White River Junction
None of which caused Noah Crane, the Upper Valley Nighthawks’ general manager, visible stress Saturday evening.
“Growing pains,” said the Lebanon resident, midway through his New England Collegiate Baseball League expansion franchise’s home opener. “We’ll figure it out.”
And then Crane was gone, his lanky frame disappearing at a jog into a crowd announced at 482 people milling around the main diamond at the Maxfield Sports Complex.
Afternoon rain dissipated into a cool, misty evening along Vermont Route 5, no doubt suppressing potential attendance, but perhaps acting as a blessing in disguise. With a gathering twice as large, the kinks that occurred might have been more pronounced.
“You want it to be 75 degrees and sunny, so this stinks,” Crane said. “There was really a palpable excitement in the community for tonight. But people don’t want to come out in this weather and I get that.”
Many of the Nighthawks presumably didn’t want to be at Maxfield at 7 a.m. Saturday, where they labored for more than four hours to partially assemble a set of metal bleachers along the first-base line. The players were sent home before noon with free food from a local Mexican restaurant chain and a Crane promise that they’d eventually be paid for their time.
How much will that be? Crane cracked a smile.
“They didn’t ask,” he said. “I guess they haven’t unionized yet. It was a little bit of slave labor.”
That set of stands was completed by other workers about an hour before the first pitch, although pieces of railing remained underneath and a corner of the structure rested on some wooden blocks. Elsewhere, others also scrambled.
“I’m hoping I don’t get electrocuted,” said online broadcaster Dave Collins, fumbling with a daunting tangle of cables and colored plugs in the press box. With few other quick options, he resorted to placing the lone camera for video streaming the game’s action alongside him in the structure, a long garden shed with openings cut in the side facing the chain-link fence behind home plate.
Inside, six media members, public address man Bob Sherman and the scoreboard operator crowded together, one scribe using the top of a small refrigerator filled with ice cream as a desk. Sherman straddled a scrap of wooden siding placed atop a plastic bin. The wireless access code was scribbled in ball-point pen on an overhead beam and four bare light bulbs provided illumination.
Outside and behind the backstop, 60-year-old Ascutney resident Gary Derosier munched on a large bag of maple syrup-flavored popcorn, bought from one of several local food vendors set up alongside the complex’s main road. Fans are prohibited from bringing their own food and drink, but are encouraged to tote lawn chairs if they’d like.
“If they can get support like Dartmouth does at its games, I’d like to think they’ll do well,” said Derosier, a retired cook who bought a pair of $70 season tickets for himself and his wife, Gail. “You’d pay more for that for one ticket to a Red Sox game.”
Elsewhere, Brownsville residents and husband and wife Peter Ferick and Ginger Mason eagerly awaited the first pitch.
“I like that they have a lot of kids here and the field and the lights look great,” Ferick said. “We’re here to offer local support and because we love baseball.”
Mason said she’d heard that Red Sox star Dustin Pedroia once played in a college summer league on Cape Cod. That circuit, the best of its type in the country, sometimes averages crowds of more than 1,000.
“We’ll get that here eventually,” Mason said with confidence. “It’s just going to take time.”
Seating is something of an issue at Maxfield. The bleachers behind home can accommodate roughly 50 and perhaps three times that many could squeeze into the player-assembled section. Another, smaller set is parked down the left field line, but its occupants mostly had to stand because they couldn’t see clearly with other patrons leaning on the fence in front.
Because Maxfield has only about 300 parking spaces, a school bus will be used to shuttle folks from and to the Upper Valley Aquatic Center, 1½ miles away. Saturday, all of eight people used the service, but it will clearly become vital with a bigger crowd.
“That’s a pain,” Ferick said, making a face. “We’ll just have to get here early.”
Other glitches included a lack of bullpen pitching rubbers, the merchandise stand unexpectedly being unable to take credit card payments and that snafu involving the shrunken batter’s boxes, which caused Crane to chuckle at the retelling.
“We had a couple of rookies on that job,” he said. “They were pitchers and they put the (template) down but traced the inside of it with chalk, not the outside.”
Upper Valley pitcher Luke Reilly, a student at Philadelphia’s La Salle University, grinned broadly when asked about the night overall.
“This is so cool,” he said. “We weren’t sure what to expect with the fans and the weather, but they showed up.
“It’s a good thing we worked on those bleachers this morning. And it was good to see them filled and that they didn’t collapse.”
Notes: The visiting Vermont Mountaineers rode a school bus from Montpelier to the game… The grilled cheese and popcorn being offered by vendors drew widespread praise. … The Nighthawks’ mascot costume consisted of a beaked head and what appeared to be a neoprene suit similar to what scuba divers wear. The $2,000 outfit was made by a local costume designer, Crane said. … Nighthawks players not seeing action moved through the crowd, offering 50/50 raffle tickets for sale. … Crane’s handheld microphone faded in and out while he tried to announce on-field promotions involving local children.