It had been 20 years since Chris Berman and Stuart Scott made the massive announcement throughout the 11 p.m. Sunday evening version of SportsCenter. Broadcasting from Fenway Park following a 5-3 Yankees win over the Pink Sox on July 17, 2005, the anchors revealed plans for SportsCenter Throughout America, an “unprecedented enterprise” during which ESPN would go to a special state every day to focus on a sporting occasion.
The logistics of transmitting from 50 states in 50 days would make any tv govt’s head spin, however the community pulled it off. Its high anchors, from Linda Cohn and Steve Levy to Kenny Mayne and Scott Van Pelt, fanned out throughout the nation to convey distinctive and enjoyable sports activities tales into viewers’ properties day by day for greater than seven weeks.
It took a full 20 years earlier than ESPN was prepared to strive one thing so bold once more.
A lot modified throughout that point, not simply in sports activities media, however in the USA. The nation appears and feels totally different than it did in 2005, when a 20-year-old LeBron James averaged 27 factors per sport and Lance Armstrong was lionized for profitable his seventh straight Tour de France. People have weathered scandals and superstorms, protests and pandemics. And whereas there have been — and proceed to be — challenges, some issues haven’t modified all that a lot. At 40, James poured in 24 factors per sport final season.
On June 27, Van Pelt took to the airwaves (or streaming indicators, because the case could also be now), to announce SportsCenter’s 2025 cross-country journey: 50 States in 50 Days. The nationwide tour is introduced the present and its on-air expertise to each state within the union this summer season as a means of connecting with the thousands and thousands of followers who make sports activities what they’re — and reminding viewers of what actually issues.
“The explanation I’m nonetheless right here and luxuriate in it as a lot as I ever have is that sports activities stay the best factor we’ve bought,” Van Pelt stated. “For as fractured as issues often really feel alongside the traces of crimson and blue, as in these supposed ‘colours’ of states, we’re nonetheless crimson, white and blue, and our best connector in divided instances has all the time been sports activities. … The true folks, the locations, the video games we get to take pleasure in collectively — issues that we worth as a result of they matter a lot to us all — that’s the reason we’re coming to each one of many nice states in our nation.”
The community unveiled its 50 States in 50 Days schedule, and it was clear that among the decisions took some creativity. How do you highlight a state recognized for its world-class snowboarding in the course of August? Meet the College of Vermont soccer staff! Others — reminiscent of spending July Fourth in New York for the Subway Collection and scorching dog-eating contest — had been no-brainers.
When it got here to New Jersey, the behind-the-scenes staff at ESPN approached Ryan Smith with an concept that the SportsCenter host liked instantly. A Philadelphia native who resided for 10 years in Montclair, N.J., Smith knew all concerning the state’s baseball historical past, how the primary formally recorded, organized sport happened in 1846 at Hoboken’s Elysian Fields. Having lived in a city the place spots such because the Bluestone Espresso Co. are recurrently packed, Smith additionally was properly conscious of New Jersey denizens’ obsession with diners. So, when his colleagues instructed him that the Yankees’ Double-A affiliate, the Somerset Patriots, could be internet hosting a sport at TD Financial institution Ballpark in Bridgewater on July 12 within the guise of their alternate identification, the Jersey Diners, he was all in.
“You consider Jersey and also you assume, OK, it’s bought loads of issues happening,” Smith stated. “It’s bought meals, it’s bought sports activities. However what defines it? The most effective diners I’ve ever been to have been in Jersey. They’ve like 500 diners or so; it’s the diner capital of the world. The truth that they’re doing this promotion the place [the Patriots] principally rip off their previous identify — new jerseys, new branding, diner meals, fireworks within the background tonight — it’s magical, man. So, for us, we get to inform the story of Jersey by means of one baseball sport. In TV land, it simply doesn’t get any higher than that.”
From co-chairmen Jonathan Kalafer and Josh Kalafer on down, each member of the Somerset entrance workplace was past thrilled to be chosen. However the expectation was not that the elevated publicity from being featured on ESPN would remodel the Jersey Diners right into a nationwide phenomenon.
That a lot had already been performed.
Patrick McVerry’s coronary heart sank. The longtime govt had spent greater than 20 years rising the enterprise and model of the Somerset Patriots, serving to steer a six-time Atlantic League champion ballclub towards success on the gate and in the neighborhood — the envy of almost any impartial baseball staff within the nation. A restructuring of organized baseball following the COVID-19 pandemic had led to the exhilarating information that, starting in 2021, the Patriots had been shifting to affiliated ball below the umbrella of the 27-time world champion New York Yankees. As an alternative of fringe gamers competing for love of the sport (and certain, hoping to money a one-in-a-million lottery ticket of constructing the Majors), the staff’s roster would now be stocked with among the high younger prospects enjoying for essentially the most well-known group in sports activities.
However in one of many first conferences with Patriots brass, Yankees normal supervisor Brian Cashman checked out McVerry together with his metal blue eyes and instructed him, “We’re altering the identify to Somerset Yankees.”
McVerry was speechless. The Patriots’ Continental soldier emblem was ubiquitous in Central Jersey, adorning bumper stickers, storefront home windows and attire all through Somerset and its neighboring counties. It was an emblem of Bridgewater’s proud place within the American revolution: Gen. George Washington and his males established a key stronghold there referred to as the Middlebrook encampment, which is the place the primary official 13-star flag of the USA was raised in 1777 and the place it nonetheless waves 24 hours a day by order of Congress. How was the Patriots’ president and normal supervisor supposed to inform his colleagues that their excellent moniker was getting shelved?
“Ah, I’m simply [messing] with you,” Cashman stated with a smile.
The enjoyable was simply starting. Whereas the Yankees poured hefty sources into TD Financial institution Ballpark to improve the ability, the Patriots’ workers set to work, as properly, on the lookout for methods to take their operation to the subsequent degree. Whereas their everlasting identify wasn’t going away, the Patriots had been at liberty to give you an alternate identification to shake issues up now and again.
Alternate identities have been in vogue for a while in Minor League Baseball, with groups switching up their identify and uniform for an evening in favor of one thing totally different, one thing artistic. It’s typically tied to native delicacies or tradition, one thing that, groups hope, will create a buzz and get followers excited.
With that in thoughts, the Patriots’ advertising staff put their heads collectively to try to give you one thing New Jerseyans would fall in love with. Meals is all the time a very good place to begin, however Backyard State staples reminiscent of tomatoes or corn simply didn’t scream pleasure on the ballpark. The pork roll vs. Taylor ham debate is all the time a energetic one, however the Yankees’ earlier Double-A affiliate, the Trenton Thunder, had already gone there. The workers members went residence for the evening understanding they hadn’t but hit on a house run concept.
Then Hal Hansen had an epiphany. The Patriots’ senior director of gross sales and advertising had grown up in close by Cranford, the place The Rustic Mill was the go-to hangout spot after all types of occasions. Whether or not it was coming down from the euphoria of a highschool musical efficiency or recalibrating after a funeral, the native diner was the place to do it over a plate of french fries and a milkshake.
“Diners imply loads to folks,” Hansen stated. “It’s a spot to collect with family and friends in good instances and unhappy instances, and it’s simply such part of the native basis. And I’m grateful that I had that within the city I grew up in.”
The following day, he primarily bumped into the workplace of senior vice chairman of promoting Dave Marek. “I’ve bought it! It’s diners,” Hansen stated. “We have a good time diners. That’s what we do.” They known as in McVerry, and the concepts began flowing like water from a fireplace hose. Diner cubicles on the concourse! Traditional jukebox tunes! A lineup card on the scoreboard that appears like a waitress’ order pad! They bought on the telephone with graphic designer Ryan Foose of Fooser Sports activities Designs, and on June 8, 2024, sporting vibrant blue jerseys with neon pink lettering and pink-and-white checkered bands across the sleeves meant to invoke the imagery of their namesake, the Jersey Diners had been born.
Sparky Lyle thought they had been joking with him. The esteemed supervisor emeritus of the Patriots, who led the staff to greater than 1,000 Atlantic League victories — together with 5 league titles — and whose likeness, together with that of staff founder Steve Kalafer, is solid in a bronze statue exterior the stadium, nonetheless comes round regularly, touring from his residence close to Pottstown, Pa., to slide into uniform and greet followers or enterprise out into the neighborhood. Now in his 80s, Lyle is ceaselessly remembered by Yankees followers because the lights-out reliever who gained the 1977 American League Cy Younger Award and helped convey back-to-back World Collection championships to the Bronx.
“You realize I’m an expert baseball participant, proper? I’m sporting a cup of espresso hat?” he remarked incredulously upon studying he’d be swapping out his Patriots duds for Jersey Diners gear that first evening.
“Oh, wait until you see this,” stated Somerset’s vice chairman of communications and media relations, Marc Russinoff, as he handed Lyle a Diners jersey together with his retired No. 28 on the again.
“I put it on,” Lyle recalled not too long ago, “and I stated, ‘Oh boy, that is going to be enjoyable.’”
He wasn’t the one one excited concerning the new threads. As quickly because the gates opened, followers eagerly filed into the staff retailer, snapping up Diners T-shirts, hats and, after all, these glowing vibrant blue jerseys. The money registers might barely sustain.
Rob Crossman grew up in Bloomfield a brief stroll from Holsten’s, the place Tony Soprano and his household sat in a sales space, tucking into an order of onion rings simply as The Sopranos collection reduce to black ceaselessly. However farther down Broad Avenue, the Nevada Diner was the senior director of merchandise’s go-to spot. “The Nevada Salad — I simply do not forget that mozzarella cheese on there was implausible!” Crossman stated. Like Hansen, he understood how embedded diners are within the native tradition, and he hoped that the alternate identification would enchantment to a large swath of followers. He was floored by what he noticed unfurl in entrance of him and shortly got here to a realization:
“We’re going to wish extra merch.”
The staff set a single-game gross sales document that first evening, and by season’s finish, Jersey Diners gear constituted almost 40% of all merchandise bought and contributed to a 51% enhance in gross sales over 2023, in addition to a mean attendance enhance of 42% in comparison with non-Diners video games.
“It actually took off as a result of it simply resonates with everybody, I feel,” Crossman stated as he identified among the new objects out there in 2025, reminiscent of a Jersey Diners natural mix from Somerville-based Ambee Espresso Co. “We open up the gates, and this place simply will get flooded. It’s really form of overwhelming.”
It’s not simply the interesting gear that has made the Jersey Diners such a success. The Patriots tapped a cultural vein that runs straight to the center of almost each New Jerseyan. The Backyard State loves its sports activities groups, however exterior of the New Jersey Devils, locals largely root for groups with both New York or Philadelphia of their identify. And New Jerseyans are typically high-quality with that. They love their state for what it’s: a various microcosm of America, a melting pot of excellent individuals who work laborious and play laborious, the place virtually something you would need is inside arm’s attain. The state may not boast majestic mountains or infinite fruited plains, nevertheless it has character — and characters. (Sopranos Night time in Somerset can also be fairly fashionable.)
That’s why the diner works so properly in New Jersey. New York Metropolis’s Michelin-starred eating places are nice for particular events, however extra typically, locals would somewhat take pleasure in a very good meal made out of scratch in a spot that’s a bit of extra all the way down to earth, the place you don’t have to consider which fork goes with which course, the place the servers appear to be neighbors and there aren’t any bridges and tunnels with $18 tolls to cross.
“The persons are the most effective half,” stated 56-year-old Dino Bonis, whose household has owned and operated the Golden Nook in Certain Brook, only a mile away from TD Financial institution Ballpark, since 1989. “We meet so many individuals which have are available for years. The grandparents used to come back in when the children had been little, and people youngsters grew up, had youngsters of their very own. Now, they’re coming in with their youngsters — it’s like three generations that we’ve seen, and it’s simply wonderful.”
Lyle was a daily on the Golden Nook throughout his New Jersey days, ordering up three eggs basted in butter with ham and residential fries. “That’s the best way my mom used to make breakfast,” he stated. “My grandkids name them ‘Dippy eggs.’” And he was very happy to placed on his neon blue-and-pink jersey on July 12 for the fourth of six Diners video games this season. (Aug. 7 and Sept. 5 had been the remaining two.)
By the point ESPN arrived for the sixteenth cease on its summer season tour, the Jersey Diners had been already a full-blown sensation. What was as soon as only a nook part of Diners gear now takes up almost half the staff retailer, and on-line orders for Diners merch have shipped to all 50 states. After an offseason during which the group (and, specifically, the Diners identification) was acknowledged by everybody from Baseball America to MLB Community to Minor League Baseball and the Yankees themselves, Patriots staffers have made a behavior of recognizing Diners gear out within the wild, whether or not within the crowd at Yankee Stadium — neon pink stands out somewhat simply amid an ocean of navy blue and white — down the Shore, at concert events … wherever and all over the place.
“It simply exhibits you the way a lot all of the Jerseyans love their diners,” Lyle stated.
MiLB’s 2024 “Golden Bobblehead” winner launched a brand new mascot this yr only for Diners video games, a large espresso mug named Joe, naturally. And whereas the road of merchandise continues to broaden with a purpose to meet followers’ calls for, the unique hats and jersey stay scorching commodities. Catcher Rafael Flores (now within the Pirates’ farm system after he was dealt on the Commerce Deadline for David Bednar) secured a number of Diners caps for his buddies again residence earlier than he was promoted to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre on July 19, as did fellow Californian Cole Gabrielson. The outfielder remembers only one diner, the Peninsula Creamery, the place he grew up in Palo Alto — an omelet and a waffle had been his go-to order — however the 25-year-old USC product has come to grasp and admire the importance of New Jersey’s diners, and its Diners.
“It’s a enjoyable option to get the gang concerned,” he stated. “We’re clearly rooted within the Somerset Patriots, however each few weeks, we roll out these jerseys, and it’s enjoyable to get a brand new type, new colours on the sector and a brand new identification to simply roll on the market and have some enjoyable with. It’s a enjoyable evening on the yard, for certain.”
Everybody will get into the spirit throughout Diners video games. Patriots account govt and operations assistant James Killeen made his rounds whereas sporting neon pink knee-high socks, as did middle fielder Brendan Jones. “Turquoise and pink will not be a quite common shade combo, and particularly on a scorching, sunny day, the place it makes the colours pop much more, I feel it appears nice,” Flores stated. “It’s all the time enjoyable to throw on that jersey.”
Sporting a vibrant pink sleeve on his left arm, shortstop Max Burt put the Diners on the board with a two-run double within the second inning, which was greeted by Dion’s 1961 hit, “Runaround Sue,” blaring from the ballpark’s sound system. The sellout crowd of seven,229 was inspired to do “The Twist” between frames, and specials on the concessions stand on July 12 included apple pie ($3.75), a Completely happy Waitress sandwich ($11.25) and disco fries in a helmet ($12.25).
Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz, making his first begin at Double-A, was harm by 4 errors, and though Trystan Vrieling (who was traded to the Giants within the Camilo Doval deal) tossed three scoreless frames in aid, the Diners trailed the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, 6-3, getting into the underside of the ninth. A clip of Michael J. Fox enjoying “Johnny B. Goode” in Again to the Future hoped to encourage a rally, nevertheless it wasn’t to be. Somerset’s seven-game profitable streak got here to an finish. It was almost 9:30 p.m., however as the primary notes of “Rock Across the Clock” by Invoice Haley & His Comets emanated from the audio system and the fireworks started to blow up past the right-field wall, nobody in attendance appeared too damaged up over the Diners’ loss. It was a stupendous summer season night in Jersey, and wherever or at any time when their evening got here to a detailed, there was a very good meal ready for them on the diner, simply across the nook.
“I feel the one factor folks actually don’t perceive about Jersey is there are such a lot of totally different pockets of it that nearly in themselves appear to be totally different states,” stated Smith, who taped his remaining phase for the midnight version of SportsCenter from the concourse at TD Financial institution Ballpark surrounded by Diners followers. “I feel in that means, it’s essentially the most numerous state in America. The diner expertise encapsulates all the things that New Jersey is about. After which to place that in Minor League Baseball, man, you don’t get any higher than that.”
Nathan Maciborski is the chief editor of Yankees Journal. This story seems within the August 2025 version. Get extra articles like this delivered to the doorstep by buying a subscription to Yankees Journal at www.yankees.com/publications.
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