THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 5, 1996 TAG: 9604050609
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: TOM ROBINSON
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
Harbor Park dolled up in bunting Thursday night and threw the season's first party for 9,603 people - and one robot.
Hard as it is to believe, Norfolk Tides president Ken Young has given patrons yet another reason not to watch the game; a four-foot R2D2 deal that scuttles around the concourse via remote control.
It walks. It talks. It blinks. (It'll scare little kids, if it's not careful.) Mostly, it contributes even more to the face-painting, cappucino-sipping, mascots-on-scooters circus atmosphere that pro sports events almost have to adopt these days.
The game stopped being the thing long ago. Especially in the minors, the game's name is mass appeal. And nobody I know can slake the public's appetite for diversion like Young.
Somewhere during his rise from sports purist to sports promoter who'll try just about anything once, Young recognized the necessity of offering almost everything to nearly everybody.
``Many fans tell me they don't like this part of it or that part, but they like the whole thing,'' Young said before the Tides opened against the Toledo Mud Hens. ``For the pure sports fan, the game is still all he needs. But now there's so many other things going on, it's a total entertainment package. Baseball's been slow to come to that.''
With some normal old balls and strikes and 18 new faces in the home uniforms mixed in, then, Harbor Park's fourth season stepped out into a warm, delightful evening, the envy of opening nights everywhere.
Four sky-divers sort of rushed the thing a little bit, but that's OK, considering the degree of difficulty inherent in leaping out of a plane. They dropped to the field unannounced as Mets minor league director Jack Zduriencik began his pregame comments to the crowd behind home plate.
Swooping wildly, one jumper nearly took out a gaggle of Mud Hens perched along the third-base line for player introductions. Introductions that were much-needed on the Tides' side of the field, where only six have been before.
Last year's parade of great prospects that streamed swiftly through Norfolk en route to New York was a hiccup. It hardly ever happens that way. These Tides are the usual Triple-A cast, a couple good-looking kids like Jay Payton and Alex Ochoa surrounded by a bunch of Triple-A free agents and fringe major leaguers.
Of the 23 players, 12 spent time in the big leagues last year. Seven of them are pitchers, including Rick Reed, Brian Bark, Joe Ausanio and Mark Lee. Thursday, those four and two others extended Harbor Park's remarkable opening night shutout innings streak to 41.
That ended when Toledo pushed across an unearned run in the 15th to win a 1-0, four-hour, 11-minute brain drainer.
``The team on the field is not a bad team,'' general manager Dave Rosenfield said.
Not that you could tell by Thursday, but ``the pitching's where there aren't a lot of prospects,'' Rosenfield added. ``But somebody is gonna have to convince me this isn't the best outfield we've had since 1970.''
Historians will note there the comparison of the '70 outfield of Ken Singleton, Rod Gaspar and LeRoy Stanton to Gary Thurman, Payton and Ochoa, the rocket-armed rightfielder who, incidentally, nearly drilled TV sports guy Bruce Rader between the eyes with an errant tracer during pregame practice.
That's straight baseball talk, though - a risk, I know. Rest assured you won't get much of that at a Harbor Park party. Which, as even a robot could tell you, only means another season of good times and filled seats ahead. by CNB