opened their doors, but I hadn’t been back since I started my baseball trips.

The game was at 6:35 PM, so I planned to get there about two hours early to visit the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center, which was located behind home plate and had just undergone a renovation of its own. It was a quick drive from Hoboken in the middle Saturday afternoon, but once I got there, I was surprised by a game already in progress.

Some quick inquiries later, I discovered that because of a rainout on Friday the night before, they were playing a double-header today, and the first game was the one currently underway. Not wanting to try and keep track of a game half over, I bought my ticket for the double-header and kept to the plan to go visit the museum before going in for the second game.

The Yogi Berra Museum had just re-opened this summer after renovations over the winter. A busload of tourists was visiting, packing the place beyond what I would assume its normal pre-game crowd to be. I had been in the museum years ago when I visited the Jackals last, and the place really had gotten quite a facelift. A new theater showed a continuous loop about Yankee Stadium, and the theater itself was dressed in stadium bunting with World Series pennants from all the times Yogi participated, as well as a faux scoreboard. The main exhibits about Yogi’s life before, during, and after his baseball career were now in a hall also designed to resemble the old Yankee Stadium. In the back of the museum remained the entrance to the “luxury box” that looks over the right field of the park. After visiting for a while, it was time to go to the second game, so I made my way outside and down into the stadium.

Somewhere, Gollum is salivating.

After the game, I didn’t stick around for the fireworks display, so I made my way out as the winners for the tennis ball toss were announced. As I weaved my way out to the main roads, the fireworks rocked the night sky behind me. It was early enough that traffic into the City wasn’t that bad, and I had a quick and uneventful ride back to Hoboken.

The Stadium & Fans:

Home plate to center field, Yogi Berra Stadium

Yogi Berra Stadium is an A-AA level park located in the back of the Montclair State University campus, affiliated with the independent Can-Am League. The entrance, right next door to the Yogi Berra Museum, is above the stadium proper, and visitors have to climb down one set of stairs to get to the promenade that wraps around the top of the seating bowl, and then down one or two more flights of stairs to get to their seats, depending how close they are sitting to the field.

The various concessions, merchandise stores, and party areas all line the main promenade. As with many low minors stadiums, there are no outfield bleachers, but there is bleacher seating along the baselines, and a combo kids/picnic area out in right field that is a popular running-around destination during the game.

While the afternoon make-up game was sparsely populated at best, the regularly scheduled evening game was about 2/3rds filled to capacity with families looking for some cheap summer fun and fireworks. They were as into the game as possible, as action bereft as it was. The Jackals ran the regular minor-league events between innings, with the dance contests, birthday announcements, bat spin races, and various and sundry events and abuse involving the mascot, the unimaginatively named Jack the Jackal.

Jack...al

Two after-game events were a tennis ball toss, where you buy a numbered tennis ball for $1 and then try to throw the ball from the stands into various hula hoops labeled with different prizes on the field, with the best prizes the furthest from the stands. If your ball stays in the hoop, you win the prize. After that was the obligatory weekend fireworks display that is always a big hit with families for some reason.

The stadium MC had an annoying habit of doing a dramatic pause before saying the name of the team, which prompted the title for this entry. It was clearly on purpose, and I seem to remember them doing this years ago as well, and frankly, it was still just as annoying. A representative example was along the lines of, “And after the game, be sure to stay in your seats for our fireworks spectacular, brought to you by… the Jackals.”

I visited on a special night, as the Jackals were retiring the number of one of their players in a modest ceremony between the games. After the marketing folks set up a podium and several folding chairs, the MC introduced several Jackals luminaries, both present and past. The Jackals had already retired two numbers: the stadium namesake Yogi Berra and another former player, who was also in attendance.

The event was quite interesting in giving the scope of the indie ball experience. Six years is not what you’d call a long career in the majors, but it was one of the longest on the Jackals, where anyone good enough eventually gets another shot back at the majors or gives up and has to get a “real” job out of frustration or necessity, and it takes an exact certain level of sort-of good to have a longish career in the indie leagues. And Zack Smithlin was just that sort-of good. He ended up on the Jackals after getting cut loose by the Cardinals system, and his excellent performance on the Jackals got him another invite to the Padres camp, where he was once again unable to figure out major-league level pitching, even in the minors.

Mr. Jackal

After testimonials from former and current managers and players, the man of the hour laid out his history in very plain, real terms, but clearly loved what he did for so long, even if it meant that he was still struggling to make his rent this month. It was a very genuine thing, and more “Bull Durham” than “Bull Durham” ever was. His retired number was revealed from under a tarp on the left field wall, and the grass on both baselines had his name and number spray painted on for the occasion.

At the Game with Oogie:

Indie scoring

Leaving my fate to the Montclair student in the ticket booth, she put me in a seat in the first row behind the Jackals dugout. This left me at front-row center for many of the between-inning minor-league games that usually happen in front of the home dugout or on the top of said dugout. The home dugout at Yogi Berra Field is untraditionally on the third base side, and why becomes readily apparent on hazy days such as this, as the third-base dugout is mercifully out of the sun and under the protection of some shade trees behind the promenade, while the first base dugout might as well be directly on the surface of the sun.

There were a group of four or five teenage boys sitting in my row with an unofficial upgrade who got bounced two or three times when the actual seat-holders showed up. Two or three families were arrayed around me, including a grandpa with his grandchildren sitting right behind me. He spent most of the game talking to his grandkids about the game and baseball in general, or prompting his wife to help him remember something.

The Game:

First pitch, Patriots vs. Jackals

Things were weird for this one from the start. Since this had become a double-header, it used a common minor-league rule for double-headers: both games would only be seven innings. This makes sense in the minors when you don’t want to over-tax developing talent, and in the indie leagues, where the rosters just aren’t extensive enough to support swapping out most of the players in a late second game.

Although I believe heartily that the pace of modern baseball has slowed down far too much, I’ve never understood people who complain about individual games going too long. While there has been some times on my trips where time constraints and travel situations make me hope a game doesn’t last five hours, nearly every long game that I’ve been to has been worth every last second I’ve invested in it.

I mention this because even considering that this was only a seven-inning game, it went by in a blink. It was about 1:45 start to finish, and even if it had gone regulation, it would likely have been under two hours. Perhaps both teams were completely tuckered out after playing the makeup game in a blazing afternoon with next to no one in the stands; the offences were both anemic.

While the Colonials went down in order in the first and managed only a weak, two-out single in the second, the Jackals showed some early life. The leadoff batter got plunked on the first pitch and went to third on a one-out single. A two-out walk loaded the bases, but a weak ground-out to second ended the opportunity. A one-out single and walk in the second got two on the basepaths, but two more outs quickly followed. The Colonials had their best opportunity in the third when a two-out walk and a blown pick-off throw got a runner to third before a grounder to short closed the inning.

After that, the Colonials went in order for the rest of the game. And the Jackals didn’t manage much better against the Colonial’s new pitcher who came in for the bottom of the third. The bottom of the third started with a walk, and then the Jackals, too, went in order until the bottom of the sixth. Perhaps it was because it was the second time through the order, but the Jackals seemed to finally solve the Pittsfield pitcher. A hard single to left had a baserunner making only a brief stop before he was blasted home by a line-drive homer to right-center, finally scoring some runs. The next two outs were hard-hit flies that barely stayed in the park, before a strikeout ended it.

The Jackals “won” the nightcap, 2-0.

The Scorecard:

Patriots vs. Jackals, 07/30/11. Jackals win, 2-0. 

The Jackals don’t sell a scorecard as part of their $2 program, or even at all anymore, although they did many moons ago when I first went to the park. On a side note, however, they do sell a scorecard book in their team store, which is some kind of first. As I’m more and more noticing, there is the dedicated batch of scorekeepers in the handicapped seating at independent parks, not because they needed the seats, but because they offer the most felicitous place to keep score. Most of them come with their own devices, so maybe selling scorecards isn’t a going concern anymore at these parks. It wouldn’t surprise me.

At any rate, as per usual these days, I had the Eephus League Official Scorebook with me, and since the Can-Am uses the DH, I was feeling on comfortable ground, space-wise.

As we’ve seen, I needn’t have worried. The 7-inning pitcher’s fest went by at a sprint, and the only scorekeeping of note happened in the bottom of the fifth. It seems that the Jackals started to worry about wasting the pitching performance of their starter and were going to do anything to jump-start their own lagging offense. They started the inning with two attempts at bunt singles, which I’ve never seen before. Both were failures: the first was fielded cleanly by the third baseman and the second was picked awkwardly by the first baseman, who had to make a diving tag to get the runner. They were appended “b” and “bt” respectively in the scorecard.

The Accommodations:
Just Hoboken

Click here to see all the photos from this trip.

2011 Stand-Alone Trip