Blue Rocks

July 10, 2023

If you’re in Philadelphia, you want to see the Museum of Art, with the Rocky statue at the foot of the stairs. Whether you do or don’t get there, you then want to see the Phillies. If the Phils aren’t in town, you head for Wilmington, Del., to root for the single-A Blue Rocks. They weren’t, so we did.

Philly isn’t loved by everyone, but it has everything, beginning with its heritage as the birthplace of the American nation. Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell downtown remind all of us of those sublime moments of 1776.

Boston had the cataclysmic preliminaries: the Tea Party, Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill. But it was in Philadelphia’s State House that the Second Continental Congress convened in May 1775 to start a year of agonized debate. In June 1776 Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed a resolution of independence. Then the giants emerged: Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson, who created the Declaration. The vote was July 4, the document was signed in early August.

We have distant connections in Philly going back a couple of generations. Our son Michael landed there for graduate school, and stayed and married Caroline, who grew up in nearby King of Prussia. They settled near Chadd’s Ford, halfway between the downtowns of Philly and Wilmington, and not far from Brandywine Creek, where the British routed Washington’s colonials in September 1777. In December the colonials set up their winter camp at Valley Forge.

So there’s all that. Anyway, we settled into our seats at Frawley Stadium, a block or so from the Delaware River. The park was more than two-thirds full, a decent Friday-night crowd. The traffic on an elevated stretch of I-95 slogged past beyond the outfield. A group of kids sang the national anthem. The Blue Rocks, a Washington Nationals farm club, took the field against the Brooklyn, N.Y., Cyclones, a New York Mets affiliate. The Cyclones were leading the division at 9-3, the Blue Rocks in the middle of the pack at 4-8.

Michael had bought tickets for front-row seats behind home plate, which at a Phils’ game would go for $1,889 each. For the Blue Rocks game they were $17.

The game moved along briskly, thanks to the new timing rule for pitchers and weak hitting by both teams. In the third inning the Rocks pushed across a run. They held on, 1-0, making some sterling defensive plays. In the top of the ninth, with the fans holding their breath, they got two outs. Then a Cyclone singled. Then a base on balls. Then—a long fly ball.

We watched. The home-plate umpire waved his finger in a circle. Three-run homer. The place fell silent. The Rocks pitcher kicked the mound. The manager pulled him. In the bottom of the ninth the Rocks got a walk, then a single. Then a strikeout. A failed double steal got to two outs. A strikeout ended the game. We didn’t stay for the fireworks.

As we trudged toward the gate I looked back at the brilliant green field. The clean sharp lines of the basepaths, the perfectly cut batters’ circle, told stories of baseball here and everywhere, single-A to the big leagues. These young guys have skills. More than that they have hope. Every fan in the park knew that if the Blue Rocks played even a last-place major league team they’d lose 15-0. The big leaguers would batter the single-A pitchers for a dozen homers, maybe more.

But the kids still have their hopes. Sure, many of the folks at our game would have gone to watch the Phillies that evening if they were at their magnificent home, Citizens Bank Park, just up I-95. The Blue Rocks were a fill-in. But everyone got caught up in the modest thrills of the place, the team of young dreamers, who shuffled off the field while the Cyclones exchanged high-fives. They’ll be back at it tomorrow. In baseball there’s always tomorrow.

We’ve watched dozens of single-A games over the years, cheering for the Potomac Nationals, the P-Nats, at their scruffy field in Woodbridge, Va. A few years ago then-Nationals superstar Bryce Harper, now a Phillie, did a recuperation stint with the P-Nats, the place was packed, the fans screaming. Then a Fourth of July game was delayed for an hour by fog, which meant the fireworks didn’t go off until midnight.

Within a year the owners, in a snit with the county government over funding repairs to the stadium, moved the team to Fredericksburg.

It’s a little quieter in Greenville, S.C., where the Red Sox farm club, the Greenville Drive—named by an awkward association with the big BMW plant nearby, is the only game in town. Their park, Fluor Field, has a replica of Fenway Park’s high left-field wall, the Green Monster. Church and civic groups organize outings to the games. As at all minor league parks, team PR people stage silly contests for kids between innings, and toss teeshirts to the crowd.

At Frawley I read the teams’ rosters: Pineda, Frizzell, Sanchez, Mackenzie, Fox, Kendall, Consuegra, Stuart, from all over America. The Cyclones’ coaches wore the New York Mets logo on their sleeves, reminding the guys what they’re shooting for, the big leagues, the reason they’re playing, riding buses for long hours to away games, staying in downscale hotels.

For sure, some of the magic of the minor leagues has to do with ticket prices, which are a fraction of the price of an upper-deck seat at Citizens Bank or any other big-league park. Still, the game is baseball. The main attraction is the source of all that hope and spunk, the players, some still in their teens, who trot onto the field to the ear-splitting din of pop music and fire the ball around the infield.

The pitcher warms up, the ball thwacks in the catcher’s glove. The batters connect, the sharp crack of bat on ball resounds. Foul balls drift into the crowd, kids and grownups scramble for them, just as they do at Citizens Bank. In the field the players lean forward in their defensive stances. The old guys in the stands somehow feel young again.

Decades ago my grandfather took me to a New York Yankees game. It was 1962, the year after Roger Maris broke the home-run record. He was in Yankee Stadium’s short right field. A batter hit a long fly ball to right. Maris crouched, hands on knees. We watched him watch the ball. A superb fielder, he knew it was heading for the seats behind him.

Maris didn’t waste any motion looking up or leaping pointlessly as the ball landed far back in the crowd. He stared ahead, no doubt thinking about his next turn at bat. He was a star—intense, focused, graceful, from a small town, like many of the Rocks and Cyclones. They all hope to be like Roger Maris—to excel, to make the fans roar with joy, as they watch those young guys, on a hot night in Wilmington, and all over America.