When the Westerners traveled up to Holyoke to play the Valley Blue Sox earlier in the month, I barely had enough time to say much to the Blue Sox staff, although I had gotten the impression that they were a friendly bunch. I remember Seth Dussault being extremely courteous and helpful in setting me up for blogging in what would ultimately be a fruitless blogging day, (blame it on the WiFi at Mackenzie Stadium). I also remember meeting Mike Lord, who is an NECBL broadcasting legend, and the supposed pioneer of the broadcasting phrase, Deuces are Wild.

Like I said, the difference between working at Mackenzie Stadium and working at Rogers Park was that we actually had face to face contact this time.

Seth, who is a favorite of a lot of people here in Danbury was on vacation in the area, and had planned on finishing up the season here. Given the fact that the Blue Sox were on the brink of elimination, and we were slightly hotter than usual, it was a wise decision on his part. I enjoyed meeting and chatting with him again, and as it turned out, he was also still reading the Westerners blog and understood my criticisms of Mackenzie Stadium. If I haven’t already mentioned it, he also DJs at the home park, so he and I also ended up talking shop that day. As it turns out, he is the pioneer of song trolling, playing bad music to rattle opposing teams. However, his song trolling is a bit more “entertaining” than mine, as he includes sound bytes from shows like The Simpsons, Looney Tunes, and other forms of media, which seem to be specifically tailored to the situation. My song trolling is limited to playing the “Trouble” song when coaches come to the mound, and playing the absolute worst music I can think of when there is a new pitcher on the mound… Oh and let’s not forget the Ocean State Incident involving Waves catcher Ethan Ferreira and his walkup music. I wish I could have learned more from him, he’s one of the best.

It was about that time that the non contending teams were starting to lose players. I recall checking the team roster that day and seeing some of the high-level Division One guys were off the roster, including Josh Graham, the Oregon catcher. Seth told me that Graham had left the team to work with his uncle, who was a Major League catcher, and get himself ready for fall ball. Now normally, I despise Oregon, namely because of its reputation as “athletics first, academics second” university and the fact that they get so many concessions from Nike CEO Phil Knight that I swear there must be a rules violation in those uniforms, but I’ll admit, I have been intrigued by Oregon’s baseball team because of its recent reestablishment and sudden dominance of the Pac-12.

On the level of human interest however, was the Blue Sox’ other catcher, Justin Hazard. Hazard, who goes to UCLA, and was a part of their National Championship team in 2013, had heard the news about the burst pipe on the UCLA campus which flooded the basketball arena and soccer stadium with millions of gallons of water. In fact, when I had walked by after the game ended, I heard him talking about the situation with a couple people.

But that’s all Valley, and this is a Westerners blog, so I’ll move on. As I mentioned before, Danbury was long out of the playoff picture and was strictly a spoiler team. Given the fact that we only had the four games left, and two of those teams had already clinched, with the other long eliminated and Valley just on the brink, we were playing just to play, and to avoid finishing in 6th for the second consecutive year. It was crucial that we win the next two games to ensure it didn’t happen,

Pitching that night was Alex Farina, who had become a solid starter for us ever since he transitioned from the bullpen.

This was also (in the mind of Mike Lord) a great musical night, as both Jimi Hendrix songs I had on file were to be played tonight (Farina uses “Hear my Train A-Comin'” while Logan Pearson uses “Foxy Lady”. And yes Lord did make mention of the fact that he liked the music on the broadcast. Every once in a while I have gotten name-checked in broadcasts. I’m just glad I never had to actually do a broadcast because apparently according to Dylan and Maggie, I’d probably unconsciously say something that would get me in trouble. Come on, am I that bad?

Speaking of Maggie, she alternated between Seth and Mike, with Seth usually taking a backseat, although he did serve as tech support that night because Trevor, our scorekeeper was out that night, and our backup scorekeeper was having a bad day with glitches. I really don’t understand why the NECBL must continually rely on Pointstreak when there are several other options, many of which probably would work better.

When Seth was on the mike, however, the coverage devolved into a hurricane of bad puns inter dispersed with play-by-play. I refuse to dignify any of the jokes Maggie and Seth said by mentioning them specifically, but I can say that the Jake Ring jokes got repetitive after the 5th one. Mike would tell me to let them have their fun, which I agreed to quit complaining, but every once in a while, I mouthed a boo! in their general direction.

To escape the pun-fest, I wandered off to the bullpen for a couple innings when the Westerners were in the field (I can’t do it when they’re at-bat unless it’s an emergency). Remembering that I had a package to give to Brandon and Bobby Bonilla from Keene, (if you need reference, please refer to the previous entry), I pulled out the envelope with the Bonilla All-star photos and Marc Ryan’s business card, and gave them to Brandon.

When I headed back to the booth, there was a new pitcher getting ready to warm up: Joey Arena. Now I’ll admit, when Arena relieves Farina, the comedic possibilities present themselves, unfortunately I barely heard any Arena/Farina puns from the comedy duo of O’Keeffe and Dussault when it happened.

I should probably mention that most of the scoring was done in the early innings, with a noble, but fruitless comeback by Valley in the 8th and 9th inning, and an insurance run by us in the 8th.

We ended up winning 6-3, and Mike wished me the best of luck in my deejaying work for the rest of the season. I must say, along with Tim Scott and Alex Texeira, working with those two was a blast.