4th of July Fireworks & Baseball!

I was doing some surfing about the various New England minor league teams’ websites, and found that the ONLY team who is currently home and will be offering a fireworks show on the 4th is the New Hampshire Fisher Cats.  Well, the Worcester Tornadoes had fireworks tonight, but that’s obviously all over and done with.  However, they do have fireworks at every Friday home game, I believe, so you can go to the next one!

The Fisher Cats certainly have a lot on tap for the holiday weekend.  There are still some tickets left for the July 4 game vs. the Portland Sea Dogs, so if you want to go, get over to nhfishercats.com and order before they sell out.  For your convenience, the site lets you print your tickets at home, so you don’t have to stand in long lines at the Will Call window.  Game time is at 7:05 PM.

In addition to the Atlas Fireworks show after the game, there will also be a hot dog eating contest before the game.  Honestly, I’m sorta glad we were unable to find suitable aisle seats for this one, because I kinda get gagged out by the sight of competitive eating contests.  The sight of seeing anyone rapidly shoving food into their mouth is just gross to me.  But many people do enjoy it, so if you do, and have tickets for this game, enjoy!

But a 4th of July tradition that I do enjoy is when the Fisher Cats suit up, this one day of the year, as the New Hampshire Primaries.  As you may know, when the team formerly known as the New Haven Ravens was bought and to be moved to ManchVegas, it was originally to be called the New Hampshire Primaries.  The logo was to be an elephant and a donkey…here it is…

However, a lot of people (myself included) thought it was a dumb name, so they put it up for a vote to the people of New Hampshire.  Since I live in Massachusetts, I was not eligible to vote.  But the name “Fisher Cats” won, and the rest is history.

But the fact that I thought that the original name was a dumb one didn’t stop me from buying logo T-shirts for Mike and me, that were left over from when they really planned to name the team the “Primaries”.  We wore them when we did get to go to games when the ‘Cats became the Primaries for the night.
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Since we have the Sunday Funday mini-plan, we already have tickets for Sunday’s game, which will also have an Atlas Fireworks spectacular afterwards.  So we’ll be seeing a live fireworks show a day late…but so what?  Also, no competitive eating contests, but we’ll be treated to something much better.

At 2:45 PM, prior to the regularly scheduled Fisher Cats/Sea Dogs game, college ballplayers take the field, as Team USA takes on the New England Collegiate Baseball League All-Stars.  We’ve been to a few NECBL games (Sanford Mainers, North Shore Navigators), and these kids really are the cream of the crop from their schools.  It’s excellent quality baseball, so if you have tickets to the Sunday Fisher Cats game, come on out a few hours early to see these guys play!

After that game, the Fisher Cats/Sea Dogs game will start at around 6:35 PM, that is, provided that the college game doesn’t go into extra innings or something.  But hey, it’s gonna be a gorgeous day out, and what better way to spend it than at a beautiful ballpark?

Yeah, I know that there are all sorts of 4th of July sales at the stores, where everything from area rugs to appliances to cars are being offered for great prices.  But I’ll be skipping the malls on Sunday and hitting MerchantsAuto.com Stadium for a day filled with sunshine and baseball!

As for Saturday, the Sox come on at 1PM, as a night game would interfere too much with the Esplanade fireworks letting out.  So, since we don’t have cable, we’ll probably go to our local TGI Friday’s to watch that game, as I have an $8.00 off coupon that will expire soon if I don’t use it.  And then we’ll go home and watch the Pops show and the fireworks thingy on TV.  So we’ll be all rested up for the big day in New Hampshire on Sunday!

However you choose to celebrate the 4th, make it safe and sane!