After 3 years of trolling the New York Red Bulls and their fans about having the New York name but playing in New Jersey, and calling themselves "the real New York team," fans of New York City Football Club have an entire carton of eggs on their faces.
This Saturday afternoon, at 3:00, NYCFC will play the Houston Dynamo. But because the Yankees needed Yankee Stadium II for a rainout makeup, the field cannot be prepared for soccer in time for the game, so they were forced to move the game -- not elsewhere in The City, or even elsewhere in the New York Metropolitan Area, but to East Hartford, Connecticut.
The Internet blowback has been merciless, and completely deserved.
Before You Go. Hartford is a bit to the north of New York and New Jersey, but the weather won't be appreciably different from home on the same day. This game will be played in late September, so no jacket will be necessary. The Hartford Courant is currently predicting the low 80s for Saturday afternoon, and the low 60s for the evening.
Hartford is in the Eastern Time Zone, so you won't have to adjust your timepieces.
Tickets. NYCFC have been averaging 23,428 at Yankee Stadium, but this game is a one-off, so as for how hard it will be to get tickets, your guess is as good as mine. But the club have said that all fans who had tickets to the match before the move will have those tickets honored.
Midfield tickets are $60, sideline seats are $35, corner seats are $30, and end seats are $25.
Getting There. Hartford is too close to fly, and doesn't have much of an airport, anyway. If you're driving, it's 124 miles from Midtown Manhattan to Pratt & Whitney Stadium. Take Interstate 95 to New Haven. Take Exit 48 to Interstate 91 North, to Exit 29, bypassing downtown Hartford. Take State Route 15 North to State Route 502 East, that's Silver Lane, and the stadium will soon be on your right.
If all goes well, once you get past the City Line into Westchester, you should spend about half an hour in New York, and about an hour and 45 minutes in Connecticut before reaching the arena. Depending on from where you leave, the trip should take between 2 and a half hours to 3 and a half hours.
Union Station, which is served by both Amtrak and Greyhound, is 2 blocks to the west of the Hartford Civic Center, at 1 Union Place between Church & Asylum Streets. But Amtrak is out of the question this time. The 1st train of the day out of Penn Station doesn't get there until 2:19 PM, leaving you with 41 minutes to get to the game. That's cutting it awfully close. Worse: The last train out leaves at 3:26 PM, in the 1st half. All later trains for that day have been canceled, due to track work. Round-trip fare would have been $124.
Greyhound runs 13 buses per day between Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York and Union Station in Hartford. The fare is $64, but can drop to $39 with advanced purchase.
Union Station
Once In the City. Hartford, named for the English country of Hertfordshire, is home to about 125,000 people, making around the same size as New Haven and Bridgeport, each competing to be the largest city in the State of Connecticut. When the Hartford metropolitan area is separated from the Boston metropolitan area, it's got about 1.5 million. Hartford is the State capital.
The State House
Hartford doesn't seem to have a centerpoint, from which street addresses increase. However, the addresses do seem to increase from south to north, and from east to west. This is also true of the City of East Hartford, across the Connecticut River. CT Transit runs the area's buses, and a 1-Day Pass is $3.00.
East Hartford is home to about 51,000 people, and is quite diverse. Pratt & Whitney, maker of aircraft engines, is the city's largest employer.
Main Street, East Hartford
ZIP Codes in Connecticut begin with the digits 06. They're 060 to 062 around Hartford, 063 and 064 in the South, 065 around New Haven, 066 around Bridgeport, 067 around Waterbury, and 068 and 069 around Stamford, in the part closest to New York. Area Code 203 serves the part of the State that tilts toward New York, including New Haven, with 475 overlaid. In 1995, Area Code 860 was split off of 203, to serve the part of the State that tilts toward Boston, including Hartford, with 959 overlaid.
Going In. The official address of Pratt & Whitney Stadium at Rentschler Field is 615 Silver Lane. Parking costs $15. It is about 3 1/2 miles east of Union Station, across the Connecticut River. Bus 83 or 121 from downtown.
Built in 2003, Rentschler Field was meant to be the 60,000-seat new home of the New England Patriots, thus enabling them to keep their regional name. But team owner Robert Kraft merely used the Connecticut capital as a pawn to get a new stadium from Massachusetts next-door to the old one in Foxboro. As a result, the East Hartford stadium was replanned, and seats 40,642. (Foxboro is 99 miles northeast of Hartford.)
The field is natural grass, and runs northwest-to-southeast. It is home to University of Connecticut football and the high school State Championships. The U.S. national soccer team is 4-1-1 while playing there, most recently in a 2-1 win over Ghana in a friendly this past July 1. The women's team is 3-0-2 there.
Food. P&WS@RF is not kidding around: Roma Pizza, Hot Dog Nation at Sections 100 & 129; Fresh Classics (including loaded baked potatoes) at 102, 118 & 130; Tamales (including Mexi Bratwurst and Bacon Jalapeño Mac & Cheese) at 108 & 136; Chicken Fry Fry (including fried pickle chips) at 109 & 139; Grill Masters (including "gourmet burgers") at 110 & 137; Chef Express (including New England-style clam chowder) at 125 & 145; Bears Smokehouse Barbeque at 126.
Team History Displays. None. NYCFC have never played here before, so they wouldn't have anything anyway. UConn football? They've only been Division I-A/Football Bowl Subdivision since 2000, although they did win co-championships in the Big East in 2007 and 2010 and 24 titles in minor conferences before that. They are now in the American Athletic Conference, with schools like Navy, Temple, Central Florida, South Florida. Cincinnati, Memphis, Tulane, SMU and the University of Houston.
Stuff. There is no team store, just souvenir stands. It is not clear how much NYCFC stuff would be sold at them anyway.
During the Game. Hartford does not have a reputation for a crime problem. And since you're probably going to be rooting for NYCFC, the home fans shouldn't bother you, because you are the "home" fans.
Red Bulls fans, upon hearing the news that this game would be played in East Hartford, hired Pucky the Whale, the former Whalers mascot who still does Hartford Wolf Pack games, to come. I don't know if he'll be at this one.
Gotta admit, it was one hell of a pisstake.
Jack Say wrote the Whalers' theme song, "Brass Bonanza." It was introduced in 1975 after the move to Hartford, and became an integral part of the Whalers experience, played after ever home team goal. Red Bulls fans played that at the game in question, too. Will the sound-effects guy at Rentschler play it if and when NYCFC score? Stay tuned.
The song is still played at the XL Center, including at Wolf Park and UConn games, and has even become a fixture at Fenway Park. After all, the Hartford Civic Center is closer to Downtown Crossing, Boston (100 miles) than it is to Midtown Manhattan (119).
After the Game. You should be safe walking back to your car or the bus, but if you're looking for a postgame meal, or just a pint, you'll have to go back to downtown Hartford. There are several places around Union Station and the Civil Center. I don't know of any that are known hangouts for New York or New Jersey teams' fans.
If you get into Hartford early enough to watch your favorite European soccer team, your best bet is the home bar of the local branch of the U.S. national team supporters' group, the American Outlaws: The Tavern Downtown, at 210 Ann Uccello Street, across the street from the west side of the Civic Center. (Uccello was the 1st female Mayor of Hartford, and the street was previously Pleasant Street.)
Sidelights. Hartford's sports history isn't much, and is even since Peter Karmanos took the Whalers away 20 years ago. But there is some.
The official address of the Hartford Civic Center Coliseum is 1 Civic Center Plaza. It's bounded by Church Street (north), Trumbull Street (east), Asylum Street (south) and Pleasant Street (west). The name of the arena was changed to the XL Center in 2007, after XL Group, an insurance company.
The University of Connecticut (UConn) basketball team, based 25 miles to the east in Storrs, also began playing selected home games there. The Boston Celtics played an average of 8 games a year there from 1975 to 1978 and again from 1980 to 1995, until the FleetCenter opened. Elvis Presley sang there on July 28, 1976. (The Beatles never played a concert in Connecticut.)
On January 17, 1978, UConn played the University of Massachusetts in basketball, in a game sparsely attended due to snowfall. It kept on snowing, and, just 6 hours after the final horn -- in the middle of the night, fortunately, when the arena was empty, so no one was hurt -- the roof collapsed. The building was just 3 years old. (In contrast, the Boston Garden stood for 70 years before it was finally demolished, and it never had a structural issue.) It took 2 years for the building to be repaired, while the Whalers played 25 miles to the north in Springfield, Massachusetts, and UConn and the Celtics returned to Storrs and Boston, respectively.
January 18, 1978. It could have been a whole lot worse.
On January 17, 1980, the Civic Center reopened, with a new seating capacity of 14,460. It is now 15,635. The Whalers moved back in, and UConn and the Celtics resumed their partial home schedules there.
The New England Blizzard of the all-women's American Basketball League played 2 seasons there, 1996-98, before the league folded. The now-defunct Connecticut Coyotes of the Arena Football League played there. The Civic Center has also hosted both men's and women's NCAA basketball tournament games.
The Whalers played their 1st 2 seasons in Boston, alternating between the Boston Garden and, when the Bruins (who owned the Garden and now own the new arena) shut them out of available dates, the Boston Arena (Matthews Arena at Northeastern University). Fed up with this, they signed the deal to move to Hartford as soon as the Civic Center opened.
Except it wasn't ready for the start of the 1974-75 season, so the Whalers moved to the Eastern States Coliseum, better known as the Big E, longtime home of the AHL's Springfield Indians. It was old (built in 1926), it was small (just 6,000 seats), it wasn't in Hartford (28 miles to the north), and it wasn't even the best arena in town anymore, but they had something they'd never had before: First choice of scheduling in an arena. 1305 Memorial Avenue, West Springfield, Massachusetts.
The Big E. Already, by this point,
they should've stopped calling themselves the Whalers,
and started calling themselves the New England Wanderers.
When the Civic Center roof collapsed, the Whalers went back north, and played the rest of the 1977-78 season, all of 1978-79, and the first part of 1979-80 at the Springfield Civic Center. Opening in 1972, it hosted the Springfield Indians until 1994, and the Springfield Falcons since then. It seats 6,866. Elvis sang there on July 14 and 15, 1975; and July 29, 1976.
The Springfield Civic Center is now known as the MassMutual Center. It still hosts minor-league hockey. The Big E does not, but it is still open for various events.
The MassMutual Center
Boston Bruins legend Eddie Shore long ran the Springfield Indians, and is buried in Springfield, at Hillcrest Park Cemetery, 895 Parker Street.
It sort of resembles the "Trylon and Perisphere"
centerpiece of the 1939-40 New York World's Fair.
The New Britain Red Sox, a Class AA team in the Eastern League, played at the 4,700-seat Beehive Field from 1983 to 1995.
The "BritSox" won the Pennant in 1983, but the Rock Cats have yet to win a Pennant in their new stadium. The Rock Cats were in the EL Championship Series in 2001 when the 9/11 attacks occurred, with the series being canceled and co-champions being declared.
According to an April 23, 2014 article in The New York Times, the Yankees are actually the most popular MLB team in Hartford proper, with about 49 percent of those polled, to about 35 percent for the Red Sox. However, when you get into Hartford's eastern suburbs, the Sox take over, about 44 to 40 percent.
In spite of the Yankees' strength in the area, the Bruins are easily the most popular NHL team now (probably because of Bobby Orr, who gave them a toehold even before the Whalers came along), the Celtics are far more popular than the Knicks (due to their "home games" at The Mall as much as to their 1980s success), and the Patriots (who do, after all, call themselves "New England") are more popular than the Giants.
Veterans Memorial Stadium is a football field at 635 South Main Street in New Britain. The U.S. soccer team played 4 games there between 1973 and 1996, going 3-1. Dillon Stadium is a football stadium at 250 Huyshope Avenue at Curcombe Street, near Charter Oak Landing, a mile and a half southeast of downtown Hartford. The U.S. soccer team beat Bermuda there on September 9, 1973.
Hartford briefly had a major league team in the early days of baseball. The Hartford Dark Blues played at the Hartford Ball Club Grounds in the seasons of 1874 and 1875 in the National Association, and 1876 in the National League, before finances led them to move to Brooklyn. Good Shepherd Church was built on the site. 155 Wyllys Street at Osten Blvd., about a mile southeast of downtown.
Best picture of it that I could find.
There was also a Hartford Blues playing in the NFL, albeit only in the 1926 season, finishing just 3-7. They had Harry Stuhldreher of Notre Dame's Four Horsemen at quarterback, and future Giants legend Steve Owen as a two-way tackle. They played at the East Hartford Velodrome, at a site bounded by Pitkin Street, Founders Plaza, Hartland Street and East River Drive. Albertus Magnus College and a Hampton Inn were built on the site.
Sorry, but I couldn't find any picture of the Velodrome.
Don't get any ideas about major league teams returning to Hartford, with the possible exception of in the NHL. The area's low population base would rank it 31st and last among MLB markets, 32nd in the NFL (ahead of only New Orleans), 28th in the NBA (ahead of New Orleans, Oklahoma City and Memphis), and 27th in the NHL (ahead of only Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg, and last among U.S. cities). Hartford has no professional soccer team.
Since 2003, the Connecticut Sun of the WNBA have played at the 10,000-seat Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza, in Uncasville, 46 miles southeast of Hartford, 106 miles southwest of Downtown Boston, and 132 miles northeast of Midtown Manhattan. Mohegan Sun advertises itself as "closer to New York than Atlantic City." This is true: Caesar's Atlantic City is 128 miles from Times Square. What Mohegan Sun doesn't tell you is that it's closer to Boston than to New York, and will have as many Chowdaheads as Pinstripers.
The Sun won the WNBA's Eastern Conference in 2004 and 2005, but lost in the Finals both times. Despite being a natural attraction for players from the University of Connecticut -- UConn's Harry A. Gampel Pavilion is just 30 miles northwest of Mohegan Sun -- they've never won a title. They've retired 3 numbers: 12, for Margo Dydek; 23, for Katie Douglas; and 42, for UConn graduate Nykesha Sales.
Gampel Pavilion
The Travelers Tower, headquarters of the insurance company of the same name, opened in 1919, and is Hartford's most familiar landmark besides the State House. It is 527 feet tall. In 1980, it was surpassed as the tallest building in the State of Connecticut by City Place I, at 185 Asylum Street, a short walk from the Civic Center: 534 feet.
Hartford is home to the nation's oldest public art museum, the Wadsworth Atheneum, at 600 Main Street at Gold Street. The Connecticut Science Center is at 250 Columbus Blvd. at Grove Street. The Mark Twain House, the last home of the author born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, is at 351 Farmington Avenue at Forest Street, adjacent to Hartford Public High School, about a mile west of downtown. Bus 60.
No President has ever been born in Connecticut, although George Bush grew up in Greenwich and attended Yale University in New Haven. William Howard Taft also graduated from Yale, and, like Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton, went to Yale Law School. But New Haven is 36 miles from Hartford.
Yale is also the only Connecticut-based school to win hockey's National Championship, in 2013.
His son, George W. Bush, was born at Yale-New Haven Hospital in 1946, and, like his father and grandfather, is a Yale graduate (however the hell that happened). But you'll never be able to convince him that he's anything other than Texas through and through.
The 1st Presidential Debate of 1996, between Clinton and Bob Dole, was held at the Bushnell Performing Arts Center. 166 Capitol Avenue, across Trinity Street from the State House.
In addition to Hartford, Elvis Presley sang at the 11,171-seat New Haven Veterans Memorial Coliseum on July 16 and 17, 1975; and July 30, 1976. State and George Streets. The Coliseum replaced the 4,000-seat New Haven Arena, which stood from 1926 to 1974 at State and Grove Streets, 5 blocks away. Like its successor, it hosted minor-league sports, especially hockey, and concerts, including the one on December 3, 1967 when Jim Morrison of The Doors got arrested onstage. Built in 1972, the New Haven Coliseum was demolished in 2007. It has not been replaced.
Lots of movies have been filmed in Connecticut, but none that I can find were shot in Hartford. Same with TV shows: Bewitched was set in Westport and Who's the Boss? in Fairfield, but neither in Hartford. I guess the capital city simply isn't glamorous enough for Hollywood honchos.
Judging Amy took place in Hartford, running on CBS from 1999 to 2005. Gilmore Girls, which ran on The WB from 2000 to 2007, did some filming in Hartford, but was set in the fictional town of Stars Hollow, said to be half an hour's drive away.
*
So now you have a taste of what it might be like to attend a New York City FC game in East Hartford.
Maybe, someday, you'll know what it's like to attend a game where NYCFC aren't a massive joke.
Maybe, someday, you'll know what it's like to attend a game where NYCFC aren't a massive joke.
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