“There’s nothing like Opening Day. It’s a new beginning, regardless of what happened last year.” – Joe Torre
Back to Dunkin’ Park with the family for Opening Day (night) of the 2025 season. While there is some player carryover from last season, a lot of the team was called up to Triple-A Albuquerque so we saw a lot of new faces. I was looking forward to seeing Cole Carrigg and Kyle Karros, as well as Benny Montgomery’s return after last season’s injury early in the year.
I didn’t notice many changes to the ballpark, other than the large Liberty Bank sign in centerfield. We kept our same seats as last season in the Stadium Club section. There’s nothing quite like Opening Day, at any level, and we were all glad to be back. We probably won’t get to as many games here as we did last year, as it was a lot, but we’ll see how it goes. Pre-game there was a cool C-130 flyover by the 103rd Airlift Wing, a unit of the Connecticut Air National Guard.
The game opened with Kyle Karros (son of 1992 NL Rookie of the Year Eric Karros) blasting his first Double-A HR for an early 1-0 lead, which got the crowd pumped up. Gabriel Hughes pitched four great innings, retiring 12 consecutive batters with 3 strike outs. It was nice to see him back for his first start since July 9, 2023 after an injury sidelined him.
Emmy was determined to find Chew Chew for a picture, and even brought her baby stuffed animal replica to show her. She was successful, and Eli joined in for the photo op. The excitement came again in the bottom of the 9th, tied 4-4 when Kyle Karros hit his second home run of the night – a walk off – to give the Yard Goats their first victory of the year.
We stayed for the fireworks after the game and headed home. Emmy was tired but was a trooper.
