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07/26/2017 08:30 AMThis year is different, pleasantly different, for Mike Abramson, the assistant general manager of the minor league Hartford Yard Goats.
“I spent four years ducking and covering,” admits Mike, who lives in Chester.
That’s because the Yard Goats, formerly the New Britain Rock Cats, had no home field on which to play baseball. Construction of Dunkin’ Donuts Stadium in Hartford was way behind schedule. It didn’t open at all last year, as originally planned, and the Yard Goats, a Double A minor league affiliate of the Colorado Rockies, had to play all their games on the road
This year, however, home games are in the brand new ballpark.
“After a lot of negative sentiment, everyone feels good now; it is really delightful,” Mike says.
The stadium, which holds 7,000 people, is usually full.
“We’re sold out four out of five games,” Mike says.
He attributes the success in part to the location.
“There are a lot of buildings, concrete, bricks, and then right there in downtown Hartford, beautiful green grass.”
What’s even better, Mike says, is that the public has finally bonded with the name Yard Goats. It was chosen after a Name the Team contest that garnered more than 6,000 entries. A yard goat is railroad slang for the switch engines that move cars among locomotives.
“People used to come in yelling about it,” Mike says.
He thinks that are the catchy graphics and logo the team uses to depict the yard goat have helped the name catch on. T-shirts and hats picture the yard goat chomping away on a baseball bat.
The team’s colors, green and blue, were very deliberately chosen. They are the very same shades of green and blue that were once used on the long-departed Hartford Whalers hockey team uniforms. Mike says the familiar shades bring a kind of athletic continuity to the new Hartford team, even in a different sport.
The marketing plan, which Mike is in charge of, is not directed at bringing die-hard sports fans into the stadium. That, says Mike, should happen anyway. With ticket prices starting at $6 and hot dogs selling for $3, Mike is looking to attract families to the stadium. His marketing plan targets women from 30 to 50 with two or more children. With the Yard Goats price structure, he points out, even if the family doesn’t stay for the whole game, they can leave feeling they’ve gotten their money’s worth.
Mike can test market on his own family. His wife Allison and three daughters, Emma, 9, Sophia, 7, and Clara, 3, fit his target demographic profile. Allison took over from Gail Beck last year as executive director of the Tri-Town Youth Services Bureau. Mike and Allison met at the University of Rhode Island when a band he played in performed at fundraiser for an organization she headed.
Their meeting came during a period when Mike’s career plans were indefinite, focused on what he now realizes were unrealistic dreams of a career as a musician.
Marriage and children set him on another path. Mike started his career in sales for WEEI in Boston, the flagship station of the Red Sox radio network. From there he went to the Pawtucket Red Sox, where he worked for six years. Pawtucket is the Triple A franchise of the Boston Red Sox. Four years ago he came to Connecticut at the time the team was embarking on its transition from Bristol Rock Cats to Hartford Yard Goats.
For the Abramson family, finding a Connecticut home was tied to their babysitters, the children’s grandparents in Rhode Island. They wanted their regular sitters to have no more than a 45-minute drive to their young charges. Mike and Allison timed distances and Chester fit their requirements.
There was, nonetheless, a significant problem. They couldn’t find a suitable home to rent, but just as they were about to give up, Mike saw a three-bedroom Chester rental on craigslist. He called immediately and said his family would take it, sight unseen. Now, they have moved to their own home and Mike is a member of the Parks & Recreation Commission in Chester, where he has coached youth basketball. In his first year, his team of 2nd- and 3rd-grade boys went undefeated, though there is no formal scorekeeping. The next year his team of 2nd- and 3rd-grade girls didn’t win one game.
“Payback, I guess,” he says.
Unlike the Yard Goats players, Mike has no ambition to move up to the major leagues. He likes the intimacy of the minor league game.
“I like knowing everybody from the fans to the ticket takers. I don’t aspire to be where I don’t have that,” he says.
During games, Mike patrols the stadium solving problems. On a recent evening, he found new seats for a couple unhappy with where they were sitting. He was surprised to learn the now-satisfied couple was actor Jeff Still and his wife. Still is appearing in the Broadway production of Oslo that just won a 2017 Tony for Best New Play. It is based on the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in l993 that resulted in the Oslo Accord. (Still is no stranger to baseball. His biography indicates he went to college hoping to be a baseball announcer before he chose acting more than 30 years ago.)
Shortly after the matter of the seats was successfully concluded, Mike got a report from a security patrol officer that the EMT van parked outside the stadium was out of water. The temperature during the day had gone over 90 degrees. The evening was still hot. Mike told the security man to bring out a supply of water bottles.
On the field, the pitcher was pitching, the batters were batting, and the fielders were fielding, but Mike had no time to look. There is one thing that he seldom has a chance to do when he is at the ball field: watch the game.