STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — If you regret that you never got a chance to see the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, the losingest team in MLB history, can I interest you in a trip to Staten Island? No wait, come back. Just a few steps away from the ferry terminal, a morbidly curious fan can catch the independent Atlantic League's Staten Island FerryHawks, who have suffered through such a hapless year that they're legitimately challenging the Spiders' historic futility. With just over two months left in the season, the FerryHawks are saddled with an 11-57 record. Their pitchers carry a team ERA of 10.03. Their run differential is -389, which means they're losing their average game by 5.7 runs. Their best hitter, Joshua Palacios, is now on his way to the Pirates' Triple-A franchise. Yes, New York, it gets more miserable than the Mets.
Staten Island's ballpark didn't always host indy ball. Pre-COVID, this was the home of the Single-A Staten Island Yankees, who came to the borough in a deal that also brought a Mets minor-league squad to Brooklyn's Coney Island. The Yankees lasted through the 2019 season, after which they were cut loose as part of MLB's overall downsizing of the minors. (It didn't help that the big-league Yankees were embarrassed by the club's headline-grabbing promotion in which they renamed themselves the Staten Island Pizza Rats.) The FerryHawks played their first Atlantic League campaign in 2022, and even though they've been a sub-.500 team in every season, their current mark is a steep fall from their typical mediocrity.
I got to see the 57th loss live and up close as the FerryHawks fell to the High Point Rockers—as in rocking chairs, since they come from a North Carolina city famous for furniture. It was unlike any game I'd ever been to before, because my $12 ticket was in practice a general admission pass to the entire hollow park. The FerryHawks' home has an advertised capacity of 7,171, but I would be surprised if there were more than 100 people in the seats on Wednesday night (plus one seagull who chose to bring his fish dinner into the outfield). There was only one concession stand open on the concourse, though they did sell surprisingly excellent hot dogs for just $2, owing to the fact that it was Weenie Wednesday. We were able to walk right down into first-row seats directly next to the home dugout, close enough to see the umpires spit and hear snippets of conversations about the players' girlfriends in the foul-territory bullpen. One of the coaches ribbed me about keeping my head up when I was looking at my phone between innings.
It was actually a little unnerving at first. I'm used to athletes ignoring the spectators while they're at work, but in this case, we were impossible not to notice, and occasionally make awkward eye contact with. Plus, it was quiet. There was power pop and party hip-hop in between hitters and innings, but nothing during the at-bats themselves. My partner approvingly called it "Bring Your Sleeping Baby To The Ballpark Night," because when the batter was in the box, it was golf-level silence punctured only by the rare boat horn from the harbor or a guy heckling the umpire from the other side of the diamond. To my eyes, this showed all the signs of a team that's about to fold, but for now, you can find peace and quiet at a baseball game on Staten Island—with an undeniably lovely view of Lower Manhattan.
I'm an optimist at heart, and for that reason I believed we were going to see an improbable win. For one, the FerryHawks are better when they're eating home cooking, even if that's not hard to achieve when you're 1-35 on the road. For two, they picked up a victory against the Rockers on Tuesday to snap a seven-game losing skid. And for three, they jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead when the No. 2 hitter, Matt Hogan, went yard. But after four innings of 2-1 ball, the FerryHawks reverted to form. High Point hit a two-run homer in the fifth and scored with a sac fly in the sixth. In the seventh, reliever Hiro Yamada took the mound as "Holding Out For a Hero" played over the ballpark speakers. He surrendered a dinger to the first batter he saw.
The Rockers piled on in the ninth and ended up taking the game 9-3—just about par for the course when it comes to this FerryHawks season. "And that's the ballgame," the PA announcer said following the final out, in a matter-of-fact voice I imagine she's been able to hone all year. Then, before I could even write the final in my scorecard, a man's voice, possibly pre-recorded, informed us that the ballpark would be closing in just five minutes. A snippet of "Closing Time" played, and then it abruptly cut off. The whole place was absolutely silent.
