A bastion of baseball and noise
Portland Sea Dogs games are fun, despite the racket
COMMENTARY
This story is the second in a summer series on New England minor league ballparks.
PORTLAND, Maine — The Sea Dogs are mounting a comeback, and Hadlock Field sounds as if a train is running through it.
Not past it, mind you, but through the very confines of the ballpark.
Aluminum benches make up much of the park’s general admission seating, and fans have a tendency to go at them like they’re slapping at a snare. It’s one of the very defining features — sometimes annoying, sometimes rally-inducing — of the 21-year-old Hadlock.
The reverberations echo throughout the 7,368-seat capacity home of the Double-A Sea Dogs with a pulsating racket that makes the place seem much larger than it actually is. So when Portland catcher Danny Bethea steps to the plate with two runners on and nobody out in the bottom of the eighth inning, with his team down, 4-0, to the Richmond Flying Squirrels, he can probably envision himself in the big-league ballpark that the 25-year-old product of the Boston Red Sox farm system envisions himself in being one day soon.
Bethea, who broke up a no-hit bid by the Squirrels’ pitching staff in the sixth inning, ended up hitting a single to center field, scoring teammate Blake Tekotte for Portland’s first run of the game. It’s 4-1, Squirrels. Based on the eruption from the crowd, the folks at Hadlock might as well install railroad crossings.
It’s not always this loud this year at this busy intersection in downtown Portland, where the brick-centric Portland Exposition Center hovers just beyond right field a la the warehouse at Baltimore’s famed Camden Yards. The Sea Dogs have been mired in last place in the Eastern League’s Eastern standings for much of the season, and the team doesn’t exactly boast the strongest names in Boston’s minor league farm system.
Pat Light, Boston’s first-round draft pick in 2012, was recently promoted to Triple-A Pawtucket after posting a 2.43 ERA with the Dogs in his first season as a reliever. Twenty-three-year-old third baseman Carlos Asuaje, whom SoxProspects.com has listed as the organization’s 20th-best prospect, is emerging into an on-base machine, but really much of the pending excitement for the Sea Dogs these days lies in waiting for the likes of 20-year-old Yoan Moncada to make their way up the chain.
Mascot “Slugger’’ welcomes fans to Hadlock Field, home of the Portland Sea Dogs.
It was only a year ago that the Sea Dogs finished first in the division with an 88-54 mark that took Portland to the Eastern League semifinals, where it fell to the Binghamton Mets, who eventually won the league title. That team enjoyed 54 games of Mookie Betts’ meteoric rise to the majors, as well as current Red Sox players Blake Swihart and Eduardo Rodriguez. Henry Owens, now in Pawtucket, was 14-4 with a 2.60 ERA here over the 20 games he started. Shortstop Deven Marrero, also now with the PawSox, hit to the tune of an .804 OPS during his 68 games with Portland.
But such is life in minor league baseball, where season-to-season success is more a byproduct of the parent club’s needs and, ultimately, the success of the players who got you there. A last-place finish isn’t going to cost manager Billy McMillon his job, though it’s his responsibility to groom these players in order that Red Sox manager John Farrell doesn’t lose his.
The lack of emerging star power doesn’t slow the enthusiasm during this matinee at Hadlock in early June, when an early-start time (11 a.m.) that gives hundreds of Portland-area grade school students the opportunity to escape the doldrums of their final classes before summer vacation, a field trip to the ballpark that laughs in the face of your friend’s foray to the aquarium. It’s also a chance to be loud.
Really loud.
Portland is such a natural locale for a Red Sox farm team that it’s nearly impossible to recall when the Sea Dogs were an affiliate of the far-away Florida Marlins.
Yet Hadlock isn’t as filled to capacity — even on a 60-degree, overcast morning perfect for hooky, — despite the roaring rally of the 5,032 fans in attendance. In fact, if the nine fans in right field’s US Cellular Pavilion represented cell phone bars, the nine or so seated in the section would signify coverage typical of Maine’s unorganized territories a couple hundred miles north up the turnpike.
Then again, matinees like this one can be tricky in downtown Portland, where the daytime workforce (pfft) has commandeered the Maine Medical Center parking garage, one of the main destinations for Sea Dogs game parking. Yet on this day, the message greeting hopeful lot-goers at the entrance is clear: “No ball game parking,’’ with an attendant soldiered by the A-frame sign with a presence that signifies the severity of ignoring the restriction. It’s reason to suggest that the ensuing gridlock in the West End neighborhood could have led to more than handful of fans eschewing the ballpark experience in exchange for a walk along the Portland docks on Commercial Street, scouring for the best spots for a lobster roll, a Portland specialty.
The rest scour for whatever side street parking they can muster, with Portland starting pitcher Mike Augliera scheduled to throw the first pitch in a matter of minutes. A particularly long parade of vehicles sneaks onto nearby Washburn Ave., in the shadow of Interstate 295, and a Herculean blast over Hadlock’s center field wall.
They can’t tow ‘em all, right?
It was only a year ago that the Sea Dogs finished first in the division with an 88-54 mark that took Portland to the Eastern League semifinals, where it fell to the Binghamton Mets, who eventually won the league title.
Inside, Augliera has sat down the first five Squirrel batters before Blake Miller’s single to right field. Augliera was a fifth-round draft pick of Boston’s back in 2012, and the numbers would seem to hint that the 25-year-old righty has struggled during his second season with the Sea Dogs (2-9, 4.63 ERA in 11 starts in 2015), but then again this is a guy who watched Portland’s early-season offense score a total of 10 runs for him in his first eight starts. And this game isn’t starting much differently. Richmond scores two in the third inning, and one in the fourth to take a 3-0 lead. By the time the Squirrels’ force a fourth run past the plate in the sixth inning, Augliera (11 hits, two strikeouts) is already in the shower, on the hook for his ninth loss of the year.
Portland is such a natural locale for a Red Sox farm team that it’s nearly impossible to recall when the Sea Dogs were an affiliate of the far-away Florida Marlins. Players such as Mike Redmond, Edgar Renteria, Kevin Millar, and Josh Beckett (the latter trio as Marlins) adorn the team’s “Hall of Fame,’’ located just inside the entrance to Hadlock’s picnic area in short right field. In 2003, the Dogs became a Boston affiliate, and the initial team featured a handful of names familiar to Boston baseball fans; Kevin Youkilis, Casey Fossum, and Kelly Shoppach among them. Dreamboat Jacoby Ellsbury patrolled center field here at Hadlock, named, incidentally, for a long-time Portland High School baseball coach and physics teacher from 1950-78. Jon Lester, Dustin Pedroia, Jonathan Papelbon, Xander Bogaerts, Hanley Ramirez, and Clay Buchholz are just some of the other current major leaguers who made a stop in Maine on their way up the ladder.
Upon their affiliation with Boston, the Sea Dogs reconstructed Hadlock’s outfield wall, erecting a replica Green Monster (the “Maine Monsta’’) in left field to cement the team’s relationship with its new major league partner. The wall does add a certain amount of definition to Hadlock, and is mostly advertising-free, the antithesis of the almost-intimidating amount of signage that the park features in right field. There is, of course, an oversized, signature LL Bean (the factory is just a quick shot up 295 in Freeport, ya know) duck boot hovering over all other commerce, so heavily promoted in contrast to its left field counterpart, that one can almost feel the park shifting under its disparate weight.
As far as local minor league parks go, Hadlock is…fine. It’s great, really. But to be honest, there’s something missing here, despite the fact that it’s a comfortable place to catch a ballgame. It’s clean, the sightline are impeccable, and the amenities plentiful. But, oh those damned aluminum bleacher seats, they make the place feel tossed together in a pinch, and denies Hadlock the quaintness that this corner of Maine should boast, as does, I suppose, the surprising lack of fresh seafood located at stops along the concourse (although the tremendous bacon, spinach, garlic, and lobster — yes — omelette I had that morning at the Bayside American Cafe downtown is still a warning presence in my stomach, not to mention the accompanying red potato hash browns and Texas toast).
Like, we’re in Maine. Right? Can we at least act like it?
The lobster omelette at Bayside American Cafe is a delectable way to start a day in Portland.
OK, so there’s a lighthouse that rises from center field every time a Sea Dogs player hits a home run. Not that it’s had much opportunity to show itself off this season. Portland has hit only 22 home runs this season, fewest in the Eastern League. Left fielder Keury De La Cruz, a 23-year-old with a career .271 average, leads the team with a grand total of four. And this particular day does feature Maine native and U.S. National Luge Champion Julia Clukey signing autographs during the game. So, short of a stuffed lobster awaiting me at my seat, what’s to complain about?
Truthfully, it’s about the brightest spot to cheer for in Portland on this day, except for the rousing moment when the PA announcer asks the crowd, “Are you feeling your inner Neil Diamond?’’ before launching into a cliched recording of “Sweet Caroline,’’ the much-loved and maligned anthem of Fenway Park.
But in the eighth inning, Hadlock comes alive, with the Sea Dogs scoring three times to cut Richmond’s lead to one. Light comes out of the bullpen to pitch the top of the ninth, and gives a glimpse of what he’s currently giving Pawtucket these days and what he’ll probably show off by season’s end in Boston. Bang, bang, bang go the bleachers with metallic glee, packed with students. Here comes the freight train.
But the Sea Dogs go relatively quiet in the bottom of the inning, Bathea’s single the only hit keeping closer Josh Osich from his 13th save of the season. It is already the 19th loss of the season, for there Sea Dogs at Hadlock Field, where the team doesn’t figure to have too many representatives on the league’s All-Star rosters in the game to be played in Portland on July 15.
As the crowd makes its way out the front gates, and back to whatever side street everybody left their vehicle on in a haste, a middle-aged couple saunters slowly past the adjacent Fitzpatrick Stadium, home to the Portland High School football team, a a place that serves a measure of memories of youth, and maybe even perhaps the spot where plenty a Portland dream both began and ended. They stop and stare, as if giving a wink to their past right in the shadow of a place that hopes to deliver a baseball future for some.
Just bring earplugs on the way up.
Baseball, a ‘Maine’ attraction
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