Even before the annual Old Home Days softball contest is played between the Londonderry Police and Fire Department teams this Friday night, Londonderry cops Jim Freda and Justin Hallock have reasons to be able to gloat a bit about earlier success on a diamond against several town firemen.
Freda and Hallock were members of the New Hampshire Battle of the Badges police baseball squad which tallied a lopsided 15-2 victory over the Granite State firemen in the 2017 Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock (CHaD) Battle of the Badges Baseball Classic at Delta Dental Stadium in Manchester last Friday evening, Aug. 11.
Londonderry firemen Riley Northrop, Mike Roberson, Brian Schofield, and Chris Schofield were members of the vanquished squad in that seventh annual contest, which was played under the lights for the first time in series history.
Each player was tasked with raising at least $1,250 for the worthy CHaD cause, for which some $320,000 were raised through the first six contests via sponsorships, ticket sales, and the players themselves.
The 2017 game was played in front of a reported crowd of just under 2,000 fans at the Delta Dental Stadium, best known as the home of the Toronto Blue Jays’ Double-A minor league squad the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. The firemen won the 2016 contest, so with the recent split in successes the 2018 game might be even more fun next summer. You can bet the firemen are none too pleased with being bested by double digits.
The firemen’s roster once again included Anthony DeRosa from the Derry Fire Department, who had the game-winning hit in the ninth inning for the fire crew in its successful 2016 Badges battle.
Celebrating its 25th anniversary as New Hampshire’s only full service, comprehensive children’s hospital, the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock is committed to providing outstanding and compassionate care for children and their families. Their physician expertise provides primary, specialty, and tertiary care to the children of New Hampshire, Vermont, and beyond.
CHaD offers inpatient (hospital care) and outpatient (same day care) services at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon. Outpatient and same day surgery services are available at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Manchester, as well as outpatient pediatric specialties at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital, Dover and in Exeter. Primary care is available at Dartmouth-Hitchcock facilities in Bedford, Concord, Keene, Lebanon, Manchester, and Nashua, N.H. as well as Bennington, Vermont.