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Thursday, November 09, 2006

2007 Schedule!

from Northshorespirit.com:

For the second straight season, the Spirit will open their season in Nashua with a four-game series against the Pride on May 24-27th. The 2007 season at Fraser Field will open with a brief three-game homestand, including a doubleheader on May 31st. The reincarnated CanAm Grays will be the first to christen the new season at Fraser Field.

The Spirit will be busy in the first full month of the season, playing 25 games in June starting with a three game set in Atlantic City. The Spirit returns home to take on New Jersey (June 4-7th), New Haven (June 8-10th) and the Grays (June 11-13th) before heading to Worcester for a four-game series June 14-17th. The Atlantic City Surf make their Fraser Field debut on June19-21st, followed by a three-game series with reigning champions Quebec City, June 22-24th. The Spirit caps off a very busy month with a three-game set against Nashua.

The Spirit will celebrate the July Fourth holiday in New Haven this season amidst a three-game stretch from July 3-5th. They return home for four with Sussex, and close out the first half of the season with Commonwealth Cup rival Brockton Rox. The second half of the season kicks off with another Commonwealth Cup foe, as the Spirit head to Worcester for a four-game series, July 16-19th. North Shore makes it only trek to Quebec Jul7 20-22nd before returning home for back-to-back series with Atlantic City and Nashua.

August gets underway for the Spirit with a series in New Haven. North Shore returns to Fraser Field to host Worcester and Brockton then hits the road once again for a series in Sussex. The Spirit returns home to take on the CanAm Grays, August 16-19th, then head to New Jersey for their last road trip of the regular season. North Shore closes out the 2007 regular season at Fraser Field welcoming back Worcester, August 24-26th, New Jersey, August 28-31st, and Sussex, September 1-3rd.



Note: the Team Chart has been updated to reflect the Spirit's wave of transactions from Tuesday, acquiring a mediocre infielder, a mediocre left-handed pitcher, and an excellent pitcher who probably won't be around.

8 comments:

Wooden U. Lykteneau said...

It will be interesting to see how the "unbalanced" schedule plays itself out. Since I'm obviously zeroing in on road games in N.J., I'm disappointed to see that they're only heading there to play each team for one series, none consecutively (e.g. in Little Falls for Dates A-C, Augusta for Dates D-F) so no Sun-Mon-Tue trip for me.

In addition to more games at home vs. the N.J. teams, they also appear to only playing Quebec and Brockton for two series each and are playing more games at Worcester and Nashua than vice-versa. It would be nice to see the damn Spirit site list the entire schedule on a calendar like so many of the other teams already have.

Anonymous said...

Ben, think about it. Having a traveling teams makes money for the other teams (4-6 extra home dates). Really, the expenses aren't that much - the salary for the entire team for the season is around $90,000 + a manager and coach (which won't be "big name" guys who cost a lot), plus the relatively low travel costs in the Can-Am and some miscellaneous stuff (equipment, etc), divided nine ways - it's not going to be $40-50k per team, as you suggested.

Do you think the Atlantic League would have had a traveling team all these years if it was such a huge financial drain on the other clubs?

A nine-team league is a scheduling nightmare - split doubleheaders, consecutive off days, etc. There's a reason it's (almost) never done.

DaveCo said...

This cousin jeff dude sounds right. If you think about it this probably is the best thing to happen in this situation.....and guys,we get to make fun of the Grays int he present tense again! HORRAY! ^_^

Also,can anyone say Road trips?
We should get on the Spirit this year for putting together MORE THAN 1 road trip this year. Either waqy though,I still wanna go with just you guys like before-it was fun.

We should all definitly try to make it to opening day in Nashua together.

Joe Grav said...

I can't wait for the trip to Nashua.

What's the method behind the unbalanced schedule madness? Why are they doing it?

SoSayethI2006 said...

Benny,
Using Your 25K figure:
At $6/head, with an attendance of 1000 per event, won't that 25K get eaten up quickly over 4-6 additional games added to the schedule and leave clubs in the balck rather than operating @ a loss?.
I seem to remember Nick telling me last season that the cost per team was not "even" across the board and was prorated according to attendance. While this may seem unfair, it would prevent the weaker sisters (ie: Nashua and The NEW HAVEN COUNTY CUTTERS) from carrying a burden that could threaten the existenc of those clubs.

Anonymous said...

We will be happy to see you for the opener at Historic Holman Stadium. Because "we" will still be in the league, despite all those rumors Jonathan and Willy started (based on nothing but the attendance tables). In fact, Tom King's current column states that Mr. Butch Hobson (now of Bakersfield, California) stays in constant touch with "the other" Chris Hall (Pride player procurement executive) and will be back in the snow once this winter to hobnob with the high rollers. He is under contract for 2 more years and is taking it seriously.

Convincing people that a day at the ballpark is fun is an ongoing challenge. Pride didn't do it well in 2006 (less than a half dozen children's groups in house at a late-season weekday day game), despite the famous day that the owner returned north and made heads roll over the choice of assignments. It's a challenge for the Spirit too, and keeping in touch with the season-ticket holders during the off-season is basic.

A blog like this goes a long way; wish the Pride had one, like the old "Fan Forum." One quibble is that I don't like wandering down the comments to each main-level message (including, I suppose, 100 messages on historic Spirit games) to see who has checked in where!

Kudos to "Benoit Emond" for following the careers of the personnel we met last summer. They're people, not just ushers!

Am sorry to hear you got the rights to Nashua's setup man Jamie Baker. He got the job done, and Jim Senior was always at Nashua and frequently at Fraser to watch Jamie. Pride do need to steal away from Worcester the contract of city native Austin "Wassie" Wasserman. It would guarantee sales of 5-10 extra tickets each game, and that's just his devoted family.

--Spike

Joe Grav said...

Spiiiike.. c'mon.. it's the offseason, there's 191 days until opening day, and any transactions at this point have to be taken with about seventeen grains of salt. Give me a break on the top 100 games thing. I still think it's a fun idea to pass some time in the offseason.

Joe

Anonymous said...

Peace! I don't claim you shouldn't write the game reviews--again, anything is better than the nine-month apathy that's settling in around Historic Holman Stadium--only that there should be a better way to navigate to the live debate.
--Spike