Rapid change in Burlington, Vt. doesn’t apply to Centennial Field
Centennial Field in Burlington, Vt.
BURLINGTON, Vt. — The old McDonald’s, where I consumed more than a healthy share of the $2.99, two cheeseburger meal on a college budget, is long gone, now inhabited by one of New England’s most-buzzed about destinations for farm-to-table burgers and craft brews. The dive bar, which should have been condemned long before my arrival in this town nearly a quarter-century ago, serves wood-fired Neapolitan pizzas in lieu of cheap beer and lingering regrets. Even the majestic waterfront, underdeveloped for so many years, has taken advantage of the landscape, with the spiffy Hotel Vermont arising from an area merely known for a parking garage and the former Radisson Hotel where parents might stay when in town, complete with views of Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains in the distance.
Even a quick visit to the old campus in nearby Colchester reveals sweeping change from the last time I stepped foot on the grounds only three years ago, then for my 15th reunion, the tiny parking area between the first dorm I inhabited and the college’s community center, gone for a clearer path from cafeteria to the library, perhaps not mistakably. Down the road, the one-time sleepy Beverage Warehouse teems with activity, a line of approximately 150 patrons crowding the interior space, where a fresh shipment of Heady Topper, the region’s most elusive IPA, has just been delivered.
This is certainly a different Burlington than the one I remember.
It’s rare for any city to stay dormant to the progress of development and time, but when it happens so noticeably in a city you used to call your own, one that you embraced as a second home for years even past the day they finally kicked you out of housing and pleaded with you to make something of yourself, the stark difference becomes ever-so glaring even after only a few years away.
There’s no smoking anymore on Church Street, and the flannel fashion of my era doesn’t appear in any of the shop windows along the commercial stretch through the center of town. Hipsters have replaced hippies, and the Vermont Pub and Brewery is no longer the best place in Burlington to grab a craft beer in a city overrun by local craft artists. Carbur’s is long gone, but the American Flatbread in its place thrives along with some other familiar haunts that have yet to disappear.
The furniture has been rearranged with a new coat of paint, yet, there’s Nectar’s, the smell of late-night gravy fires permeating the air onto the sidewalk, stenciled into my memory. There’s the Pure Pop record store where we peddled the extra freebies we received in the mail from Columbia House and turned the cash into the latest grunge to hit the scene. And up the hill from the downtown area is perhaps Burlington’s shining beacon of assuring that not everything has changed, a place akin to your Mom’s favorite meal in a world of rapid change surrounding its confines.
Champ. the Lake Monsters’ loveable mascot.
At 109 years old, Vermont’s Centennial Field is one of the nation’s oldest baseball parks, and a place that hasn’t exactly been impervious to change over the decades, but certainly one that has resisted it to the best of its stubborn ability. Rickety, wooden seats still populate the nearly 4,500 seating capacity, with a more pronounced pitch greeting ticket-holders from row-to-row. A paucity of concession stands forces the park’s food and drink offerings to use remote carts along the easily-scalable fence that surrounds the perimeter of the grounds.
This place is ancient, and yet making full use of its surroundings instead of claiming unfavorable playing conditions like in New Britain, Conn., or the need for ancillary businesses to support the baseball product like is happening in Pawtucket.
Centennial accepts and grasps onto its history rather than use it as an excuse for something shiny.
Ken Griffey, Jr. played here for all of 17 games back in 1988, when the Vermont Mariners served as a Class-A affiliate for the Seattle Mariners, with whom Griffey would begin his Hall of Fame career a year later. When baseball returned a few years later to Centennial Field, it was as a Class-A affiliate of the dearly-departed Montreal Expos, with the parent team located only 90 minutes to the north. Red Sox hero Orlando Cabrera passed through town on the way up the chain, as did familiar names like Jason Bay, Jordan Zimmermann, and Jorge Julio.
When the team switched its affiliation to the Oakland A’s in 2011, top draft pick Addison Russell (.818 OPS over 16 games) played at Centennial during the 2012 season, a couple years prior to being traded to the Chicago Cubs in the 2014 deal that landed Oakland pitchers Jason Hammel and Jeff Samardzija. Rated the No. 3 prospect in the game by Baseball America prior to the 2015 season, Russell is hitting .240 with seven home runs for the wild card-leading Cubs.
Story continues after gallery: Old-school Centennial Field in Vermont
[bdc-gallery bgmp-legacy-id=”8a913124-41de-11e5-9cfe-38a0e2e653e3″ id=””]
Baseball makes a quick stop each year in northern Vermont — these days known as the Lake Monsters, adopting the mascot of “Champ,’’ the supposed sea monster that lurks in Lake Champlain from the former Expos. This area is indeed primed for nothing more than a short-season Single-A team seeing how winter can extend into early April around these parts prior to the incomparable mud season that speaks for most of what others consider spring. So too do the players, some of whom are destined for the next rung almost as soon as they arrive, others on a short visit en route to their major league destiny, or the realities that their game isn’t up for the challenge of that lifelong dream.
“The reality is that a lot of them are coming out of high school or college where they use metal bats certainly, and they may see a pitcher who is real good and is a mid-90’s pitcher every five or so games,’’ said Lake Monsters general manager Joe Doud. “At this level, every pitcher — from starter to closer — is throwing fastballs and curveballs.’’
In a matter of days, from the draft to the first game in a uniform for which a player is getting a paycheck, the game transforms from hobby to career on the historic field located on the grounds of the University of Vermont, overlooking the Green Mountains, the same hills that have a defining glow during the summer months, a fleeting sight as rapid as the baseball months themselves.
Blink and you might miss them. Blink too often, and you will definitely miss the next rising star.
*****
“We’re a small market team,’’ Doud said of the Vermont Lake Monsters, a franchise now in its 22nd season as both inceptions of the Expos and its current namesake. “Burlington is not a huge city. Chittenden county, the county that we’re in, might be 200,000 people, and it’s a very extended country. The reality of our job is we operate the team, of course, and have certain Major League Baseball and minor league baseball standards that we need to follow.’’
There is perhaps some symmetry in the Lake Monsters playing in the antiquated Centennial Field and their parent Athletics playing at whatever they call Oakland Alameda County Coliseum these days, and the debate extends beyond the gobs of foul space at both venues, real estate just beyond the first and third base lines that all but assures few errant tips will make into the pockets of the fan base. Both parks follow certain standards set in place by their leagues, but frankly, while Centennial Field does as much as it can without severely altering the surroundings of its history, there is little history in Oakland, only one of the majors’ most beleaguered ballparks.
There’s potentially a future at Centennial this summer too, where nine of the Oakland’s top 10 draft picks in 2015 have played for some period of time, including 20th pick overall Richie Martin, 20, who is hitting .258 for the Lake Monsters this season after being drafted out of the University of Florida. Fellow shortstop Mikey White (21, second-rounder out of Alabama) was promoted to Single-A Benoit (full season) after hitting .315 with an .864 OPS in 29 games in Vermont. Outfielder Skye Bolt (21, a fourth-rounder out of North Carolina) has struggled with a .221 average over his first 30 games.
It’s 2013 draft choice Dustin Driver though who gets the start on the hill for a Thursday morning matinee in early July against the Mahoning Valley Scrappers. Driver missed all of last season with injuries, and has come back in 2015 to post a 1-2 record for the Lake Monsters with a 4.11 ERA. In this game, he lasts only four innings, allowing eight hits and four earned runs, watching his ERA soar to 5.06 in the process. Driver’s outing is as plodding as the entire game, a nearly-four-hour affair that sees the Scrappers bang out eight runs and 15 hits in the win. First baseman Chris Iriart is the offensive star for the Lake Monsters with a 3-for-5 day including two runs batted in. There haven’t been many days this summer like that one though for the 12th-round selection who is hitting only .205 with three home runs overall.
At 22-26, the Lake Monsters are in last place in their New York-Penn League division (Stedler), yet only five games behind the Tri-City ValleyCats in what is a crowded field that also includes the Connecticut Tigers and Lowell Spinners. The team has drawn an average of 2,228 fans per game this season, far less than the 3,266 that pack the yard for Driver’s start in July. A wet June was to thank for part of the attendance dip this season (Lowell has averaged nearly 4,000 fans per game thus far) according to Doud,also noting that the 22 years that the franchise has been in existence under the ownership of local businessman Ray Pecor is a relative eon as far as minor league stops are concerned.
There’s little question that part of the attraction, particularly for a team whose parent club is across the nation in the Bay Area of California, is the ballpark, a place that is a living historical marker, minus the amenities of improved lighting, and the jumbo scoreboard in left center field.
“You really get to find a balance in exacting the facility as comfortable for the players as they can be,’’ Doud said. “You do have to have balance and make sure you’re catering to both sides.
“There are fans who do come out and really appreciate the historic value of Centennial Field and the memories that exist. But there are also a number of fans who are excited for the next, best thing too.’’
There’s a picnic area in left, a kids bouncy area beyond the fence in center field. Fans can get Fiddlehead, a popular Vermont IPA, on draft at the concession stand, and Champ often makes his entrance by “water skiing’’ behind an ATV on the park’s infield. Beyond your middle-inning T-shirt giveaway, don’t expect much in terms of bells and whistles at Centennial, an ancient ballpark that neither faces the reality of its age, nor the insistence to be impervious to any needless change.
*****
The burger is $16.95. It is also quite possibly the best burger I’ve ever had.
That’s about $14 more than I would have normally forked over at the Farmhouse Tap and Grill’s former incarnation for the aforementioned cheeseburger value meal. I’m OK with it, also pleased I didn’t fall prey to my server’s suggestion to try the pork special in lieu of the burger for which the house is known.
I hop into Pure Pop and purchase the latest box set from a band that used to play locally and has gone on to some level of national notoriety. I wonder how many of my used CDs might be burning a hole in a box somewhere in the back.
I try to envision what the ghosts of my past would think of the city Burlington has become, complete with the haunts of old.
This is indeed a different Burlington. It’s also a better one.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com