It was wonderful to see a baseball game live after more than two years on Sunday, a beautiful day for a game and my thanks particularly to my wonderful wife Susan who arranged the attendance of family and friends to celebrate my birthday. We attended a game between the Staten Island Ferry Hawks and the Charleston (W.Va.) Dirty Birds in the Atlantic League, an independent league affiliated with Major League Baseball. The ball park, now known as Staten Island University Hospital Community Park, originally was built for the AA Staten Island Yankees and my family attended many games there before MLB decided to eliminate a fair amount of minor league teams; the rather cynical rationale being that minor league teams are costly and don't produce enough major leaguers in any case. Fortunately some investors stepped in to form the Ferry Hawks as an expansion team in the Atlantic League
The ball park is a ten-minute walk from the Staten Island ferry terminal and has a lovely view of the harbor and the New York City skyline; tickets and concessions are reasonably priced so the whole family can afford to go; the park seats 7,000 people and all the seats have excellent views The game we saw was at a fairly high level of performance, with Ferry Hawks pitcher Anthony Rodriquez giving up only one run in 6 2/3 innings and closer Victor Capellan getting the save, his fourth in six days; outfielder Joseph Monge, who played in six seasons for the Boston Red Sox, had three runs batted in and at one point stole both second and third. One slight disappointment was that Kelsie Whitmore, the first woman to play in the Atlantic League and a member of the Ferry Hawks, did not play in Sunday's game but, all in all, a delightful day of baseball on a lovely day at the ball park, seeing the white ball against the blue sky with family and friends.
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