The park was buzzing tonight! Ryne Sandberg came out to a rousing ovation and the usual Opening Day activities commenced. Fans showed up as early as 3:00pm to get in line and they all got quite a show!
The first inning started out well for the Pigs. Frandsen got it started by taking a pitch in the side. Cory Sullivan then singled and Delwyn Young grounded out driving in the first run of the 2011 season. Belliard and Moss both had RBI singles before the inning came to an end.
Something I noticed, even in the first inning, was Sandberg baseball. With a 3-2 count and 1 out, the hit and run was successfully executed. In 3 years I may have seen Dave Huppert call for a hit and run maybe twice. More on that later.
In the fifth, the Pigs tacked on 3 more runs with a Delwyn Young home run, a Belliard double and a Jeff Larish home run.
The Yankees came close to a rally in the 7th when Jason Grilli loaded the bases, but Stutes came in to shut them down and end the inning with a strikeout. They would add another run with a walk and triple in the 9th off of Scott Mathieson.
Overall the pitching looked good for the Ironpigs. Worley came out with the win and Stutes with a hold. Mathieson ended the game effectively but was not elligible for a save given the lead opening the bottom of the 9th. All four pitchers combined for 15 strikeouts and kept us busy at the K corner.
This was a welcome start to the season for us Pig fans. We needed this. The win puts the Ironpigs above .500 for the first time in franchise history and thus begins the Ryne Sandberg era in Allentown. My thoughts… Sandberg ran this game to win not develop pitchers. Dave Huppert is a great development oriented coach. When Grilli got into a bind, Sandberg pulled him for Stutes. This would have been a situation where (while developing a player’s abilities) a minor league coach would leave the pitcher in to see how he reacts and performs in a tough situation. One thing for sure… the Pigs were playing to win tonight and win they did.
One thing I did notice was some open seats. While a paid attendance of 9,225 is really good… I was expecting a sell out capacity crowd for Opening day. The weather and it being a school night can easily be the reason. Let’s get out there and support this team! It’s well worth it and you’re going to get a show on the field as well as between innings!
Haven’t gotten any photos in yet… will post when I do.
OinK!
noisenation.mlblogs.com 
Great game, great evening, AND the National Anthem was beautifully played by the South Side Brass in one of the most stirring versions that I have heard in three plus years of IronPigs games. At least they couldn’t forget the words. OinK ON!
That National Anthem WAS one of the best I’ve seen. My personal favorite was in 2008 from a 11 year old girl who belted it out like noone I’ve seen since.
OH NOo! Friday’s National Anthem will be sung by overused American Idol finalist Tyler Grady. Haven’t we heard him enough? Maybe someone can buy him a pair of jeans that don’t have holes in them.
Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has entered the building. 🙂
The only disappointments for me were food-related: the Patio hadn’t any BBQ chicken by the time we arrived (none was made, I believe) and what was available that wasn’t made cold, got cold quickly in the dropping temps.
Scouting other munchies for future games (the three Tuesday-morning contests), I discovered they’d put pretzel burgers and pork-n-chips together at the burgers’ most recent venue, and moved walking tacos from the pizza stand to the funnel cake counter.
Meanwhile, I see Dickey’s Barbecue (Schoenersville Rd and Avenue B, north of 22) had a promo in the game. A freebie from them would be nice. Sadly, I don’t think the “ROAST BEEF” chanting will be heard anymore…
CAN SOMEONE WITH A MATH MAJOR HELP ME? STADIUM SEATING 8200, GA 1800———TOTAL PEOPLE IN GRASS 100—-SO IF ALL SEATS WERE SOLD, 8200+ 100= 8300——————AN ANNOUNCED CROWD OF 9225—–COME ON NOW!!! SOMEONE FIND ME THOSE EXTRA GA PEOPLE
Attendance math.
1. Paid attendance – how many tickets they sell.
2. Actual attendance – how many people pass through the gates.
3. Sell out – Every seat is sold, General Admission does not count.
4. Capacity crowd – Usually announced if every ticket is sold, but for me is 10,000 people through the gate.
5. General admission levels vary with the sales of the “luxary” tickets sold. More if the patios, picnic area and dugout suites aren’t full, less if they are.
Still surprised only a paid attendance of 9,225. That means 775 tickets were left. Not all seats were sold (per my anonymous source)
Okay you probably knew I would defend Grilli. 🙂 In his defense he got the first 2 batters easily and then allowed two rather weakly hit singles. He would have escaped the inning unscathed except for a 2 out error which resulted in an unearned run for the Yankees.
Even without the promotion, the cold beer/roast beef chant was still alive and well in my area of the ballpark. Some younger fans even chimed in with a ‘warm beer’ chant of their own.
Right now the Ironpigs are guaranteed to be a .500 or better team for at least 2 days.
Something different about the ballpark pizza this year but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
I think I read somewhere that the ballpark pizza is DiGiorno this year..
Unlike the ad campaign says, DiGiorno is not like delivery pizza. How about getting a local pizza place in to make the pies? Even a franchise pizza stop would be better than frozen.
Joe Savery was 4-4 as the DH for the Clearwater Threshers on Thursday.
Reno Aces (Andy Tracy, Cody Ransom) season opener postponed due to inclement weather.
Here is an article on Milb.com about the IronPigs game last night:
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20110407&content_id=17500552&vkey=news_milb&fext=.jsp
Pat at the front desk told me the earliest fan at the gates was there at 1:15pm. Now that’s dedication!
Great point about playing to win versus player development…
NO HUPPERT=ENERGY. It was a great opening night despite the cooler weather. Hate to harp on a negative, but it is a positive. No Huppert equals more energy. You could just feel the difference during the game. The team hustled, Rhino wavied a runner Huppert would have held, he also pulled a pitcher that Huppert would have kept in. GO PIGS!!!
Matt Provence posted this on his twitter, a Ryno quote:
Love Ryno’s attitude. “Ryne, stinks about rainout killing our momentum.” “Killing momentum? We’ll still have it tomorrow. It didnt go away”