Pittsfield Suns Open Season Thursday With High Expectations
General Manager Kevin McGuire has high expectations for this season. |
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — After their first season exceeded expectations, the Pittsfield Suns open their second at Wahconah Park on Thursday.
Management is expecting to continue to building the franchise.
Suns General Manager Kevin McGuire said on Tuesday that the team has set a goal of increasing both the quality of play on the field and attendance numbers.
The Suns became the city's latest baseball team to call Wahconah Park home last year after multiple teams had failed to keep an ongoing presence.
In taking over where others have failed, the team set a goal last year of an average attendance of 1,000 and exceeded that. McGuire said sales "across the board" — from sponsorships to group sales to individual tickets — are already up for the season and that the goal is to increase attendance to an average 1,500 per game.
"We came in knowing it was going to be a difficult year since baseball had been beat up over the last 10 to 12 years. And the Berkshires really embraced us. We made promises that we'd be different and do things the right way and I think once we kept our promises people started coming back over and over and over," McGuire said, overlooking the collegiate players who were taking the field for their second practice since arriving Sunday. "Our goal was to average 1,000 people a night and we actually end up averaging 1,344."
The Suns came into Pittsfield as an expansion of the Futures League — a newly created collegiate baseball league with the intent to be similar to the Cape Cod league. The owners, the Goldklang Group, had a history of managing minor league baseball teams and promised "wacky" promotions and quality baseball.
Many of those promotions are staying — like last year's toilet paper night (tissue paper night this year) — but McGuire said the team has increased the number of promotions that are intended to "help the community."
"We put kind of an emphasis promotionally in doing things that would help the community out," McGuire said. "We really want to show the Berkshires that we are a community partner, we're not just here to be your summer baseball team."
The team has scheduled promotional nights to raise money for war veterans, breast cancer awareness groups and Special Olympics, and is holding a special-needs camp for autistic children.
Also different this year is the newly installed sound system by the city, a sponsor for the playland area in right field to bring in "more and better" inflatables for children and the organization's take over of the food vending — including serving locally made beer from Wandering Star.
The Suns will still be hosting a game and fireworks on the Fourth of July, which is somewhat of a Pittsfield tradition, as well as hosting the All-Star game.
"We worked very hard to get the All-Star game this year. Obviously there is a lot of heritage and history of baseball here in the Berkshires, Pittsfield and this field in general," McGuire said. "This is a market where they really respect great baseball and we knew that this would be an event that they would really fall in love with. We wanted to bring it here and do it right."
The All-Star game will be similar to the Fourth of July with fireworks after the game. There is a total of seven firework shows scheduled during the season — including opening night.
For the team itself, McGuire said the talent level has improved considerably. Last year the team featured five players from Division 1 schools but this year, they've quadrupled that number.
"We continue to build the product on the field and get better players each year. We've done that even far and above what we thought we'd do in year two," McGuire said.
Two of those players will be familiar faces to Berkshire County.
"One of the things I am most proud of is our ties to local players this year. We've got two Berkshire County kids. We've got John Kinne from Great Barrington and we've got Mike Geannelis from Williamstown. So, we've got two homegrown baseball players and both are Division 1 baseball players," McGuire said.
The team is built around speed and contact hitters, McGuire said, while it features a young pitching staff.
"This is a big ball yard and you don't hit a lot of balls over that big wall out there. So we wanted guys who are going to make contact, get on base. Our manager, Tom Conley, is big on 'run the bases,' keeping it exciting and not getting two guys on and hoping the next guy hits a homerun."
The pitching staff is filled with mostly freshmen and sophomores, who hadn't thrown many innings in college. But McGuire said that he was "pleasantly" surprised to see them throw on Monday.
"I think the pitching will be just fine," he said.
Those who followed the team last year will see four returning players. Ryan Deitrich, Steve Dill, Rob McLam and Brendan Slattery all played for the team last year.
"It's going to be another summer packed full of excitement and fun," McGuire said.
Tags: baseball, Pittsfield Suns,
