Sea Dogs Neophytes Make the Hajj to Maine

In principle, we're fans of the New Hampshire Fisher Cats.  We've been going to their games for years, splurging on those $6 seats - sometimes even the elite $12 ones -  to watch them take on such giants of the super-minor baseball league world as the New Britain Rock Cats, and other world-class competitors like Altoona, Pennsylvania and Akron, Ohio.  In fact, the boys have developed an outright antagonism for the Boston Red Sox, for they believe that you can't love the Sox without somehow two-timing the Fisher Cats.  I tried to stress to them that the Delta Dental Stadium in Manchester [I couldn't make this stuff up] is filled nearly to capacity with Red Sox fans - that nobody else sees a hint of disloyalty in loving both New England teams at the same time - particularly in light of the fact that there's no chance, ever in a million years - that the Fisher Cats would be in danger of losing a game to the Red Sox, for reasons that I'd rather not spell out to them. 

In fact, Ian has maintained a kind of devotion to the Toronto Blue Jays, for they are the major league affiliates of the Fisher Cats.  Ian sees a kind of double-coupon-credit loyalty value in wishing the Blue Jays well, since they somehow sponsor or otherwise advance the cause of our own Fisher Cats.  Never mind that the Blue Jays aren't even in these United States, and they're a good ten hour drive (or so) from New Hampshire.  No - they're "ours," like some kind of distant-but-much-loved in-laws, by virtue of their ill-defined (for us) but still meaningful   "marriage" to New Hampshire's minor league team.  Moreover, Ian likes the Blue Jays logo.

But Ian, himself, has harbored a far more radical dual-loyalty for some years now.

Ian loves the Portland (Maine) Sea Dogs.  In fact, this hate-the-Red-Sox-for-not-being-Fisher-Cats fan [and remember, "fan" comes from "fanatic"], nevertheless maintains an explicit and outspoken enthusiasm for the Portland Sea Dogs - the Fisher Cats' direct competitors - and when we have attended Fisher-Cats-vs.-Sea-Dogs games in Manchester (New Hampshire) - on our very own home turf - Ian has inwardly routed for the visitors.  I think a large reason for this is that Ian loves dogs.  He loves their dog-logo, and can't help but wish well to the quasi-canines when they take on our own bizarre species.  Fisher cats (a.k.a. "fishers") are an odd species to adopt as team mascot.  We do have them in New Hampshire, but this familiarity does not breed affection:  they're some kind of weaselly wood creatures - pretty big, with ready-to-devour, frightening mouths, and they eat all kinds of things. They do pose a danger to humans, and they also have this horrific wail which we sometimes hear on the periphery of our property.  The first time I heard it, I thought somebody - probably a woman - had been severely injured, and I drove around trying to find her to see if she needed help.  The shrieks ended when I apparently came close the source of the outbursts (it was night-time), and I'm very glad that they stopped, and that I went home, considering what I've learned about these nasty predators since then. 

But the "other" Fisher Cats - a bunch of ordinary guys in baseball uniforms who play for our state - are very much our own, and yet Ian prefers the quasi-canines from out-of-state to the quasi-screaming-weasels from our own.  To add insult to injury, this "other" team has tended to beat New Hampshire on our own diamond.  What's a Dad to do?

Well, this year, things worked out unusually, in favor of Ian's clashing loyalties.  We never actually made it to a Fisher Cats game, and, wisely, the season ends at the end of August.  The Fisher Cats have one more game, but it's somewhere way beyond our driving range.  Furthermore, I have been meaning to indulge Ian's Sea Dogs enthusiasm, not because I encourage duplicity but because the lad likes them - and it helps that Portland, as a city, and Maine, as a state, are such great places to visit.

So this year: season's over in New Hampshire, for all intents and purposes, plus Madeleine came down with a bad cold today.  Because she was a bit too sick to go on a road trip, Amy was going to stay home with her, which freed "the boys" up for the quintessential guy outing.  Neither of the girls would have wanted to sit through a nearly-two-hour-each-way ride just to attend a baseball game.  But this was one of the few times when the guys would write the agenda without any input from the admittedly quite docile and accommodating female contingent of our family.  So we went to Portland.

Everything about the experience was delightfully Maine.  The stadium parking was full, but there was a sign by the stadium directing people to overflow parking across from the medical center just up the hill.  As I got to the parking lot, I didn't know whom to pay - there was no booth, but there was a car between the entering and exiting lane, at the entrance.  As I slowed down at the entrance, a grandmotherly lady hopped out of the car, wearing an I'm-at-work type of yellow vest, like something from a construction site, and, with impeccable, friendly, down-home manners, she collected from me the whopping sum of $5 for event parking. 

When we got to the desk to pick up our pre-ordered tickets, the two young-ish guys were similarly friendly.  They wanted to know if I had won the tickets - apparently a couple of radio stations I've never heard of give away Sea Dogs tickets as contest prizes.  After I cleared that up and collected the tickets, I told them that we're Fisher Cats people, but my son was a Sea Dogs fan.  They wanted to know which of the two was the Sea Dogs fan.  When I pointed Ian out, they cheered for him.  I told them that tonight, when they were playing Harrisburg, we were *all* Sea Dogs fans.  Ian picked up a couple of pocket-sized, folded up Sea Dogs season calendar leaflets, keeping one for himself and giving the other to Daniel. 

Then we proceeded into a stadium which, while it felt crowded due to the congested space, nevertheless turned out to be (apparently) considerably smaller than the Fisher Cats stadium - something I hadn't really thought possible.  The ads on the edge of the stadium were for hot-shot outfits like York's Wild Kingdom and the Norway Bank (Norway, Maine) and, of course, L. L. Bean.  The crowd was most enthusiastic for their team.  The loudspeaker was a continual flow of highly cheerable song fragments, and all kinds of wacky games were introduced between plays, such as one where a seven-year-oldish boy raced against Slugger the Dog-Mascot (costume-clad).  Slugger seemed neck-and-neck with the boy, but somehow he seems to have forgotten that the race course was the baseball diamond itself, and he ran off in a straight line, far from the finish line, which meant that the boy somehow ended up winning the race, to the cheers of the crowd.  They actually had a musical chairs match between innings, where several local children danced around a few large, inflatable pink chairs, rushing to occupy the limited number of seats available each time the music stopped.  In the final round, the remaining boy and the girl jumped into the seat at the same time, knocking it over, along with themselves.  Then there was the sack race between four children, with the sacks colored and designed to look like baseball food, such that the hot dog was racing the ketchup, the relish, and the mustard.  The hot dog won, and I cheered loudly for the hot dog, since I've never had the chance to cheer for a hot dog before in my whole, long life.  Ian told me that he decided that since the hot dog was winning, he should route for the ketchup instead.

The teeny children from the family sitting next to us were beside themselves with excitement when they saw Oakie the Acorn mascot from the Maine dairy Oakhurst Farms.  Oakie didn't come anywhere near us - he was walking down the main strip between the front and back sections of sats - but he stopped for an extended period of time to wave to the children - these Oakie-lovers - to show that the feelings were mutual.  He also hugged several children who came to him for that very purpose.  I wanted to invite Oakie to sit with us, but he wouldn't possibly fit in the seats, with his huge costume, and he wouldn't have heard me, for the crowd, in the first place.  But I feel good just knowing that Oakie is there. 

One great thing about being a turncoat Sea Dogs fan, in our capacity as temporary New Hampshire refugees, was that we got to watch our team win, and by a nice margin.  Portland beat the Harrisburg Senators five to one.  Each time the Sea Dogs got a home run, or even just a run-batted-in, the stadium would erupt in euphoria, with festive music, clapping, cheering, feet pounding furiously on aluminum-ish bleachers, and dancing.  This wasn't lost on any of us.  But Ian felt bad for the Senators, and he wasn't completely okay with the way that the crowd would cheer when one of Harrisburg's batters would get an out.  And more movingly, Daniel himself mentioned that he hoped that they would at least score one point, so they wouldn't be too sad.  I was proud of my deeply compassionate boys, even as they turned their backs on the entirety of New Hampshire.

Needless to say, the food-and-souvenir campaign ran parallel to the game itself.  By the sixth inning, Daniel was highly distressed that we didn't have popcorn or peanuts.  It turns out that in Portland, the only food that comes to you is ice cream sandwiches - you have to go down to the concession stand for everything else.  And I didn't want to unseat the twelve Mainers between us and the aisle - even though most of them were tiny and less likely to be inconvenienced as we walked past them.  We went to the concession stand and spent an outrageous $5 on a large order of French fries - probably a $8 value in most stadiums, along with peanuts still in their shells - Ian's choice, as usual. 

In the souvenir shop, Daniel procured a pair of Sea Dogs arm bands, and a commemorative ball - looking more Faberge than Cooperstown, with all kinds of painted images on it pertaining to the Sea Dogs, such as the logo and stick-figurish baseball players, in many colors.  And true to good ole' American tradition, we tossed the ball before we got into the car, as if the attraction of all that baseball was too much for us just to internalize as an abstract ideal, and there was some instruction in ball-throwing.  Daniel did his best to teach me to throw it directly to him, and not to the ground in front of him, encouraging me to try throwing with just three fingers.  We played in the garage where we were parked, which was luckily nearly empty by then.  It was a terrible ball for practice - hard as a brick, badly hurting me if I didn't catch it exactly right, but it made Young Daniel happy.

We did a quick joy-ride through Portland after the game - the boys didn't remember the last time we were there, since they were much younger at the time - and we stopped for a bit of drive-through dessert, since Daniel had been deprived of that important dietary supplement, and mentioned it perhaps more than once.  Then we headed south, and by the time the Corolla of Adventure coasted over the mighty Piscataqua, across the state line into New Hampshire, Daniel was fast asleep.  Ian held on, talking about the many considerations that the toll roads evoke, before surrendering to sleep about ten miles inside the state.  I carried Daniel up to bed, him clinging to me like a baby monkey, and fulfilled his two major requests before going back to sleep - that I take off his sneakers, and that I take his Sea Dogs arm bands, which he had carried inside in spite of his catatonic condition - and set them on his bureau.  I guided Ian in, as he carried his books (of course) and his Sea Dogs plastic commemorative mini baseball cap; there was no literary stalling, however, as we got him right into his bed.  And in short order, the newly confirmed Sea Dogs fans were sleeping soundly, far more readily than their usual pattern arriving home from a long evening drive.

(August 30, 2014)