Yesterday was a day of firsts for my 2025 baseball experience season. Yesterday morning, I woke up (normal time, no alarm) to watch the 8th and 9th inning of the MLB Tokyo Series on Fox Sports, featuring the LA Dodgers vs. the Chicago Cubs. My first MLB game of the season, on TV or live in person. From the many camera shots into the crowd, the Tokyo Dome looked absolutely jammed packed with fans. Fox Sports had some fancy graphics and camera angles and slow motion replays from 360° and 2 relatively interesting announcers. I watched until the final out, with the LAD besting the Cubs by a score of 6-3. Now that my TV first is over and watched, I will be enthusiastically scanning the MLB app later today for my first live MLB or MILB game, probably an MILB game here in Norfolk.

Now for the more exciting first of my 2025 baseball experience season – my first night game. William and Mary University’s Plumeri Park is quickly becoming one of my favorite spots to watch a game. It is easy to get to, easy to park at, it has plenty of character, and has great seating throughout the entire park. Yesterday’s matchup featured the W & M Tribe vs their cross HRBT rivals the Old Dominion University (based in Norfolk, VA) Monarchs. The Monarchs are on a very interesting baseball journey themselves in 2025 – they officially have no home field. Bud Metheny Stadium, their baseball park on campus, is being reconstructed and is no where near baseball ready. So, the Monarchs have been road warriors for 2025, traveling from Atlanta to Charlotte to Alabama and Mississippi just to name a few spots. With Plumeri Park being just about an hour ride from Norfolk, at least ODU family, friends, students, and fans didn’t have far to travel for last night’s contest.

So, after a leisurely walk around Colonial Williamsburg yesterday (pre-game), Rachel and I made it over to Plumeri Park about 25 minutes before game time, 6pm. After getting our GA (General Admission) tickets, I popped over to the concession stand for a hot dog special, then back to the program distribution center, aka a mailbox built into a brick rectangle. Don’t you just love the simple things in life, like opening up a mailbox and grabbing a program for a baseball game???

Rachel and I found a bullpen style bench just outside the bleacher stands, ground level, and sat down to have our hot dog special – which consisted of a hot dog, chips, and a commemorative William and Mary cup of soda. About halfway through our dinner, we were greeted by a wonderful gentleman who joined us for a spirited conversation about sports, William and Mary athletics, and his cousin, Dick Vitale. I kid you not, this guy’s cousin is Dick Vitale, the famous basketball personality. Shame on me for not writing his name down, but from what I can gather – he said his first name once but he was soft spoken, he was the captain of the William & Mary Baseball Team in 1961, he played against Vitale as cross town rivals in basketball in high school in New Jersey, he coached basketball at Wayne State University, and he was about a genuine a person as you can find anywhere. And he was Italian, so Rachel loved all of his Italian sayings and mannerisms. We sat and chatted baseball and I threw out a few names from the 1960s he might know, pausing briefly to honor America with the playing of the National Anthem, then escorted him up to his seats behind the bleachers high atop the fan section of William and Mary. What an awesome way to experience a game – with a baseball alumni who was once the Captain of the team. And to create a special connection with that man, who was such a nice guy, heck I could have gone home satisfied at that point.

By the time Rachel and I sat down in our seats behind home plate, the William & Mary players had already started to heat up at the plate. Tough luck ODU starter Nick Sulpizio was not fooling any W&M batters, who got hit after hit in the first inning, knocking the ODU starter out after just 1/3 of an inning (translation, he only recorded one out). Double, Double, Single, Single and before you knew it, it was 5-0 heading into the rest of the game. They don’t call the game after the first, so ODU had 8 at bats to make up the difference. More on that later…

The view from behind home plate is so awesome. If your view is unobstructed, you can really capture every essence of the game as it unfolds. You can see where pitches hit their mark and where they miss. You can see a hitter fouling a ball off with purpose, meaning they just missed. You can see the infielders jumping into ready positions. You can watch bunted baseballs turn into horror shows for the fielders not communicating. You can see area scouts in the stands, with the pocket radar guns and computer screens processing data for future emails to be sent. You can hear the call of the local play by play guy/gal and listen to how they tell the tale of each at bat, each RBI, each strikeout to end a rally. It is probably the purest location to sit at a baseball game and I love it when the opportunity presents itself because I sat right there behind home plate and take it all in.

I mentioned that this was my first night game of 2025. I actually prefer night games to day games. The lighting is better, once the sun goes down of course. The field lights don’t actually make a ton of difference at 6pm when the sun is setting at 7pm. The time between the sun actually setting, the period of time called last light, and when the park’s lights take effect is a tough time to play defense. The ball gets caught up in this semi-darkness zone and fly balls can be tough to catch. There were a few examples of this last night, although no errors were made. Some typically routine plays were made a bit more difficult by the ODU and W&M Outfielders because of the dimness at Plumeri. One ball I was sure was misplayed and would end up a double or worse, the LF made an awesome catch on, almost crashing into the wall. Here are some examples of the light situation as the game progressed – no filter, no flash.

Once it gets dark out, the lights function like a spotlight helping the outfielders find that baseball in the Williamsburg sky. It is this time of the game, as a fan, that I absolutely love. For me, the ultimate baseball fan, every player on that field is a celebrity, a star, under the lights. The field is lit up and bright and it just feels different than a day game. You see the ball better at night, how’s that for a baseball oxymoron.

As the game approached the bottom of the 5th inning, ODU had made the game a lot more interesting. W&M Starter Chad Yates was one out away from getting through 5 innings, qualifying himself up for a W on Wednesday night. With 2 outs in the top of the 5th, Yates just didn’t have enough in the tank to put away the ODU hitters and was relieved by 2 other W&M Pitchers to finish the inning. When the top of the 5th was completed, William and Mary held a slim lead over ODU by a score of 7-3. As the game was nearly 2 hours in, Rachel and I decided to pack up and head back to VA Beach. Plus, with the temperatures dropping from near 70° earlier to the present 50 somethings, we were eager to warm up in the car for the hour or so ride back home.

As it typically does, the action on the field does not stop after I/we depart a game. In the bottom of the 5th inning, William and Mary erupted for a matching 3 runs to bring the score up to 10-4. Then, ODU countered in the 6th, 7th with 4 more runs to narrow W&M’s lead to just 10-8. But, remained relatively quiet in the all important 8th and 9th innings vs. William and Mary closer Zach Boyd and that’s how the game ended – William and Mary on top of ODU 10-8. Great crowd at the game, saw a lot of green for the William and Mary crew and a ton of blue for the ODU fans gathered. Amazing, T-shirt weather to start the game, fleece/sweatshirt/possible winter hat weather to finish the game. Hey, it was still Winter yesterday. Spring didn’t official start until this morning.

It was another fantastic afternoon in Williamsburg. I love that this historic town with so much to offer is so close to Virginia Beach. And with the wooden backdrop and historic sites and Wickford, RI-like feeling, it is such a different kind of day in Williamsburg then the typical beach, beachfront, resort life of VA Beach. William and Mary’s Plumeri Park is really growing on me, I love going there to see live baseball. This particular game was cool because of the closeness of the two D1 baseball schools – Norfolk (ODU) is about 30 to 40 minutes to Williamsburg (W&M). Night games are my favorite and preferred time to watch a game, so that made the game even more special. It was so awesome chatting with the William & Mary Baseball Captain, 1961, with the famous cousin (Dick Vitale). If I figure out his name, I’ll let you know asap. Overall, it was another spectacular Williamsburg baseball experience watching my first night game of 2025, featuring William & Mary vs. Old Dominion University.