He thinks his first time at TD Bank Park, to see a Somerset Patriots game, was when he was about three. So give or take, Jayden Capindica has been around the ballpark in Bridgewater for some 15 years.
He and his family were a constant fixture at games, and I was the on field host for many years, entertaining fans with karaoke contests, musical chairs, dizzy bat races, and whatever else the Patriots’ marketing team could draw up.
Making my way to all corners of the ballpark, you’d get to know the regulars. The Superfans, we’d call them, the ones who were there every night, whether it was 50 degrees and drizzling, or 90 and with high humidity on a blazing summer Sunday in August.
Capindica was one of them. He’d run around the concourse, being chased around by his mom – or sometimes me – eventually paying more attention to the games as he got older. I was there for the opening season in 1999 – well before he was born – then came back in 2007 and continued on for 12 more seasons, getting introduced every night by longtime, now retired, PA man Paul Spychala.
We lost touch when I left, as the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Then, in 2022, our first time covering Somerset County baseball on CJSR (we began with baseball in 2021, but only did the GMC in a short season where there was no SCT) our opening game was out at Diamond Nation in Flemington. It was April 20th, the Spartans taking on Somerville.
On a blustery day – which also destroyed our tent as l was going through starting lineups – I’m looking through the lineups, and a woman popped her head around, and said, “Hey, do you remember me, I’m Jayden’s mom!”
Of course I did. One of the thrills of this job is seeing high school players go on to college, and sometimes they turn pro, and you can say “I covered them at 16!” Anthony Davis, Kyle Wilson, Karl-Anthony Towns, and many more to mention, I covered in high school. But this was different.
The kid with the Million Dollar Smile was now playing high level high school baseball, and he was good, too.
Wednesday night back at TD Bank Ballpark – where he is such a fan of the team that he actually works concessions at the stadium – it all turned surreal. Here was a kid who would scamper around the middle concourse, and run the bases in the postgame run the Patriots would have on Sunday afternoons, dreaming it would be him out there one day.
On Wednesday night, he scored the first run of the game after hitting a one-out double in the fourth, coming to the plate after an error on a ground ball to short.
Wonder if he ever thought that, when he was crossing home plate as a four-year-old, he’d be bringing home what turned out to be the winning run for his high school baseball team on a field that now is full of future Yankees’ stars.
If he didn’t then, he’s thinking about it now. Congrats, Jayden! You earned this one!
“It’s truly a storybook ending,” he told me after the game. And before I let him go, I had to get a picture.
Enjoy!
