Baseball Road Trip Planning: Twittered Baseball Roadtrip #4: Atlantic League Two-City Doubleheader Roadtrip

Date: August 12, 2009
Primary Destination: Day trip to Bridgewater, NJ and Newark, NJ

Twitter Address: http://twitter.com/Wtriebel

Games Attended:

Game 1: Bridgeport Bluefish vs. Somerset Patriots, Aug 12th, 11:05AM, TD Bank Ballpark, Bridgewater, NJ

Game 2: Lancaster Barnstormers vs. Newark Bears, Aug 12th, 7:05PM, Bears & Eagles Riverfront Stadium, Newark, NJ

http://www.ballparkreviews.com/newarknj/newarknj.htm

http://www.digitalballparks.com/Atlantic/Newark.html

http://franksballparks.tripod.com/pats.html

http://www.minorleagueballparks.com/bear_nj.html

Summary:

The Atlantic League is an independent baseball league with eight teams located in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States. All but the Maryland franchise are conveniently located to the metropolitan New York City area and three of the teams, the Somerset Patriots, Newark Bears, and Camden Riversharks, reside in New Jersey. Day trips are possible from the NYC area to attend games at the home stadium of all Atlantic League teams except the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs.

I have called this baseball trip the “Atlantic League Two-City Doubleheader Roadtrip.” The trip was done in a single day during which I attended two games at different Atlantic League team locations. The first, a day game, was at the Somerset Patriots stadium TD Bank Ballpark (previously known as Commerce Bank Park) in Bridgewater, NJ and the second game was in the evening at Bears & Eagles Riverfront Stadium in Newark, NJ, the home of the Newark Bears. The departure point for the trip was my home in Wayne, NJ.

Through these games, I saw the four Atlantic League teams identified above play and visited two of the eight stadiums used by the league’s teams. The other four teams in the league and the stadiums where they play are:

Camden Riversharks, Campbell's Field, Camden, NJ
Long Island Ducks, Citibank Park, Central Islip, NY
York Revolution, Sovereign Bank Stadium, York, PA
Southern Maryland Blue Crabs, Regency Furniture Stadium, Waldorf, MD

The stadium where the Bridgeport Bluefish and Lancaster Barnstormers play their home games are the Baseball Park at Harbor Yard, Bridgeport, CT and Clipper Magazine Stadium, Lancaster, PA, respectively.

As part of the trip I used twitter to post travel information, such as the stadium addresses, travel distances, and travel times. For each game attended, I sent pregame tweets with the record of the teams, their current standing in the league, and the starting pitchers. This was followed by in-game reports giving the inning-by-inning score and highlights about how the runs were scored. After the game, post-game tweets gave the winning team and final score.

Upon return from the roadtrip, I suggested games and dates for several similar Two-City Doubleheader Roadtrips with tweets to twitter. One trip is to attend games at the home stadiums of the CanAm League’s NJ teams: the Sussex Skyhawks and New Jersey Jackals. The other recommended trip is a mixed League Two-City Doubleheader to attend a day game of the Newark Bears (Atlantic League) and offers three options for the evening game. The evening game can be a home game of the Trenton Thunder (Eastern League), Staten Island Yankees (New York-Penn League), or Lakewood BlueClaws (South Atlantic League). Each of these three destinations is close enough to Newark to permit attendance of two games in the same day.

Twitter Roadtrip Information:
Total number of tweets: 94
Time/Date of 1st Tweet: 12:26 AM Aug 10th
Time/Date of 131st Tweet: 2:49 PM Aug 13th

Roadtrip Planning Resources:

The following are the web resources used for planning this "Atlantic League" baseball roadtrip.

Official Website of the Atlantic Baseball League: http://www.atlanticleague.com

Current Standings of the Teams in the Atlantic League:
http://www.atlanticleague.com/scores-standings.php

Composite Game Schedules for the Atlantic League: http://www.atlanticleague.com/info-schedule.php

Official Websites of the Home Teams: