Dan Carubia would have begun his 13th season as an usher with the Tri-City ValleyCats on Wednesday night. He patrols section 120 and 140 on the first-base side with his yellow Shamwow, cleaning off seats for the fans who come to enjoy baseball at Joseph L. Bruno Stadium.
His favorite cloth is still stored in his garage in Valatie. It won’t be used on Wednesday, what was supposed to be the home opener for Tri-City’s 19th year in Troy against the Williamsport Crosscutters.
The start of the minor-league baseball season has been delayed indefinitely because of the coronavirus pandemic and there’s a strong likelihood the season will be canceled altogether.
Carubia, 73, said he misses his “big ValleyCats family,” which includes his fellow employees and fans in his sections whom he hasn’t seen in months. They would have caught up Wednesday, asked how their winters went as thousands streamed into "the Joe." Many would have remained for postgame fireworks.
“When you do something on a consistent basis for that period of time, I get psyched up,” he said. “I got psyched up to see the game of baseball, really got psyched up to see the fans, the friendships we made, the fans that come back on a yearly basis. The young kids that come in maybe for the first game for the first time.”
The ValleyCats haven’t completely abandoned opening day. They’re doing a virtual version on social media with a series of activities that begin at 10 a.m. and end at 7 p.m. with an audition winner doing a rendition of the national anthem.
It still won’t be the same for Rob Witt, who has attended ValleyCats games since the franchise’s first season in 2002. He’s really a Houston Astros fan who moved from Texas to the Capital Region in the early- to mid-1960s. He was thrilled when the Astros’ affiliate relocated from Pittsfield, Mass. to Troy.
He sits in Section 100 at Bruno Stadium, behind home plate. After major surgery two years ago, he returned against doctor’s orders to watch the ValleyCats win the New York-Penn League title at Hudson Valley.
He’s been to every ballpark except two in the NYPL and planned to visit Tri-City’s first two road series at Vermont and Connecticut last week.
Witt said not making the 45-minute drive from his home in Greenville to Troy leaves a major void in his life. He's worried the ValleyCats have played their final game as an Astros' affiliate with Major League Baseball planning a major revamping and contraction of the minors next year.
“It can’t be put into words,” Witt said. “The ballpark and the woods are my churches. That’s where I go to recharge my soul, to a ballpark or a walk out in my woods. Right now, all I have is the woods, and with the tick infestation, I don’t really have that, either.”
It also means lost income for the roughly 200 employees who work for the ValleyCats each summer, a combination of college and high school students, retirees and other people who have the summer off.
One is Mike Springstead of Latham, also known as Southpaw, the popular mascot. He’s a sixth-grade teacher at Loudonville Elementary who has been wearing the costume since the inaugural season.
“As a teacher, I don’t get paid in the summer, so yeah, I’m not going to lie,” Springstead said. “It’s going to hurt in my pocket. … And I think it’s disappointing for me as an employee, but we were talking to some of my friends, and for a lot of people, the ValleyCats is no different from the racetrack. It’s a summer thing to do.”
Carubia sat in the team store at Bruno Stadium on Monday afternoon. He stopped by to say hello, but most of the full-time employees are working remotely during the pandemic. Normally the shelves would be full of merchandise, but now they’re mostly in boxes. The team is still selling gear online.
While Carubia said the field still looks immaculate – the ValleyCats are renting it out to make up for lost income - the sponsor signs were missing from the outfield fences.
“It’s the weirdest feeling I’ve ever felt in my life,” said Carubia, a Queens native who’s retired from a textile company. “There’s no noise. There’s no inventory. … You don’t take any of that into consideration until it’s missing. And now it’s missing.”
msingelais@timesunion.com • @MarkSingelais
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