I’m not sure if this will turn into a series over the course of this summer, but I will be attending three (3) Hartford Yard Goats games this season. Sort of planned, sort of not. Yet here we are.

For this game, it was just Josh and I. The other two games we’ll be going to are with my parents and two family friends, so we wanted to have a game with the two of us. I originally bought tickets for us back in early May for the Thursday, June 22 game. At the time, Josh and I both would have Fridays off over the summer, so we figured that would work best.

Well, then, his work schedule changed for the summer and a Thursday night game wasn’t going to work. So thankfully I could exchange the tickets for a different game. The only one that really worked was this past Saturday, but I was still able to get aisle seats. (Yes, I’m that person who always has to get aisle seats at games. It’s a thing I picked up from my dad.)

The game started at 6:10 p.m. and gates opened around 4:30 p.m. We got to the park right around 5:00 p.m. and easily got through security. (Bag policy: they don’t have a policy about specific bags, just that they’re subject to search. So I used my belt bag from DC.)

The park has its own real goats—obviously—but I don’t think they were there yet when we walked by their pen. We assumed it might have been too hot for them, but there was an announcement on the big screen later on in the game to go see Fancy Pants (one of the goats) and his friends. Maybe next time.

Bear’s moved to a different part of the park and have a bunch of high-top tables. We sat at one to eat before heading over to our section.

The view from our seats! This was the furthest I’ve ever sat down the first baseline, but, honestly, there’s not a bad seat in the park.

Just a few notes:

1. I want the job of firing the t-shirt cannon. The guy that was using it between innings was able to shoot the t-shirts like halfway across the stadium. It was awesome.
2. We kept away from the mascots, like usual, but I was particularly freaked out by the donut costume, which was supposed to be part of the Dunkin’ mascot clan that are at the park (since the park is called Dunkin’ Park).
3. One of my favorite things is when the grounds crew is dragging the field between innings, they play YMCA and the crew will stop and do the YMCA.

By the top of the eighth inning, it was 6–0 Fisher Cats, and it was looking kind of bleak for the School Boys. Then they staged a comeback in the bottom of the inning, scoring 6 runs to tie up the game. The scored was tied going into the ninth, and we knew we’d probably have to leave right after the ninth, no matter what happened. Josh had to get home in time to go to bed for his early shift on Sunday. Unfortunately, the game went into extras—and we’d be missing the fireworks, too.

I checked the score on the way home and Hartford ended up winning in a walk-off in the bottom of the tenth. Of course, if we stayed the game probably would have gone on forever, but we were happy they won.

We also had to continue our tradition of taking a selfie in our seats. Back in 2021, going to the game was one of the first things we did as an official couple—aka when we were babies, as we say. It’s definitely a tradition we’ve started and will continue doing each year.