Well, we've always wanted to do it and this is the year. As you may or may not know my family and I love, LOVE,
LOVE baseball, and we have said for years that one summer we'd like to check out all the minor league parks in New Jersey.
This Friday my father attended the local fireman's golf outing, and during the dinner they raffled off 4 tickets to 7 local minor league games - six of the 8 NJ teams (the non NJ team is the SI Yanks, which may or may get a review.) Oh, and if it isn't clear by now - he won.
Having tickets for 6 of the 8 teams handed to us, we knew that this would be the year.
We kicked off this tour of the NJ minor league today, this Fathers Day, attending a Camden River Sharks game.
CAMDEN RIVER SHARKSAs excited as I was to attend my first of many minor league baseball games, Camden was the one I was least looking forward too. Well if this is the worst of the New Jersey minor league this will be a great summer!
Camden is part of the Atlantic League, the same as my next-town-over team, the Somerset Patriots, so I had seen them play only last week (not part of the “tour" which started today using the first free tickets.) This was quite a treat since I had already made up nicknames for some of the players. “Shorty,” the first base coach and “Speedy,” the 6’6’’ leadoff left fielder with a knack for stealing bases.
Parking was $3, the highest minor league total I have seen, and was it ever a pain. There were 3 visible lots, including the VIP one, but only the VIP one and one of the other two were open causing some bottlenecking for about 1 city block.
The stadium looked typical from the outside,
however inside there was a real surprise! The Ben Franklin Bridge was RIGHT BEHIND left-left center field!
Additionally, as you moved closer to right field there was a beautiful view of the Philadelphia skyline.
The giveaway today was a River Sharks cap to the first 1500 males 18 or older in honor of Father’s Day. Good looking cap, tan with a blue brim and the shark logo, the only advertisement on it was in small blue lettering the word CONAIR on the back.
It was interesting attending a game on Father’s Day because of all the embarrassing t-shirts to be found! Ohh the iron-on pictures with the words “We love you, dad!” was the fashion of choice for those not in Phillies gear.
Camden had the typical minor league baseball fan interaction games between innings: dizzy bat race, fill the shopping cart race, shoot the t-shirt from the sling shot into the stands, and race the mascot around the base path, etc. but it also had some unique games. My personal favorite was the cow-tipping game, where a young girl from the crowd was blindfolded and spun around and sent to knock over a giant inflatable cow guided by the crowd’s cheers and silence. Another exclusive was the knock-over-giant-beer-cans-with-a-football game, where two men, well, you know, and the one who knocked down the most was the winner. There was also a hungry, hungry hippo game and a weird guy in a tux to collect people’s trash. Another highlight was during the bottom of the 8th inning kids announced the River Shark batters.
One thing noticeably missing from the game was the vendors roaming the isles announcing the product. The only food that they brought too you was cotton candy. Also, from what I hear the selection of food the concourse was probably the weakest part of the Sharks offering, with long slow lines, and not all the food stands open.
The stadium, capacity 6,450, held 4,113 fans today, all of whom were invited on the warning track for free ice cream sundaes for “Sunday Sundaes” at the end of the game. While the vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup was a nice way to close the game, what made the day was being able to walk on the field, where you get a chance to experience the really size of the game and see what the outfielder sees.
Ohh and the bathrooms were REALLY clean!
This is me seeing how hard it is to "steal" a homerun ball.
That’s all, until next time!
