The Ridgefield Raptors’ Colby Wallace may have cracked the game open with a home run on first responder night, but the star of the night was connecting the community and emergency personnel with the shared love of summertime baseball.
The Raptors, a team in the West Coast League — a summer collegiate wood bat league — hosted their annual first responder night highlighted with a jersey auction benefiting Kindness 911, a nonprofit organization connecting first responders with the community, on Wednesday, July 10.
“It’s a pretty amazing experience,” Ridgefield Police Chief Cathy Doriot said of first responder night at the Ridgefield Outdoor Recreation Complex. “We have a really good relationship with the Raptor organization anyway, but Gus Farah does an amazing job with that team, and Jason Hattrick works really hard at promoting Kindness 911 and the positive acts of being kind to others. We’ve supported him for a long time, and he’s such a good human, and he really wants to recognize people and promote kind acts, even small kind acts.”
First responders were provided tickets courtesy of Riverview Bank, the key sponsor of the night, Doriot said.
“So for us to have an opportunity to not only come together to recognize law enforcement, but then to do it in a way that also supports [Hattrick], a person who goes out of his way to make sure law enforcement has opportunities to be recognized for the things they do day-in and day-out to help the community, I think is fantastic, and it’s just a way for us to pay him back a little bit,” Doriot said. “I know our officers had a really good time. We had several of them up there throughout the course of the night. We had people that were on duty and off duty.”
Ridgefield police officer Rob Cuneta threw out the first pitch in full uniform. A highlight for numerous officers was being able to bring their family to an event while they were on shift. Doriot said the opportunity for officers’ families to see positive community support for their loved ones in uniform was extremely uplifting.
“One of the things that makes Ridgefield special is we do have a family environment. We have a meeting a couple of times a year that we call our family dinner,” Doriot said. “So this is just another opportunity for us to kind of have some time where we’re not doing the work, but we’re coming together, we’re bringing our family there so that we get to meet each other.”
Ridgefield Mayor Ron Onslow, a frequent flier to Raptors baseball games, recognized the importance of the first responder night.
“There’s a lot of people that don’t know how much these first responders provide them,” Onslow said. “We’re growing so fast. We need them. We got them. When I got on the council there were two officers. Right now they have 17, and we just hired four. We’re still short one or two, but we’re working at getting some good people.”
The Raptors brought home the win 7-1 over the Walla Walla Sweets on first responder night and concluded the series sweep on Thursday, July 11, with a 4-3 victory. The Raptors’ next promo game will be Friday, July 19, with a Rally the Raptor Bobblehead giveaway for the first 500 fans into the RORC. First pitch against the Victoria Harbourcats featuring MLB great Manny Ramirez’s two sons, Manny Ramirez Jr. and Lucas Ramirez, takes place at 6:35 p.m. on July 19, with the series going through the weekend.
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