As seen on Noah's blog earlier this week, last Friday we took him to his first baseball game, a minor-league affair last Friday in Camden, N.J. between Atlantic League clubs the Camden Riversharks and the Brideport Bombers.
It was a fun experience, although the Riversharks don't have quite the madcap spirit of my beloved St. Paul Saints- no pig on hand, no tuba sitting in for the organist, and no perpetually wise-cracking PA announcer. I'm telling you, someone from the Veeck family should buy every minor league team.
Another thing that struck me- the road team, the Bridgeport Bluefish, had a whole bunch of ex-major leaguers that I remembered, and Camden didn't have any, with the exception of their manager, ex-Phillie Von Hayes. Players on the team included Tike Redman, Josh Phelps, Hiram Bocachica and Adam Greenberg If the latter's name sounds familiar, it's because the ex-Cub is a real-life Moonlight Graham: In his lone major league plate appearance in 2005, Greenberg was hit in the head with a pitch and never made it back to the bigs again.
I've always rooted for him to get another shot at the majors. And now that the Texas Rangers are actually owned by a guy named Greenberg, maybe he will.