Yard Goats

The 'Yard Goats' are Hartford's Double-A minor-league baseball team, and the name has become a piece of regional shorthand for the capital city's identity and downtown ballpark scene. A 'yard goat' is railroad slang for a small switching locomotive that shuffles cars in a rail yard, a nod to Hartford's rail history. Connecticut residents use 'the Yard Goats' or 'going to a Yard Goats game' as a marker of central-Connecticut local culture.