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There Used To Be A Ballpark
All that's left for baseball fans in New Haven are the memories.

Dan Hickling
MinorLeagueNews.com

WEST HAVEN, Conn. -- It was an hour before game time and business was brisk in the tiny New Haven Ravens souvenir shop.

What goods were still left for sale had been pretty much picked over.

There wasn't much left to choose from, certainly not in the apparel department, save for one solitary T-shirt (size small) hanging behind a door on a plain wire hanger.

"Going...going...gone...." it read. Moments later, the shirt was gone.
A few hours later, the Ravens were gone too.

Forever.

Such was one scene played out on Sept. 10 at old (some call it 'historic') Yale Field, built in 1927, which for the last 10 years served as home to the Ravens in the Eastern League.

Some 5,235 fans, all of whom were let in for free, showed up to bid adieu to the Ravens.

Game 2 of the Eastern League championship series against the Akron Aeros, was to be the last game the Ravens would ever play before the home folks in New Haven.

The Ravens, the Double-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays, will set up shop next year in Manchester, N.H., where earth has been turned on a new ball park, set to open in 2005.

With them will go the heritage of a Ravens team that enjoyed a lot more success on the field than at the gate.

"This is it," said Joe DeCrosta of New Haven, who with his wife Vicki, were rabid Ravens rooters from the beginning. "No more sports in New Haven. We're going to miss it. We're going to miss it so much."

For the Ravens, there were just not enough die-hards like the DeCrosta's to keep the team afloat.

The reasons were legion, of course.

Affiliations with the team came and went. Meanwhile, Yale Field, which is part of the Yale University sports complex, was a crummy place to visit.

The Shoreline has been a graveyard for other professional sports as well.

New Haven just shuttered up its only arena, the Coliseum, which had been home to three pro hockey franchises through the years. None of these teams could generate enough fan interest to keep the clubs viable.

Still the Ravens, which entered the Eastern League in 1994, soldiered on until this year, when they were sold to Massachusetts businessman Drew Weber.

Weber also owns the highly successful Lowell Spinners of the New York-Penn League.

Operating in New Haven for one last year, the lame duck Ravens attracted an announced average crowd of 2,273, despite fielding an entertaining team that ran off with the EL North Division crown.

Through it all, this year's team played as though detached from the whole matter.

"It is nostalgic in the sense that it's a venerable old stadium," said Ravens manager Marty Pevey, whose office wall featured a giant portrait of Babe Ruth standing with a young Yalie, former first baseman George H.W. Bush. "But as far as the players...no. You know how they are."

"I had every reporter come in here and they wanted to know whether the move was affecting us. But it never affected us,"Pevey admitted. "We had no control over who goes where, or when, or why."

In time, memories of the Ravens will fade as they have for other pro teams who once called Yale Field home -- the Colonials, the Yankees, and the Athletics.

For some, the grieving and healing both began before the lights were doused on the Ravens for the final time.

Fans milled about on the field after the game, some running the bases, others hugging one another and reminiscing, while Frank Sinatra's classic "There Used to Be A Ballpark" poured out of the speakers to provide a baleful backdrop.

For Sam Rubin, who worked in the Ravens' front office from the beginning, and who literally wrote the book (Baseball In New Haven, Arcadia Publishing) on the game's history here, the scene was bittersweet.

"Fortunately or unfortunately, we knew this coming for a long time," Rubin said. "It's not like it was a shock or surprise. Right now, I definitely have mixed emotions. You look out here (on the field) and you see people enjoying themselves. You can't put a price on that. My experience here has left me with the good that can be accomplished in minor league baseball. I'm going to keep that with me."