“The other night we had 13 people,” Acton said. “I had 18 people playing baseball.”

The same thing happened to the Canadian Baseball League. I went to London Monarchs game on my birthday, and there were about 700 people there. However, it was "Joe Thornton Day" at the park, and most people were there to get autographs from him. Every other game that season (except the opening one) was sub-200.

Interesting note: I had a better seat than Joe Thornton that game. He sat in the row behind me. Nice guy. HUGE hands. A baseball almost disappears when he grips one.

The Mohawk Valley has struggled to support professional sports. Since the early 1990s, four hockey teams and one baseball team have left or folded.

The baseball team was doing fine, wasn't it? It left because Cal Ripken's greatest wish was to pay big money for a minor-league team in order to move it to Aberdeen, Maryland, and the Utica NY-Penn League team was available.

The four teams, composed mainly of former college stars hoping to be noticed by scouts, have played nightly doubleheaders.

Four teams? A doubleheader every day? If I was a fan I wouldn't know what to do in this situation. Especially if all the players are "former college stars hoping to be noticed by scouts" (i.e. guys who didn't even get drafted, not the former professional (some MLB) players who you find in the Atlantic League). Sounds like the Cape Cod League, except without any history and not located in a vacation destination.

former Major League Baseball star Dave Cash

I consider myself a pretty big baseball fan, and I had never heard of Dave Cash. And he played in the 70s. He was a three-time All-Star though! Some really cool BB-K numbers though!

1976 Philadelphia .284/.337/.345 666 at bats 54 walks 13 strikeouts!!!!!

The guy was Rob Deer's evil twin.

JOE!!!!! From my hometown. #1 overall, 1997

St. Thomas' next big hockey star: 15-year old Greg McKegg, watch for him in the upcoming OHL draft. The kid has been playing 2 years above his level his whole life, which explains how he played with my brother.

Notice my lack of interest in the New York State League of Professional Baseball...

I'm so old, I guess, that I think of Cash not as a Phillie but a Pirate. Seems to me the Bucs had a choice between him & Rennie Stennett & went with the latter.

Crispix - You are correct, Ripkin yanked the team of off Murnane Field, and I've been pissed about it every since. I'm a native Oneida County person (no longer there, of course) and when I make enough money, I'm going to move a true minor-league team back there. It may involve me winning the lottery.

For those of you who remember, it was "Utica?" spoken by Ken Brett in the Miller Lite commercials that caused a minor to everyone else but massive controversy in - of course - Utica. Then he came and played a few games with the Utica Blue Sox or something.

And that Observer-Dispatch is really an awful paper.

I still think of Cash as a Pirate too, though he had his best years in Philadelphia. He was instrumental in the Phillies finally winning a division title in 1976. For several years he held the major league record for at-bats in a season, 699.

Stennett was potentially even a better player than Cash, but IIRC he broke his leg at the high point of his career in 1977 and was never the same afterwards.

I'm a huge baseball fan, and I live less than 10 minutes from where these games were played. I never even considered going to one of these games.

I'm a huge baseball fan, and I live less than 10 minutes from where these games were played. I never even considered going to one of these games.

Bob...are you just waiting around to rebuild the league?

How many Londoners do we have at BTF? I am soon moving to Ottawa, but London is the city I was raised in having spent the last 17 years living here. I will always consider myself a London native even though I wasn't born here or lived here as a toddler.

I volunteer for the London Majors of the Intercounty Baseball League. An average attendance for them is probably around 400. On Canada Day and in the playoffs last year they got over 1000.

I'm a huge baseball fan, and I live less than 10 minutes from where these games were played. I never even considered going to one of these games.

That's sort of a shame. For 3 years we had an indie league team here, the Montgomery Wings, & while they either started before I moved here &/or my work hours kept me away, by their final season I was ganinfully unemployed & went to dozens of games, as the stadium (Paterson Field, former home of the Tigers' AA team) was maybe 5 minutes from the house. Every now & then I go & see the Devil Rays' AA team in a really neat new stadium downtown, but the experience at the Wings' games was vastly more enjoyable. (Or maybe I'm just cheap, since I was attending the Wings' games on a free season pass provided to my old newspaper.)

For those of you who remember, it was "Utica?" spoken by Ken Brett in the Miller Lite commercials that caused a minor to everyone else but massive controversy in - of course - Utica. Then he came and played a few games with the Utica Blue Sox or something.

He managed the team.

And just to tie everything together, Ken Brett was once traded for Dave Cash, even up.

For those of you who remember, it was "Utica?" spoken by Ken Brett in the Miller Lite commercials that caused a minor to everyone else but massive controversy in - of course - Utica



so "Utica" became the buzzword to mean, not only the minor leagues, but minor league baseball in the boonies

in the 50s, it was "Terre Haute"

don't axe me why

IIRC, Utica was also the indy NY Penn team that Roger Kahn owned one year in the book Good Enough To Dream.

Every now & then I go & see the Devil Rays' AA team in a really neat new stadium downtown, but the experience at the Wings' games was vastly more enjoyable. (Or maybe I'm just cheap, since I was attending the Wings' games on a free season pass provided to my old newspaper.)

The Biscuits have a neat park, as you say, but there's something antiseptic about it. It's like a corporate version of a ballpark in Pleasantville, if that makes any sense.

I haven't seen it yet, but I fear that the Travelers' new stadium back hom in LR is (or will be ... can't quite remember if this is its first season or fab old Paterson Field-esque Ray Winder Field's last) pretty much a carbon copy as far as soul (or the lack thereof) is concerned.

The Travs are now in Dickey-Stephens Park.

-- MWE

And that Observer-Dispatch is really an awful paper.

An abomination. No paper should take less than 3 minutes to read. And they still won't spring for expanded box scores...when I lived there, and when I go back to visit, I'll resort to buying the USA Today...

The Travs are now in Dickey-Stephens Park.

Thanks. A friend of mine back at the LR paper sent me a book they'd done on the history &, I guess, last days of Ray Winder (nice volume, though filled with all sorts of silly typos that I like to think I would've caught if I were still there, but probably the Sports Department was in charge, so it's amazing it came out at all, given the sports editor's antipathy toward baseball), so I should've figured it out.

From the new field to my old house is about 3 miles, which come to think of it is also roughly the distance between the Biscuits' park & where I live now. Unlike here, though, no one of the stature of Hank Williams is buried along the route to the park in Arkansas (though if memory serves, Dale Hawkins does have a studio in the vicinity, or at least he did when I lived there).

All you people who are actually in Utica can completely go all Cagney and Lacey and Jericho on that league.

I expect results.

This is a shame. Murname field is a nice place to see a game. 16 oz Saranac Lager for $2.50. Yikes. Fans know the difference between A ball and indy league, apparently. It was the same with the hockey. Once they lost the NHL affiliated team, things went downhill.
There used to even be a team in Little Falls, just down the river. Maybe Watertown and Oneonta still have teams. Utica has 10 times the population of Oneonta.

I heard about ten years ago that Oneonta was the smallest town with an affiliated team. That may still be true, as they still have one.

Oneonta is REALLY nowhere. Watertown is not as big as Utica but it's close. With all of the recent minor-league shuffle in the Mets and elsewhere recently I was hoping that some random team woud somehow end up in Utica, but sadly that simply did not occur.

I haven't been there to live in years, but other than drink, I'm not really sure what people do for fun in Utica. I grew up in Oriskany, where it was famously said one winter Saturday: "Let's go sit in a snowbank and get drunk."

Of course, that was probably in April.

IIRC, Utica was also the indy NY Penn team that Roger Kahn owned one year in the book Good Enough To Dream.

I'm pretty sure Jay Acton was Roger Kahn's agent. I know he was Mike Lupica's agent. He was almost my agent too, back when I had a book proposal I was shopping around. I met with him, he was very enthusiastic, agreed to read my manuscript, didn't like it, and had his assistant call me to say he wasn't going to represent me. On my birthday.

Joe Thornton should be deported from Canada for his shitfest at Torino 2006

Joe Thornton got deported from Boston for a shitfested faceoff on November 30 2005.