Brooklyn Cyclones 2: Return to Coney Island

The first (and only) repeat trip of the 2025 baseball season is also its final trip

*This trip occurred on August 31, 2025.

In prior years of my sports adventures (i.e. when I was living in Massachusetts), there were often several teams that I’d go and see multiple times a year (y'know, like Cape League teams since they're pretty close to each other). However, since I came back to Jersey, I haven’t been able to do that as much. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure if this year wasn’t going to feature any repeat visits to see certain teams again (outside of my two visits to Staten Island for two different events); I thought about several teams I wanted to return to, but never made any of those trips. Part of it is that the (increased) distance from where I live to a lot of these stadiums makes these trips difficult, but another part of that is due to the costs of tickets being more expensive than they used to be. Case in point: there's a recent article about how MiLB is expected to draw its lowest attendance in decades, and a lot of fans are blaming rising costs for that. However, I was finally able to “follow through” with one of these "repeat visit plans" right at the end of the Minor League Baseball season.

I’ve already talked about the Brooklyn Cyclones and Maimonides Park, as I went to a game back at the end of April. The story of THIS game starts that day at the team store: back then, I was only interested in one particular hat (the one with a white and red “Bc” logo that, for most of the Cyclones' history, was their “main” hat¹). I did see some other hats that I was mildly interested in, but wasn’t really sure if I wanted (they were variations of the “Bc” logo); over time, however, I realized that I wanted to take another look at said hats, so I began to think about making a New York City trip to visit the Maimonides Park team store again. Unfortunately, there were two major issues complicating things:

1. Coney Island is FAR from a lot of the rest of New York City. There is subway access, but it’s a LONG trip from Midtown Manhattan (which is where I’d likely be coming from).
2. As part of my “preparations” to see the Cyclones, I actually called the Cyclones team store because I thought about going to the store BEFORE the game². Said call left me under the impression that the team store was not intended to be open outside of events, and between me finding the BlueClaws team store closed on a random visit PLUS a banner on the Cyclones’ online store basically saying “if you want to do in-store pickup, you need to call us”, I wasn’t hopeful...

With those factors in mind, it became clear to me that the only way I’d be able to do this was to go to another game. There were two games I was interested in for their giveaways: A Brandon Nimmo “jersey hoodie” and a David Wright number retirement jersey; however, various circumstances prevented me from going to either game (one of them being the fact that one of the games was a “premium” game where tickets were substantially more expensive).

Throughout the season, I kept getting emails from the Cyclones, as I had somehow ended up on their promotional email list (something that I’m sure has happened to many of you). One of those emails mentioned a discount for tickets to Brooklyn FC’s 2025-26 home opener in August (Brooklyn FC being a soccer team that plays at Maimonides park). When I decided to look up the team, I found something even wilder: a ticket package for the game that included a jersey...and not just some cheap giveaway: the actual, authentic, jersey the players on the pitch wear. This is a CRAZY marketing tactic to try to bring fans in, and being a jersey collector, it sure as hell worked on me!

...but then something came up and I couldn’t make the trip.

Part of that is related to travel (in case you forgot: getting to Coney Island from New Jersey ain’t easy/cheap, and I couldn’t tell if the parking deal the Cyclones had was available), but the bigger factor was the game being at 7 PM - a bit late to be traveling to/from Coney Island from New Jersey (not to mention traffic).

Still determined to make it back to the stadium, I selected a new date to see Brooklyn FC at the end of September (i.e. about four weeks from this being published) - but then I realized that I had something (or "have", since it hasn't happened yet) that weekend that would make getting to the stadium that day iffy. It was at this point that I realized I might not make it back for a Brooklyn FC match until mid-October at the earliest, and I felt that I didn’t want to wait until then to return to Maimonides Park, so I decided to check the Cyclones schedule again. Sure enough, I saw that they were going to be home on Labor Day weekend, and between the weather being really nice and the fact that it was the last home series of the year for the Cyclones, I decided to make this the time I returned to Maimonides Park (well, that and one more reason I'll get into later). This time, however, I decided to go by train, as it ends up "mathing" out to being less than paying tolls and I kinda like the trains. It was a fun way to get to explore parts of the city I had never seen before...though it would have been better if the train on the way to the game didn't suddenly kick everyone off and have us wait for the next one for no apparent reason...

The Cyclones had booked a postseason spot by virtue of having the best record in the first half of the season. Their opponents - the Hudson Valley Renegades (who I also visited earlier in the season) - were chasing the second half championship to clinch a postseason spot. Said "desperation"³ (plus MASSIVE roster turnover on the Cyclones end) ended up helping the Renegades, as they ended up riding a big first inning to victory (similar to how the Scrankees won off the back of a big inning when I saw them).

As the game was a Sunday game, kids were allowed to run the bases after the game (something rather common across all of baseball). However, since this was the final Sunday game (and final regular season home game) of the season, they expanded the "run the bases" opportunity to everyone, which was VERY cool.

MERCH

I discussed the Maimonides Park team store back during my first visit, but in case anyone forgot: it’s a two-level store with various items on both levels - some the same, some different. What I realized in writing THIS post, however, is that I forgot to mention that there was a small selection of Brooklyn FC merch at that game exclusively on the upper level (it must have gotten deleted in one of my edits). I thought about getting a jersey then, but I didn’t find anything in an appropriate size (or style - I’m pretty sure what I found were children’s and women’s jerseys).

I will admit here that part of the reason I didn’t want to wait to return was due to Brooklyn FC merch, but alas, there was no Brooklyn FC merch available for this game. There may have been a good reason for that however: the Cyclones were having a “fan appreciation sale” and most items in the store were 25% off (i.e. the system was already set to take 25% off any items it doesn't have marked as "clearance", and Brooklyn FC merch wasn't supposed to be part of that). This ended up helping me quite a bit as I got one of the hats I alluded to earlier⁴; however, the most interesting items to me were THESE hats:

These four hats are for other teams that WERE affiliated with the Mets back in the day; two are still affiliated with the Mets today, one changed affiliation during the 2020 realignment, and the last team was axed in 2020. They are:

• Columbia Fireflies (top left): a Carolina League team and the current Low-A affiliate of the Kansas City Royals. The Fireflies were a Mets affiliate when they moved to South Carolina’s capital in 2016 and switched to KC during the 2020 realignment. As for the city they moved from, well...
• St. Lucie Mets (top right): the team below the Cyclones in the Mets’ organizational ladder (in the Low-A Florida State League). They play at the Mets' Spring Training facility in Port St. Lucie, FL (about midway between Orlando and Miami).
• Binghamton Rumble Ponies (bottom left): The team above the Cyclones in the Mets’ organizational ladder (in the Double-A Eastern League). I read somewhere that the Cyclones were supposed to take their place in the Eastern League during the 2020 realignment, but multiple groups nixed that idea (one of them being New York State itself).
• Kingsport Mets (bottom right): There's a LOT I could say here, but the basic gist of it is that Kingsport was a former Mets affiliate (at a level that no longer exists) who became a summer collegiate league team and rebranded to the Axmen in the 2020 realignment (hence the earlier use of the term "axed"). While the Axmen have a championship in their current league/form (in 2022), the most notable thing that happened to them is when they were forced to become a traveling team after one of the players made death threats after getting cut (though thankfully, the situation was resolved before the end of the season).

The Rumble Ponies and Fireflies hats were only available in very small sizes, but I lucked out as the two “Mets” hats were available in my size (and believe it or not, the St. Lucie Mets hat I got wasn't available in my size online). The Kingsport Mets hat was on clearance (because it's been SIX YEARS since the last Kingsport Mets game), so it wasn't included in the 25% discount.

I also made a quick stop at the Barclays Center (home of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets and WNBA's New York Liberty) to check out their store on the way to the game, but didn't find anything interesting there (mainly because the jerseys were all either sublimated or heat-pressed).

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As for Brooklyn FC, I was finally able to make the trip a few months after this game.

Also, please check out this video I made from footage I recorded on the subway ride back to Penn Station I had to edit it FOUR times because it kept getting lost for some stupid reason _kthnxbai