The city clashed with Bluefish cofounder and then chief owner Mickey Herbert about the Harbor Yard lease. First came 9/11, then the imprisonment of Bridgeport’s longtime mayor and biggest Bluefish backer Joseph Ganim. None of its franchises had more success coming out of the gate than the Bluefish, which set league attendance records that remain today.īut the good times didn’t last. Boosted by fan buy-in, the Atlantic League took off right away. A minor league baseball enterprise not formally connected with the major leagues, the Bluefish has featured both past and future major leaguers and topflight minor-league talent looking for a fresh opportunity to draw some eyes. Only eight years ago, the Bridgeport Bluefish burst onto the scene with much fanfare as part of the brand-new Atlantic League. “I’m sure there are financial goals, but in the first year of a turnaround situation, we have got to put fannies in the seats, make ’em smile, make ’em come back.” “We want to see a lot of smiles in that stadium,” Kushner explains. Kushner and his partners are fixing to change that. During the 2004 season, the ballpark was often only half full. Now more than twenty years later, the New Canaan business executive is not only back in Bridgeport but staking a claim as a principal investor in its minor league baseball team, the Bridgeport Bluefish, which plays at what Kushner and his partners regard as their own “Field of Dreams.” The Ballpark at Harbor Yard is an undeniable gem, overlooking Long Island Sound and passed every half hour or so by Metro-North trains, whose whistles blow in greeting to fans watching home games on warm summer nights.īut those fans have been less in evidence of late. The large picture mural on the front of the stadium was made from a 35 mm picture by a business acquaintance of Ed's.When Tom Kushner cruised the streets of Bridgeport in the 1980s as a volunteer ambulance driver, the wide-eyed Fairfield University undergraduate was unsettled by what he saw, scarcely imagining he would ever willingly return to those unquiet streets. We went to the game with Ed Hicks, an orienteering friend, who drove over from New York State. The last picture has both a Connecticutt Rail and Amtrack train in it, Amtrack in foreground.
We saw many passenger trains go by and only one short freight train. At second base the red brush broke, so the girl had to sweep with a shortened brush. This time is was a relay with four girls. A between inning activity that we have seen a couple of times is sweeping the bases using large tooth brushes. The field nestles up against the train tracks in right and center field. The second Bluefish batter hit a ball into the bullpen tarp that was ruled a ground rule double because the Road Warrior left fielder couldn't find it. The Bluefish have two mascots-BB the fish and Captain. The field lines displayed are RF-325' and CF-405'. The box score was Road Warriors R-7, H-14, E-0 and Bluefish R-5, H-13, E-0. The Bluefish were playing the Road Warriors, the team that does not have a home stadium. The menu is the best in the independent leagues we have seen so far. This is another nice independent league stadium. The stadium was built in 1998 and seats 5,300. The Bridgeport Bluefish, an Atlantic Independent league team, play at The Ballpark at Harbor Yard in Bridgeport, CT.
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