Bart Giamatti
Money cannot buy a warm summer night baseball game played on real green grass by boys of summer who love the game so deeply they wish to never grow old.
This is the Frontier League, an independent circuit
on the lowest level of the totem pole of professional minor league baseball. I
spent five weeks at the tail end of the 2015 season with league member the
River City Rascals of O’Fallon, MO, a suburb of St. Louis, MO.
On a mid-August evening the surging Rascals - seven
wins in the last nine games – are entertaining the Southern Illinois Miners
from Marion, IL. The visitors own the league’s best record, 50-28. With a
little over three weeks left in the regular season the Rascals are in a high
gear sprint to the Labor Day finish line; hoping to position for a deep run
into the ensuing playoffs climaxing with a league pennant; a mountain Rascal's
Manager Steve Brook’s nine last climbed in 2010.
Most players in the Frontier League are paid $600 a
month for the four month season, less than $2500 total. A few make up to $1700
a month. Some hold down day jobs, all live room and board free with area host
families; a product of the indigenous needs and resources of those who labor in
the bush leagues of professional baseball.
A planned pre game meeting between Rascal’s Radio
and Media Supervisor Al Hernandez, Assistant General Manager Lisa Fegley and I
is delayed when both are drafted by the grounds crew to hastily maneuver the
infield tarp into place to protect from a sudden heavy downpour of rain. “I
hate rain days,” says Fegley, now half way through a work day that started at 7
am and will end after 11 pm.
When the skies clear, after a 30 minute delay, the
Rascals jump to an 8-2 lead after five innings only to see the Miners rally in
the next two frames to cut the home club’s advantage to one run, 8-7.
During the 7th inning stretch I count 523
fans still in attendance. Earlier, many adult fans, with young children in tow,
have departed early to meet school night bed times.
Still down one tally, the Miners put two runners on
in the 9th inning setting up newly acquired Rascal’s Dominican
Closer Victor Beriguete’s jog in from the right field bull pen. The sidearmer
slams the door on the Miners with a nail biting save. In the 8 ½ innings of
play neither team commits an error.
The Rascals line up for the post game congratulatory
hand bumps just like they do 30 miles east on Highway 70 over at Busch Stadium,
the home of the major league St. Louis Cardinals. However, in many ways T.R.
Hughes Stadium; home of the red hot Rascals is light years from Busch Stadium.
Infielders wait single file for the outfielders to jog past then turn and
similarly greet the reserves, followed by the team’s coaches and finally
Manager Brook. The regimentation of the process is paramount for custom - and
custom in baseball etiquette is absolute on all levels.
The minor league experience is one of long bus
trips, shabby playing surfaces, cut rate motels, hamburger helper, soiled
uniforms, cramped and dirty locker rooms—or none at all—and broken dreams. Lots
of broken dreams; but all trumped by a passionate counterweight love for the
game.
In this tight home stretch run to qualify for
the post season, each game is critical. Manager Brook is focused but on edge.
He has invested heavily in personal time and sweat for this stretch run. Most
all of the 24 young men that compose the Rascals’ roster know they are at the
tail end of their playing careers, holding on desperately to their fleeting
last days as Boys of Summer.
“When I was
growing up, there weren't any Little Leagues in the city. Parents worked all
the time. They didn't have time to take their kids out to play baseball and
football.”
Mike
Krzyzewski
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| Rascals Alex Winkleman |
The Frontier League bills itself as a “prospect”
league. A more accurate description would be a “last call” league; or maybe
better a “reality” league. Most players above the entry rookie level on active
Frontier League rosters have professional experience in “affiliated ball,” or
major league sanctioned minor leagues. In the sanctioned leagues the major
league club provides the players (and their salaries) plus some equipment to the
minor league team. It is a nice tidy arrangement for the minor league team
until the major league master decides to move up the league’s leading hitter
with two weeks remaining in a tightly contested pennant race. In the major’s, a
pennant race in the bush leagues is of little concern. Not true, however, in
the independent Frontier League. “I want a ring,” many Rascals will share with
me over the upcoming weeks.
Major League teams today maintain a tier of minor league entries under their control, a “farm system,” an idea originated by Branch Rickey when he was General Manager of the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1930’s. The major league teams promote and demote, sign and release players as they deem in the best interest of the big league team. A recent trend of the past decade shows a few of the minor league teams owned outright by their parent major league team, the Springfield Cardinals, for example, a AA team in the Texas League is owned by the same group that owns the big league Cardinals; but most are still independently owned with agreements between the major league team and the minor league owners conducted as a business negotiation and transaction, or an “affiliation” between the two.
Today, most of the 30 major league teams will have
one AAA team, the classification just below the major leagues, one AA team, two
A teams, known as high A and low A and two Rookie League teams, one long season
and one short season.
Before TV killed small town minor league baseball
in the 1950’s and 1960’s, in addition to the above four tiers, lower levels
labeled Class B, Class C and the lowest, Class D; also existed. Nowhere was the
game more popular than in North Carolina. In 1950, the state had 45 minor
league teams and four eight-team leagues within its borders: the North Carolina
State, the Tobacco State, the Western Carolina and the Coastal Plain.
Nineteen
Forty Nine was the peak season for minor league baseball participation. Four
hundred and thirty eight teams in 59 leagues were members of the National
Association of Professional Baseball Leagues. By the end of 1963, only 15
leagues survived. Many factors converged to contribute to the decline, the ones
most quoted by baseball historians: television, the development of college
baseball and air conditioning. The colleges became a cost free and efficient
breeding ground for young talent and the lure of sitting home in air
conditioned comfort while watching a major league game on TV proved to be tough
draw for the Class D level of baseball played on the hot and dusty small town
diamonds of the nation’s rural crossroad towns.
It was common for former big leaguers in the minor
league heydays of the 40’s and 50’s to return to the minors at the end of their
careers. The pay was good, sometimes almost as good as what was made in the pre
free agent major leagues of the time, plus the opportunity to close out a
career back home in front of family and friends was a strong allure.
In the golden pre-TV era many minor league teams
developed players who would help fill out the home team’s roster, year after
year, becoming local heroes and year round members of the community.
Consider the legend of Joe Bauman. In 1954 Bauman
hit 72 home runs for the Roswell (N.M.) Rockets of the Class C Longhorn League.
At the time it was a record for any level of organized ball. Bauman spent his
days and off season months pumping gas at a local full service “filling station”
(Eventually, he bought the station). The next season, despite his record
setting performance, he received neither a pay raise nor a promotion, nor did
he ask for either. Neil Sullivan is the author of the excellent book The Minors. He gives the following
perspective to the role of the aging minor leaguer on the local community.
"Bauman's record might be the most dramatic event in (local) baseball
history………..the local player who for a moment rises to join the god’s of the
sport [and] takes a community with him for that brief ascent."
In the immediate post war days and before TV
saturation, many major league stars were unseen by a large majority of the
nation’s fans. In the vast rural areas followers could read about the magical
glove of Billy Cox as he patrolled third base at Flatbush’s Ebetts Field, or
the towering blasts launched from the bat of the Splendid Splinter in Bean
Town, but never witness in person their super human exploits. It became a must
see event when a former decorated major leaguer played over at the local ball
yard: in the flesh an aging former major league star who they had read about in
the Sporting News for years now squaring off against the local nine. Sometimes,
a local rising talent might even get the best of the former big leaguer,
spawning a story that would be embellished to local legend as the years rolled
by.
Due to coast to coast TV
broadcasts, baseball major league heroes were by the mid-50’s national idols brought
directly into the living rooms of America. The day of the local minor league
star attracting a paying following was now as dead as a sore armed fast baller.
If the kid was good, he didn’t hang around the bush league’s long.
In 2015, the total of affiliated minor league teams
falls in the range of 180-190 teams, employing around 4,000 players yearly.
Approximately 1,200 additional players find paying jobs in the eight
Independent leagues.
The affiliated short season leagues – lower A ball
and Rookie league levels, begin in late June and finish by Labor Day; their
rosters stocked with the recent June draft choices of high school and college
age players. The other levels will play longer seasons, most starting in April
and finishing by Labor Day. The Frontier League plays a 96 game schedule,
commencing in mid-May with the regular season ending on the Sunday before Labor
Day. The playoffs add an extra two weeks to the calendar for those fortunate
enough to qualify and advance to the championship round.
The Frontier League was founded in 1993. The original eight franchises were located in
West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and the southeast Ohio region. None of the
original eight exist today. The last survivor, the Chillicothe, OH Paint
struggled through 16 summers before giving up the ghost, ceasing operations
after the 2008 season.
Since the founding of the Frontier League, no less
than 28 independent minor leagues have taken spro
ut only to fail. Nine never
made it out of the first inning, folding before crowing even one champion: the
All-American Association (2001), the Arizona-Mexico League (2002), the Atlantic Coast League
(1995), the Canadian Baseball League (2003), the Empire State League (1997),
The Golden State League (1995), the Great Central League (1994), the
Mid-American League (1995), and the South Coast League (2007).
In late June of 1993 the Frontier League began play
in high school, college and municipal parks. By the first of August, two teams
had already packed up the bats and balls and called it quits. The West Virginia
Coal Sox lasted 10 games and the Tri-State Rifles folded after 11 games. The
six survivors limped home and crowned the Zanesville Greys as the league’s
first champion. The Greys survived through the 1997 season, took a one year
sabbatical for 1998 and then moved to O’Fallon, MO for the 1999 season, reborn
as the River City Rascals.
Playing that first season in the newly built
municipally owned T.R. Hughes Stadium - the first ball yard built specifically
for a Frontier League team - the Rascals shattered the league’s season
attendance standard, drawing 151,661 fans. The following year, they raised the
bar once more as 157,922 passed through the turnstiles. Last season, despite
falling one game short of claiming the franchise’s second league crown, the Rascals drew only 81,622
fans, third lowest in the 14 team circuit. The attendance total’s for 2015
would climb to 91,354, or an average of 1,903 for each of the 48 regular season
games at T.R. Hughes Stadium. The Shaumburg, IL franchise, located in the
Chicago suburbs and despite a last place finish, led the FL in attendance for
the 2015 season, drawing 162,210 fans for 54 home dates, an average of 3,061
per game.
Over the last twenty two years twenty seven
Frontier Alumni have endured, beating the long odds and played in a major
league game. Strangely, 24 of the 27 have been pitchers. At the start of the
2015 major league season in April four former Frontier Leaguers were on the 25
man opening day rosters of the 30 major league teams. At the AAA level, one
notch below the major leagues, 12 FL alums had found jobs. AA showed 30
employed.
To promote itself as a development stage for the
major leagues the Frontier League religiously tracks and publicizes not only
its former players, but also non-playing personnel. Front office positions,
managers, coaches, scouts, umpires, broadcasters and even bullpen catchers who
have found work in affiliated baseball are all documented by the league. In
April, 2015 80 non-playing former Frontier League employees were working in
affiliated leagues; from the rookie league level all the way up the baseball
ladder to the major leagues.
Prior to the 1994 season the owners of the Frontier
League hired Bill Lee as the first and only Commissioner the League has ever
employed. In 2015, Lee is in his 21st season overseeing the day to
day operations of the now 14 team league. Such stability in leadership in minor
league baseball, an industry often as unpredictable and unsteady as a
Kardashian family reunion, is unheard of. His lengthy tenure places Lee’s
monumental impact on the league well beyond any doubt.
Lee is a baseball lifer. His father, Roy, was a
long time respected and successful college coach in his native St. Louis area.
“Dad coached the 1965 St. Louis University Billikan baseball team to the
College World Series,” Lee recalls proudly. “It was quite an accomplishment, to
make it to Omaha. I was 12 years old and the bat boy. It was unforgettable. We
won two games and lost two, both (loses) to Arizona State who had an outfielder
named Reggie Jackson. I have been in love with baseball my entire life.”
Bill Lee is well beyond any reasonable doubt the
heart and soul of the Frontier League. Every league administrator or owner I
spoke with gave Lee his props, pointing to his longevity and leadership for why
the Frontier League has flourished year after year while so many other upstart
Independent Leagues go bankrupt, awash
in red ink and the doors shuttered sometimes before the first champion has been
crowned.
Lee brought a solid pedigree to the Frontier
League. After graduating from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville with a
degree in Mass Communications, Lee played in the Atlanta Braves organization
and the independent Lone Star League. After hanging up his spikes he worked for
the Birmingham Barons as their Assistant General Manager and Public Relations
Director before moving on to become the General Manager of the Chattanooga
Lookouts. While with the Lookouts, Lee was the Southern League’s 1989 Executive
of the Year. Just before joining the Frontier League, he was the Vice-President
of Sales and Marketing for the Seattle Thunderbirds Hockey Club in the Western
Hockey League. Lee was chosen as Marketing Executive of the Year of that League
in 1991.
Sitting relaxed in his make shift office on a late
August afternoon Lee shared with me the spirt of the Frontier League. “We
promote ourselves as the League of Dreams. That is why we have roster
limitations that force teams to employ and play the rookies, the guys just
breaking in who are still young enough to get a serious look from affiliated
ball. I tell every player in our league when I make my pre-season rounds,
“welcome to the Frontier League. Now get to work and get the hell out of my
league as fast as you can; work hard and get to that next level, make your
dreams come true.”
Minor League baseball has gone through, no pun
intended, a Bull Market that last 20 years. “The movie Bull Durham in the late
80’s was a big boost to the minor league,” Lee shares. “People like the
culture, the pureness of the way the game is played in the low minors. Then the
player strike in 1994 that shut down the major leagues (and the World Series,
something that not even two world wars was able to do) upset a lot of long time
baseball fans. The public was turned off, not to baseball, but to the business
it had become at the major leagues. Starting in 1993 was good timing for us,
for sure Minor league baseball was hot.”
And investment in minor league baseball, even in
the independent leagues, is steep. Reportedly the Rascals are for sale at an
asking price of 1.4 million dollars. I could not get either Lee or any Rascals’
officials to comment on the accuracy of the rumor or the asking price, nor did
either deny its legitimacy. “Few of our owners are in this to get rich,” Lee
says. “Most have already made their money. Owning a team in the Frontier League
becomes a labor of love more so than about a business transaction. Our owners
are very competitive. Most care more about winning the pennant on the field
than they do wining the attendance race. I tell them, ‘why not win both.’”
Lee, with his sockless feet up on his desk, attired
in jeans and a collarless pull over shirt, finds contentment in what he claims
is the stretch run for his tenure as leader of a league others have used as a
template for developing a successful independent baseball minor league.
“Not many who come through our league do make the
major leagues, true,” Lee admitted. “But while they are here they can dream,
and we can provide a baseball experience to families in small towns. What is
more American than dreams and baseball? It is not all about saber metrics and
multi-million dollar contracts, it is about people and how you treat them. That
is what I stress to our people.”
“I am 61 years old. I have been doing this for half my life. I get tired. I drive 40,000 miles a year, stay in motels all summer and deal with a lot of headaches. But I love it.”
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| Evansville's Historic Bosse Field |
“When my dad died in 1985, and he never made much
money at all, a college baseball coach in those days worked for peanuts, but
over 800 people came to his funeral. It was a funeral unlike any I have ever
seen. My belly hurt for two days after, I never laughed so hard in my life. The
stories just came one after another. I was amazed how many lives my dad had
positively impacted, men from every walk of life. I had another relative who
died within a year of Dad. He had made some very wise investments in start-up
companies that did very well and he was a very wealthy man and a good man. He
had maybe 40 people at his funeral and no one smiled.”
“In the end is not about money, it is about the
impact you have on lives. That is why I have stayed here all these years.”
Cal Ripken,
Jr.
For this nomadic bunch of Rascals who labor on the
obscure diamonds of the Frontier League, the name Josh Kinney is revered and
magical, resonating hope through a minor league clubhouse when hope is all that
many of this group of 24’s careers have left.
After a marginal at best college career with
Quincy, IL University - hardly a name on anyone’s short list of collegiate
baseball powers - at 22 years of age, the righthander signed with the Rascals
for the 2001 season. His tenure in O’Fallon was short lived but career
changing. After only two weeks and three starts the St. Louis Cardinals saw
enough to offer the previously unknown and undrafted Kinney a contract in
affiliated ball and assigned him to their short season Class A team in the New
York-Penn League. Kinney parlayed his two week lay over with the Rascals into
an 11 year career in affiliated ball, including stints with four major league
teams.
By 2006, Kinney had reached the major leagues with
the Cardinals and pitched in three post season games, including the World
Series, as the Cardinals defeated the Detroit Tigers, earning the former Rascal
a world series ring, estimated to cost more than a four year contract in the
Frontier League. Later, the Pennsylvania native hurled in the Big Show for the Pittsburg
Pirates, the Seattle Mariners and the Chicago White Sox.
Kinney’s is a story the Frontier League loves to
promote: an unknown who would have remained so if not for the exposure of a
short backwater gig in independent ball. In reality, his story is an
aberration, the exception to the rule. Only two Rascals; left handed pitcher
Joe Thatcher and right handed pitcher Brandon Cunniff have since Kinney made
major league rosters. No Rascal alumni position player has ever-worn a major
league uniform.
Most non-rookies that make up Frontier League
rosters are not on the way up but down - and then out. Most have been drafted
by a major league team and after several seasons, sometimes with multiple
organizations, released. With no other major league organization willing to
pick them up off the waiver wires, they land in the independent Frontier
League, where some become fixtures and crowd favorites, tearing up the
competition – until the clock strikes 30 years of age and mandatory FL
retirement.
Of the 24 River City Rascals on its roster at the
conclusion of the 2015 playoffs, 11 had been drafted by a major league team,
either out of high school or after playing at least one year of college
baseball. Two others had signed as free agents out of high school with
affiliated teams. Eleven RC players have never landed a job in affiliated ball.
Catcher Josh Lundy holds the distinction as the
highest draft pick amongst the 2015 Rascals. The Baylor University grad was the
2012 Big 12 Conference player of the year, but was only a 8th round
choice, selected by the Philadelphia Phillies. Listed liberally in the Rascal’s
program as 5’9 and 210 pounds, a lack of stature has been the constant
detrimental hurdle for Lundy’s career to clear. He has twice reached the High A
level in the minors, including last summer with the Oakland A’s Beloit, WI
affiliate, only to be told both times his services were no longer needed and
given his unconditional release. Both times the Rascals have had a waiting open
roster spot for Lundy, happy to offer employment a backstop with a reputation
as a fine hand with pitchers as well as a solid hitter with good power. Both
seasons, 2014 and 2015, Lundy has been honored by the Frontier League’s
managers as the best catcher in the circuit. The 25 year old was recently
married, one of three family men on the Rascals’ playing roster.
Second baseman Hector Crespo was drafted in 2013
out of North Carolina’s Appalachian State University by the New York Yankees in
the draft’s 34th round. The Florida native had only one season in
the Yanks’ system, but advanced all the way to AAA with the Scranton team of
the International League. Crespo recorded only one hit in nine at bats in his
brief stay in the Pennsylvania rust belt, before his release. Crespo signed on
with the Rascals in April, 2014. At only 24 years of age and with two all-star
seasons in the Frontier League now on his resume, amongst the Rascal’s players
and team personal I spoke with, Crespo was the consensus choice as owning the
best odds for future major league employment. Still, history dictates Crespo
chances of ever donning a major league uniform are at best remote. He is the
only one of the current Rascal’s to have reached as high as AAA.
Niko Vasquez, the All-Star second baseman for the Southern
Illinois Miners, is an example of a soft landing after a fall off the
affiliated baseball ladder. Vasquez steps to the plate as a pinch hitter at
T.R. Hughes stadium as the last hope for the league leading Miners to avoid
their first negative sweep of the season. Down 9-8 with two outs in the top of
the ninth inning and with the bases loaded, Vasquez immediately digs a hole for
himself by watching two strikes from Ra
scal’s closer Victor Beriguete speed by. The home crowd stands and
rythamatically claps in anticipation of one last strike and the Rascals sixth
straight win. With one swing Vasquez crashes the party. He turns a hanging side
arm slider that does not slide into a scorching rope which after one bounce
caroms off the right center field wall, scoring both the tying and the eventual
winning run.
As an 18 year old fresh out of Durango High School
in Las Vegas, NV, Vasquez was chosen in the third round of the 2008 Major
League Draft by the St. Louis Cardinals. Many had projected him as a first
round pick but the rumor that Vazquez would be hard to sign as had repeatedly
stated an interest in college ball before turning pro.
Current Tampa Rays’ starting shortstop Tim Beckham
was the number one overall pick in 2008. Many thought Vasquez was the better
pro prospect.
 |
| Nico Vazquez |
Wrote draft expert Alex Eisenberg the day after the
2008 draft, “Is it possible the best
shortstop in last June's draft will be somebody not named Beckham? Obviously
it's too early to tell, but the possibility is real. Niko Vasquez, the St.
Louis Cardinals 3rd round draft pick and the No. 90 pick overall has more
upside and has more polish than the raw, but very toolsy and athletic Tim
Beckham. Vasquez is coordinated and fairly agile with a strong arm at the
shortstop position, but questions about his overall foot speed lead some to
doubt his ability to stay at the position. He hasn't appeared to have had many
problems thus far in his young career, however. Should Vasquez stay at
shortstop, his bat could have borderline Major league All-Star value.”
Vasquez gave the Cardinals five seasons, but never
advanced higher than their AA Springfield team, where in 2011 for 69 games he
the Redbirds starting shortstop and teammates with such current Cardinal
stalwarts as Matt Adams and Tommy Pham. Vasquez’s best season was in A ball with the Peoria
Chiefs in 2010 when the speedy infielder hit for power, 14 home runs and 70
Runs Batted In, while playing in 130 games. In 2012, after getting his
unconditional release from first the Cardinals and then the Cininatti Reds,
Vasquez played with the Gateway Grizzlies, the first of three FL teams he has
sold his talents to. The 2013 season saw the slick fielder on the roster of the
Joliet Jammers. 2015 is his second season with the Miners. Vasquez appears now
to be a Frontier League fixture - comfortable, successful and popular in sleepy
downstate Marion, IL - but any dreams of a major league career have long ago
flickered out.
What went wrong?
“I never felt the Cardinals were always real
straight with me,” Vasquez told me. As the Miners season wore down, Vasquez
spoke to me in a quiet by philosophical tone. “I love baseball. I still feel I
can play at the major league level. I am now 25 years old, have kept myself in
good baseball conditioning. I am a serious player. I study the game and I work
hard. I have not given up on playing major league baseball, but I have got to
get out of independent ball and get back with an affiliated team. Nobody jumps
from the Frontier League to the major leagues.”
On May 15, 2012 the Cardinals released Vasquez. It
was game of musical chairs in the Cards minor league system and Vasquez was the
guy left standing. “They told me they had better middle infield experienced
players in the system ahead of me and better younger prospects behind me,”
Vasquez remembers. “It was a numbers crunch. I was told that I had the talent
to play in the major leagues I just had to find the right organization and the
Cardinals were not the best fit for me.”
Smelling the opportunity to snatch a former highly
thought of project for the cost of a $200 waiver transaction, the Cinncinati
Reds immedialtley signed Vasquez and assigned him to their Bakersfield team in
the High A California league. Late in the season he was promoted to Dayton with
outside hopes of being placed on the off season 40 man major league roster of
the Reds. Then on September 12, 2012, Vasquez was suspended by Major League
baseball for the remainder of the 2012 season and the first 50 games of the
2013 season.
Vasquez had tested positive for an Amphetamine. The
Reds immediately released him. His agent dropped him. 22 years old, broke and
team less, Vasquez drifted to the Frontier League. “I made a mistake” he says
today. “I was 22 years old, already a five year vet and felt I was at a cross
roads when the Cardinals released me. I was desperate to stick with the Reds and
would do whatever was needed not to get released again. It was dumb on my part.
After that I was damaged goods in the eyes of all the other orginazations, I
guess, because the phone never rang.”
Does he find irony in the fact that in 2013 the
Cardinals gave current all-star shortstop Johnny Peralta a 15 million dollar
contract just as we was completing a 50 game suspension for the use of
performance enhancing banned drugs? “Peralta made a bad decision, was punished
and got a second chance, which everyone deserves and he has stayed clean and
made the most of his second chance. He was 31 when he got caught. I was 22. I
also deserve a second chance in affiliated ball, but nobody responses when I
contact them and without an agent, it is hard to get a fair look.”
On the August night of Vasquez heroics in O’Fallon,
MO, former 2008 draft rival Tim Bekham manned
the shortstop position for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, getting two hits
and driving in a run in the win over the Houston Astros. The crowd in Houston
topped 28,000. Less than 500 witnessed Vasquez game winner.
After Southern Illinois sets down the Rascals in the bottom of the 9th inning the quiet but well liked Vasquez is congratulated by his teammates; the hero who has dramatically averted a three game sweep by the hated Rascals. The award for his heroics: a quick shower in the cramped visitor’s cinder block clubhouse, an even quicker midnight meal at a lonely 24 hour Denny’s; followed by a 429 mile all night bus ride to Avon, OH. The next evening, the Miners will begin a three game series with the Lake Erie Crushers. Memories of a clutch double helps for the development of a tolerance, if not a taste, for the Denny’s menu.
After eight years in the bush leagues of pro ball,
Vasquez has passed to the far side of innocence. Is it worth it? For the
moment, Vasquez nods yes. While most 26 year olds will be tomorrow morning
hitting the 6 am snooze button, after an evening dominated by mundane adult
“stuff,” Vasquez will be bus bouncing along Lake Erie dreaming of a two strike,
two out, ninth inning fortuitous hanging slider. He may not have a college
education - sacrificed for the dream - but Vasquez knows, as only
few do, the
sensation of electric impulses shooting through the forearms as the wrists
turnover after solid contact; followed by the sweet cracking sound of wood on
horsehide. For a true hitter, it is a sound to live for. Niko Vasquez, for at
least a few more weeks, is a professional baseball player.
Michael
Mandelbaum
The Frontier League rosters are subjected to strict
set of rules of eligibility. Club rosters are composed of a minimum of 22
active players and a maximum of 24 active players. Each club must carry a
minimum of eleven rookies, first year players, with no professional experience.
The maximum number of players with professional experience is set at 13.
 |
| Curren Radel |
No player can have attained twenty seven years of
age prior to January 1. An exception is made for one player, designated as a
“Veteran,” who cannot turn 30 before January 1.
For the 2015 season, players must have been born on
or after January 1, 1988 to be eligible, aside from the Veteran classification
player (one per team) who must have been born on or after January 1, 1985.
Players without prior affiliated baseball
experience must be at least 18 years old to play in the Frontier League.
The minimum pay for the players in the Frontier
League is $600 a month. The maximum pay level per player is set at $1600 a
month. Most receive the minimum. The league sets a salary cap per season at
$75,000 per team. Brook says that Rascal’s management limits him to an even
lower cap, although he will not revel to me what that lower level is.
For some perspective consider this: Yankee slugger
Mark Teixeira was the highest paid player in the majors in 2014. He hit 23 home
runs on the year. With a yearly salary of 23.13 million, Teixeira was paid
$1,005,652.17 for each home run he hit over the course of the 2014 season. The
14 teams in the FL, if all spent to the limit of the $75,000 salary cap; and as
Brook confirmed all do not, but if they did, the total payroll combined for
every player who in the summer of 2014 labored on the dusty diamonds of the
Frontier League would be $1,050,000, or a mere $44,347.83 above what Teixeira
was paid for hitting one home run. For the love of the game? No doubt.
As Commissioner Lee points out in his boiler plate
marketing pitch, the Frontier League is about dreams, not money. But you can’t
eat dreams. True, agrees Lee, the players do deserve more money, but where is
it going to come from, he asks?
Hitting Coach Eric Williams has run the gauntlet of
employment at the lower end of professional baseball. The 30 year old native of
Carmel, NY turned 30 years of age on January 9, thus ending his Frontier League
career. After an extended college career that saw Williams play at first
Arizona State and then Wake Forest, he launched a five year voyage through
independent league ball. 2009 saw Williams in the now defunct Continental
Baseball League, a league that last for three hot and dusty summers with
outposts in Texas and New Mexico. 2010 landed him a spot in the American
Association, a circuit often found in competition with the Frontier League for
top prize as the “most stable” of the eight leagues operating during the 2015
season.
Williams spent four years with the Rascals; a
tenure in longevity seldom found in the Independent leagues. His longevity
transformed him into a crowd favorite and endured him to the area, “and I me
this girl,” he admits. “St. Louis has become home to me,” he said as we set in
the Rascals clubhouse four hours before the start of a September late season
game.
Personable and well-spoken Williams holds several
Rascal records including most games played, 427. He hit .268 and set a Rascals
record with 112 walks in 2012. “I was a steady player and I think an effective
player for the Rascals,” he self-evaluates. Why did you not make it into
affiliated ball, at least get a look, I ask? “Not sexy enough, I guess, I
didn’t have the big home run power or the rocket arm they like. But I played at
a very high level in college and held my own, and the Frontier League is above
the talent level found in most of A ball, don’t know, just wasn’t meant to be,”
he says with a head shrug, “But I have no regrets.”
What does the future hold; I press the question
many of the Rascals do not want to address? Williams weaves and bobs as well as
his younger teammates. “I don’t know; I do need to get a better paying job that
is pretty obvious. 30 years old and need to start putting this Wake Forest
education to use, I guess, but first we got a pennant to win.”
“Every day is
a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures
behind and start over again. That's the way life is, with a new game every day,
and that's the way baseball is.”
Bob Feller
 |
| Commissioner Bill Lee |
At dusk on a sultry August evening, River City
Rascals center fielder Curran Redal confidently patrols the outfield turf of
GCS Ball Park in Sauget, IL. Amongst the industrial smokestacks, railroad
tracks and trailer lots that dominate this Mississippi River east bottom flood
plain; and less than a mile from the small town's street of infamous strip
clubs and all night bars, lies this quaint "field of dreams," home
field of the Frontier League's Gateway Grizzly's, chief rival of Redal's
Rascals.
Strange place to build a ball field, the 28 year
old Moses Lake, Washington native thought the first time he saw GCS, four
summers prior.
In between third inning pitches and swatting
mosquitoes with his non glove hand, if Curran glances west over his left
shoulder he has a postcard view of the city of St. Louis' skyline, dominated by
the monumental Gateway Arch and the lights of Busch Stadium, home of the iconic
National League leading St. Louis Cardinals.
As the crow flies, the distance from Redal's
centerfield to the Busch Stadium center field manned for $3 million plus per
season by the Cardinal's John Jay is three miles. The four year Frontier League
career of Curran Redal, who brings home $200 a week - before taxes - bares
witness that it is the longest three miles in baseball.
Radel has battled low expectations of his baseball
skills for so long he says it no longer motivates him. “I have no regrets but
will always wonder why no major league organization gave me at least a serious
look.”
The diminutive outfielder is soft spoken and baby
faced. Although 27 years of age, if he drank, he would be regularly carded, asked for proof of
age. Redel impresses immediately as a
sincere young man while possessing a gee-whiz countenance about himself. He
describes his formative years as if residing in a Cracker Jack box, ideal. “I
was raised in rural Washington with very supportive parents,” he tells me.
“Education was stressed and baseball was meant to be fun.”
“I had to work real hard to even get a look in the
Frontier League,” Radel admits. After graduating from Liberty University in the
spring of 2010, Radel took a one year break from playing, but stayed in the
game, coaching back home in Washington state. “I hurt my arm the beginning of
my senior year,” he relates. “I was also a pitcher in college and needed elbow
surgery. We put it off until the end of the season, but I couldn’t pitch
anymore after that.”
Now damaged goods, the scouts never came around. “I
had a very good career at Liberty. I was very confident I could play at a high
level of pro ball. I spent a year rehabbing the elbow and then started looking
for a pro league to play in. At first, I thought Independent ball was below me,
didn’t realize how many good players are in this league, now many have moved on
to good pro careers, even reaching the top. There was a player I knew in
college who we always talked about how similar our abilities were, how a like
our careers had been through college. I got a text this morning he has been
called up to the Yankees.”
At first not even the Independent Leagues threw out
the welcome mat for the suddenly orphaned player. “It was frustrating,” Radel
admits. “I tried out with Washington (fellow Frontier League member) and they
told me I would never play in this league.” After proving the evaluation dead
wrong – Radel is a two time league All-Star – the 27 year old gained a measure
of revenge. “Skip (manager Brook) came to me last year during the stretch run
and told me Washington had inquired about trading for me. I told him to tell
them to forget it; I am not good enough to play in their league.”
Radel admits the next few weeks will “probable, pretty sure at this point, and if nothing changes,” be the end of his baseball career. But as many of the aging Rascals will do; Radel will hedge when speaking on his future, leaving at least a sliver of the dream alive, “if someone came up and made a great offer, I would listen.”
Rascals’ manager Steve Book says that Radel is the
one player in his years with the organization that has not gotten a contract
for affiliated baseball that should have. “He is a solid player,” said Brook.
“He brings his best game every night. He has the tools, he can run he can throw
and he is a tenacious hitter. He doesn’t produce the measurable numbers all the
scouts are in love with today. He is not a big physical hitter but he knows his
limitations and he plays to his strengths.”
With such a low maintenance endorsement form his
manager of four years I ask what the scouts missed about Radel. He notorious
dry humored Brook was succinct with his answer. “They never came around to
measure his heart.”
“I just got
hooked on the radio, the voice of it all. It was my connection to metropolitan
America, if you will. Sports, in particularly baseball then 'cause of its rich
sediment of numbers, was one of the first things a young person could peg up
with adults on - that is, you could know as much about Jimmy Fox as your father
did.”
George Will
One of
my favorite perches for watching the Rascals play is the cramped Press Box at
T.R. Hughes Stadium. I like to sit dead center with Al Hernandez; radio voice
of the Rascals, on my right with the evening’s opponent’s broadcasting team
seated to my left. Listening to the different approaches and styles of two
budding artists both painting the same picture but often with contrasting
styles, is interest grabbing and sometimes humorous.
When on
the air Hernandez is a bundle of high energy and nerves that do not allow him
to sit still. He will often stand to
call the play by play. His shoulders dip and his body weaves as he excitedly
reports to the Rascal listeners a perfectly executed River City squeeze bunt, a
rare occurrence but perhaps the most exciting play in baseball. His loud
description of a play that plates the go ahead run in an important late season
game with Evansville, contrasts sharply with his Otter’s counterpart Mike
Radomski, who prefers a more low key approach. Radomski remains seated
throughout the game, the pitch of his voice low and controlled. Hernandez
either rocks back and forth on one foot or paces one step in one direction,
pivoting and pacing two steps in the opposite direction before repeating the
process over and over. Radomski texts between pitches, an impressive example of
multi-tasking in the world of multi-media. Despite contrasting approaches to
their craft, both tell me they are living out their dream; a professional
baseball announcers. Like their counterparts on the playing field, both are
living on a wing and a prayer; hanging on to dreams of someday announcing in
the major leagues. For most, the summer gig in the Frontier League is a part
time hold over job. Come fall, most will once again be sending out performance
tapes, looking for next summer’s gig, hopefully one rung higher on the ladder
to the Big Show.
Like the
players, most broadcasters in the lower minors are paid only for the four
months of the summer that finds the league active. They toil at their craft
without complaint through the warm months, dueling with mosquitos and other
such annoying bugs for control of the cramp press boxes of the lower minor
leagues and with cable TV reality shows for their audiences. They endure though
the long season of endless drudgeries, with only Monday as a day off.
Broadcasters
on this level share with the players the long bus rides, the side of the road
greasy spoons and the cheap chain motels. Often, they are as young if not
younger than the players, making for an accrued comradery between the two as
June turns to July, then August and finally September. Unfortunately, also in
common with the players will be the death of a dream; most minor league
broadcasters will not make the show, either, but will by the time the calendar
signals 30 years of age, have crossed over to the real 9 to 5 world. But the
memories of laboring in the bush league as the years roll by will become a
badge of honor and source of many stories of the fond memories of a few summers
of broadcasting minor league baseball.
Al
Hernandez came to the Rascals sight unseen. “I sent them a tape in March and
they hired me over the phone. I was in Florida for the last two years,”
Hernandez reports. “I spent the last two seasons working in the Advanced-A
Florida State League. I started as a broadcast intern with the Brevard County
Manatees, a Milwaukee Brewers affiliate, in 2013 before becoming the Assistant
Coordinator of Broadcasting and Media Relations for the Toronto affiliated
Dunedin Blue Jays in 2014.
“I grew
up in the suburbs of Chicago before moving to the Sarasota, Florida area in
2006. I graduated from the University of Central Florida in December of 2014
with a major in Broadcast Journalism and a minor in Writing and Rhetoric.”
I
inquire as to plans after the season. Hernandez shrugs, “don’t know yet,
probably go back to Florida and start sending out tapes. I want to move up the
ladder and to do that I need to get back into affiliated ball. But I have
enjoyed this time with the Rascals. I travel light and I can pick up and moved
pretty quickly, if that is what I need to do.”
“Major league
baseball is about the history of the game. Baseball history is so important.
It's so much more than money.”
Joe Torre
The 2015
Frontier League season ground to its traditional Sunday before Labor Day
finish. The River City Rascals are in as a Wild Card team and will host the
Florence, KY Freedom in a one game play in. The two division winners, the
Normal CornBelters and the Southern Illinois Miners, both receive byes and will
be joined in the 4 team playoffs on Thursday by the two winners of the Tuesday
evening play in games.
 |
| Rascals Advance |
As the
calendar turned to September a late season surge had Rascal’s manager Steve
Brook hopeful of catching Western Division rival Normal for the division crown
and the critical pass into the four team final bracket. “No one likes being in
the play in,” Brook stated with still two weeks left in the season. “You never
know what is going to happen in a one game playoff, especially if we do not get
our bull pen straightened out. If we don’t catch Normal, it does at least look
like we have a good shot at hosting the play in game.”
The
Rascals finished the regular season with a road sweep of the Evansville,
eliminating the Otters from the playoffs. Rascals’ third baseball Tyler Ard,
earlier in the week chosen as the league’s Most Valuable Player, sealed the
Otters fate, clubbing his 29 and 30th homeruns of the season.
The
Otters over the final two weeks of the season suffered what has to be one of
the most calamitous collapses in the history of the national pass time.
Thirteen days prior to the season finale, the Otters had celebrated after a
road win over the Rascals what they believe to a postseason spot.
Two days
later Frontier League Commissioner Bill Lee, reversed the celebration when he
announced that Evansville would have to forfeit 10 games for using an eligible
player; a late season signing of a star pitcher. Records showed that Evansville
for ten games had two players on their roster who were older than 27 years of
age, a major violation of FL rules. “You win and lose with your veteran player.
The one designated veteran player is the cornerstone when you are building your
roster,” observed Rascals’ manager Steve Brook.
In its
appeal, pled over a conference call to Commissioner Bill Lee and the league’s
executive committee, the Otters claimed they should only have to forfeit one
game as the player in question pitched in only one game before the problem was
detected. The League ruled otherwise, that the violation covered all games that
the offending player was on the 24 man Otter roster, regardless of if the
player participated or not. “Pretty clear cut, I thought,“ was Lee’s assessment
of the controversy. “Unfortunate, for sure,” he continued, “but the bylaws are
pretty clear.”
At the
time of the forfeiture announcement, the Otters were leading the Eastern
Division. On September 1, now eliminated from any shot at a division title, the
Otters needed only one win in September to clinch a play in playoff spot.
Evansville proceed to lose six games in row and ended the season one game back
of Florence and Rockford for the final wild card slot.
“We
walked into a situation where our backs were against the wall,” Evansville
manager Andy McCauley said. “But no excuses to be made. We just didn’t respond
offensively.”
Evansville
left 13 base runners against the Rascals in the season finale and struck out
more than 10 times for the fourth straight game.
Adding
to the gloomy Sunday finish for Evansville, Florence and Rockford both lost but
still backed into the playoffs. With a win, the Otters would have been the
third wild-card team and would have served as a host team.
It is
universal coach speak that you never admit you are overmatched and would balk
at any challenge on the horizon. Perhaps, still shell shocked from his team’s
total melt down, the Otters’ manager made a very strange pronouncement to wrap
up a very strange season, “I would not have liked our chances against the
Rascals in a one game playoff with the way we were swinging the bats,” he said.
Oddly, over nine seasons of playing independent minor league baseball in a combined four different leagues while toiling for ten teams, Isaac Wenrich and Victor Beriguete baseball paths’, until September 8, 2015, had never crossed. Laboring in such small crossroads towns as Sonoma and Normal, selling their services to teams with nicknames like the Stompers and the GrainBelts, the right handed reliever from the Dominican and the catcher from Pennsylvania, via a New Hampshire college, both 27 years of age, now dueled in a showdown that when over left Wenrich crumpled on both knees at first base, head down pounding his fists into the ground and Beriguete behind the nearby pitcher’s mound, buried under celebrating teammates. One dream dead, the other still alive.
In the
top of the 8th inning Wenrich had driven a long home run over the center field
fence of the Rascal’s T. R. Hughes Stadium, giving the visiting Freedom and
seemingly safe 5-2 lead in this do or die Frontier League playoff game. The
winner would advance on to the semifinal round while the loser would stow away
their equipment until next spring.
Before
the final four outs were recorded the Rascals would provide for their small but
enthusiastic group of fans a heart stopping finish followed by a quaint
fan/team on the field celebration.
ith two
outs and no runners on base in the bottom of the 8th inning, Freedom reliever
Ethan Gibbons, to this point sailing along effortlessly, suddenly floundered.
Three walks and an error on the shortstop had plated one run and loaded the
bases with Rascals. With two strikes, River City’s ninth place hitter, Josh
Silver, became an unlikely season saving hero blasting a Gibbons fast ball off
the center field wall, driving in three runs, dramatically rallying the seemingly
beaten Rascals to a 6-5 lead. Silver stood atop second base pumping his right
fist wildly in the air while accepting loud cheers from an ecstatic and
relieved Rascal’s dugout.
Despite
being outhit 15-5, the Rascals were poised to steal a critical playoff win,
keeping alive their season. All that was now needed were three top of the ninth
inning outs. Enter from the right center field bullpen closer Beriguete.
 |
| Grass Roots |
The
bullpen had been all season for the Rascals an Achilles heel. With two weeks
left in the regular season Manager Brooks related it was his biggest concern
entering the stretch run of the schedule. The week prior Brooks had engineered
a trade to acquire the side arming Beriguete from league rival Normal. The new
closer’s performance over the last 20 regular season games had drawn mixed
reviews form both Brooks and Rascal fans. When the Dominican with a funky
sidearm delivery and even funkier demeanor was on his game he was unhittable,
especially for right handed hitting batters. His downfall, though, was his
control. He had a pendency for walks, a fatal flaw for a closer. Brooks
mentioned the stress of the “do or die” attitude confidence a manager must
convey to his closer. It is a contentious relationship at all levels of
baseball. When the closer enters, the bull pen shuts down, sending a message
from the manager to the psyche of his closer that we are burning the boats,
“you are the man. We win or lose with you,” endorsement. With two weeks left in
the season, Brooks was not sure if Beriguete was “the man,” or not; but he also
honestly acknowledge that at this late stage of the season he had no other
viable options.
With a
one run lead to protect and his team’s season riding on his performance,
Beriguete promptly and to the groans of the Rascal faithful, walked on four
pitches Zack Mitchell, the first Florence batter he faced. Brooks motioned for
both a right handed and a left handed reliever to begin throwing in the
Rascal’s bullpen, located beyond the right center field fence. As the sometimes
volatile Beriguete turned his back to home plate to rub up a new baseball, he
had a clear view of the action of his potential replacements and the message
Brooks was sending him.
After
watching the first two pitches cross wide of the plate for called balls,
Florence’s Austin Newell lashed a single to right field, advancing Mitchell and
the tying run to third base. The winning and season winning run was now perched
on first, with still no outs.
Brooks
took two steps from the Rascal’s mound, heading on to the playing field with an
apparent early hook for his beleaguered closer. Rascal’s catcher Josh Lundy
took one step from his position behind home plate, caught the gaze of the
striding Brooks and stopped the manager in mid stride with a wave of his gloved
hand, motioning for the manager to return to the dugout. It was the gritty
Lundy’s way of saying to Brooks, “he is our closer, don’t lose your nerve now.”
Ludy is
a prototypical Frontier League veteran, desperately holding on to the dream. A
graduate of Baylor University, where he had been named the Big 12 player of the
Year, Ludy was a 2012 8th round draft choice of the Philadelphia
Phillies. Ludy spend two years in the Phillies organization bouncing back and
forth between the Sally League’s Low A level team in Lakewood and the Florida
League High A team in Clearwater.
In May,
2014, hitting only .246 as a 25 year old in A ball, Ludy was giving his unconditional release
by the A’s. When no suitors in affiliated ball came calling, Ludy and his
catcher’s mitt migrated to the welcoming and open arms of the Rascals. It was a
great fit as Ludy became a team leader in River City. In 51 games the fireplug
5’9, 210 pound backstop smashed 16 home runs complimented with .362 batting
average.
Ludy’s
performance in River City caught the eyes of local bird dog scouts and his
contract in July, 2014 was purchased by the Oakland A’s. He was assigned to A’s
High Class A team at Beloit, WI in the Midwest League. After playing 14 games
and finishing the season in Beloit (while his former Rascal teammates were
falling one game short of a Frontier League championship), hitting only .214,
he receive his second pink slip of the 2014 season.
In
April, 2015, Ludy re-signed with the Rascals. At 26 years of age and twice
having fallen off the affiliated ladder, Ludy’s chances of resigning over the
upcoming winter with a major league organization are at best, slim. The odds of
him ever making a major league roster, practically nil. The likelihood that
this summer will be his last in pro ball, high. He desperately wants to exit
with, “a ring.”
Beriguete rewarded the vote of confidence from his catcher by falling behind the next hitter, Sam Eberle, two balls to one strike. As Brooks paced in the Rascal’s dugout, with the cry from one leather lunged Rascal’s fan of, “go get him Brooks or I will do it for you,” ringing in the skipper’s ears, Beriguete caught the eye of his manager and mouthed from the mound to Brooks one of the few English phrases in his vocabulary, “we ok.” He then blew two fast balls past Eberle. One out.
Now,
suddenly in his groove, Beriguette struck out Florence pinch hitter Ozzy
Gonzalez on three pitches. Two outs.
As every true baseball fan knows, the hardest out in the game is the 27th.
With two
outs in the top of the ninth inning, with the tying run now perched 90 feet
from home plate, with the potential winning run on second -one base hit from
the League semi-finals - the stage was set for the Beriguette’s/Wenrich
showdown, winner take all. With both players at the maximum Frontier League age
limit of 27 years, the result would be not only season defining for their
teammates, but highly probably career ending for the loser.
After watching Beriguette’s first three pitches - two balls and one strike - wiz by, the right handed hitting Wenrich took his bat off his shoulder, leveled the picture perfect swinging arc of his bat stroke - a skill he had spent most of youth mastering - on an outside and low slider from Beriguette. Baseball is a game of inches. Wenrich just missed centering the ball on the barrel of his wooden bat. Instead of a winning live drive he delivered a lazy fly ball to center field and the waiting glove of the Rascal’s Curren Radel, igniting an on field celebration of both joy and relief for the 24 young men wearing black Rascal’s jerseys.
For at
least two more games, there will be air in the lungs of the 2015 River City
Rascals, the dream still alive. The Freedom quietly loaded their bus and
departed into the night, heading east, transporting most on board into an
uncertain off-season, a baseball Purgatory.
“America is
built around this premise that you can do it, and there are an awful lot of
people who are unlikely to have done it who did.”
Michael
Bloomberg
A good half of surviving in the
lower levels of minor league baseball is resilience and the 2015 River City
Rascals, if they are anything, are resilient.
The Rascals dropped the first
game of their three game playoff series with the Eastern Division winners and
owners of the best regular season record; 63-33, the Southern Illinois Miners.
Compounding the task they now faced, it was the only game the Rascal would
host. Niko Vasquez had broken an 8th inning 3-3 tie with a booming
450 foot blast over T.R. Hughes Stadium’s left center field wall, resulting in
a 5-3 Miners win. River City would now have to travel to Marion, IL and win two
consecutive weekend games in the Miners spacious and beautiful Rent One Bank
Park. The Miners entered the weekend showdown holding a huge 31-13 all-time
home field advantage vs. the Rascals.
Too really pile on to the
improbability of any Rascal’s success in the upcoming game(s) and the futility
of making the two hour trip south, the Miners would have on the hill Saturday
the Frontier League’s runaway choice for pitcher of the year, Adam Lopez. The
6’6” hard throwing right hander finished the year with overwhelming statistical
superiority over the hitters in the league; a 10-0 mark with a minuscule ERA of
1.86 with batters hitting only .185 against him. Earlier in the summer Lopez
had hurled a complete game 4 hit shutout against the Rascals.
Lopez, as he warmed up before the
game in the right center field bull pen, looked as dominant as his resume. His
delivery was free and easy. He had the air of a major leaguer. As with all
standouts in the Frontier League, the looming question was the ignored two ton
elephant in the room: why didn’t Lopez make it in affiliated ball?
Lopez, a Fredericksburg, VA
native, was a 21st round draft choice of the Chicago White Sox in
the 2012 draft. After pitching two seasons for Virginia Military Institute and
leading the Big South Conference with 86 strike outs in 79 innings, in 2011
Lopez underwent Tommy John arm surgery. The White Sox deemed him fully
recovered, signed him and sent the strike out specialist in 2013 to their high
A affiliate, Kanapolis, NC in the Sally League. Lopez was a totally dominant
pitcher in 2013, recording a 5-3 record, a 2.54 ERA and a dominant 129 strike
outs in only 99 innings; an impressive K/W ratio at any level of baseball.
Inexplicitly, Lopez threw only 11
innings in 2014 before the White Sox released him. He signed over the winter
with the Miners and threw 15 shutout innings in his first two Frontier League
games. His contract was quickly bought up by the Seattle Mariners. However,
within a week, he was returned to the Miners, his reconstructed right shoulder
unable to pass the approval of the Seattle team medical staff. Despite the
whiff by the Mariners, his shoulder had held up quite well all summer while
dominating the Frontier League batters.
All the obstacles facing the
Rascals, in the end, were overcome. Lopez became uncharacteristically wild in
the third inning, allowing for two walks and two wild pitches, wrapped around a
Miner fielding error, allowing the Rascals to turn one bunt single into a three
run inning. Final score River City 7, Southern Illinois 2; setting up a Sunday
afternoon rubber match between the two teams. For the third game in the last
four the Rascals would face a must win encounter, or their 2015 season would be
over.
Commissioner Bill Lee told me the
two teams were the current most heated rivalry in the Frontier League. As Lee
pointed out, they don’t like each other. When the Rascals’ violated age old
baseball etiquette by stealing two bases in the 9th inning of game
two when leading by five runs, the barking from the Miner’s first base dugout
let the visitors know the transgression had been noted and registered for
action the next day.
“Success and failure. We think of them as
opposites, but they're really not. They're companions - the hero and the
sidekick.”
Laurence Shames
What a
marvelous setting for Game 3, the Southern Illinois Miners vs. the River City
Rascals playoff series: 70 degrees with cloudless blue skies, low humidity with
a gentle south wind. For the uninformed who do not appreciate how the fiber of
baseball pulsates through main street American culture, I offer an open seat
next to me at Rent One Park in Marion, IL, on this beautiful Indian summer
September day. As I await the first pitch of a game about to be played between
men who will take the field with the purist and the noblest of intentions, my
hotdog is being grilled to order. All that is needed now to facilitate this
perfect setting is for Mr. Rockwell to break out his paint and brushes and
replicate onto a two dimensional canvas this three dimensional master piece I
soak in from my third base box seat.
The
hometown crowd is small (announced as 1,822) but enthusiastic. They represent
this middle of America rural community with pride. After finishing my pre game
meal and 15 minutes before the Miners will sprint from the first base dugout to
take their defensive positions for the top of the first inning, I move to the
shade of the grand stand to engage a group I had spoken with the night before;
older men with leathery skin and suntanned foreheads, whom I assume are
farmers. They understand baseball. They talk of past success and of recent
failures. Just a year ago, one tells me, the Miners had traveled to Shamburg,
IL and won the first game of that year’s best of three semi-final series only
to return home and drop two. Will history repeat? His fellow boosters quickly
swat aside his pessimistic memories. All around assure me their heroes in the
black jerseys would seize the moment and send the upstart and hated nine from
St. Louis back north up interstate 54 and an early start on the long 8 month
off season.
The
Traverse City, MI Beach Bums had the night before clinched their own semifinal
series with a two game sweep of the Normal Cornbelters. With the League’s best
record, the Miners would host the first two games of the best of five
championship series, with the Beach Bums making the 700 mile trip from the edge
of Lake Michigan down to Marion. At least that was the pre-game plan the
confident Miner’s faithful discussed.
These
Miner’s boosters proclaim themselves as the most loyal fans in the FL. Even the
few followers of the Rascals who made the trip to Marion, when I polled them,
had agreed. After last night’s unexpected setback, the Miner boosters had met
with the manager and most of the Miner’s players at the local Dairy Queen, as
they do after all Saturday night home games.
They had all departed the late night meal assured the loss to the
Rascals had been a quirk, the result of several bad bounces that the baseball
god’s now had out of their system such shenanigans and Sunday’s matchup now
heavily favored the home towners. A post game celebration after Sunday’s
clincher was scheduled for Applebee’s and plans for the pep rally before Game
One of the finals on Tuesday with the Beach Bums would be cemented then.
But Josh
Silver ruined it all.
Silver
is the soft spoken but well liked first baseman of the River City Rascals. In a
league full of unsung heroes, Silver became the Frontier League’s new gold
standard for opportunism. When opportunity knocked Sunday in the third and
deciding game, Silver didn’t just answer, he kicked the damn door in.
The
unassuming Silver was signed by the Rascals in 2014 after the conclusion of his
lightly decorated career at Lee University, a NCAA Division II program in
Florida. The 25 year old native of Elk Grove, CA went undrafted out of college.
Viewed by Rascal’s Manager Steve Brook as a valued utility player, one
versatile enough to fit in where needed, Silver had even pitched a couple of
innings back in a June blow out game, saving some innings for an at the time
overused bull pen. Silver was above all, a team player.
A part
time starter at first base and the outfield most of the season, Silver entered
the game on Sunday with over the course of the entire 96 game season having hit
only one homerun and driven in a mere seventeen runs. Trailing the Miners 2-1
in the fourth inning, Silver came to the plate with the bases loaded and one
out. The Miners had intentionally walked the previous Rascal’s bats man, Josh
Ludy, to get to the light hitting Silver. The 8th man in the Rascal’s
order, Silver drove the first pitch from Miner Starter Rick Teasley over the
375 foot sign in left center field, a grand slam home run dramatically and
suddenly turning a one run deficit into a 3 run lead.
With the
notoriously porous Rascals bullpen to worry about and with the visitors
clinging to a two run lead in the 8th inning, the River City dugout
was clearly on edge. So close to pulling a major upset by coming into Marion
and winning two consecutive games, but yet, so far. Such concerns soon dissipated
into the Southern Illinois night. With two outs and once again the bases
loaded, Silver repeated his heroics, this time taking a 0-1 fastball and
driving it over the left center field fence at almost the same location as his
4th inning shot. Grand slam.
Again. Four runs plated and a now very comfortable six run late game
Rascal lead.
The
width of the bearded Silver’s grin as he floated around the bases to the rowdy
cheers of his teammates was matched only by the stone dead silence of the Miner’s
home crowd. Shocked. Tonight, there would be no joy in Mudville as the Mighty
Casey, this time, had not struck out. A player with only one home run for the
entire season had just become the first player in the 23 year history of the
Frontier League to hit two grand slam home runs in one game. Silver’s
scintillating blasts came in the most intense of situations, a clutch
performance whose memories should 50 years from now still warm the aged bones
of Josh Silver.
Fifteen
minutes later Silver scooped up a ground ball and stepped unassisted on first
base to record the third out of the bottom of the ninth inning and secure a
River City 9 to 5 series clinching win. After a giddy but short on field
celebration, the Rascals loaded their bus - road warriors still - on their way
to Traverse City, MI and one last series to close out the season; now only
three wins from the coveted ring.
For as
long as the Rascal’s franchise lives, the Herculean feat of Josh Silver on a
beautiful summer night in Marion, IL will live on, Silver now the River City
version of Bucky Dent. After the game Silver confirmed to his back slapping
teammates that he could not remember the last time he had hit a grand slam home
run. Maybe Little League, maybe never?
It was
now time for the winners to load up their bus idling behind the right center
field clubhouse and head on to the next and final series, win or lose, of the
2015 season.
Life in
the low minors cannot be validated without a discourse about the horrific and
endless all night bus rides, kidney jarring torturest journeys, linking one
Podunk minor league town to the next. For veterans, it is a badge of honor to
be worn with pride when lecturing wide eyed rookies about the old days. Rascals
relief pitcher Victor Beriguele, a veteran of five years in the Dominican
League could bear witness to his younger teammates of the narrow roads of his
native land, a sojourn on two lanes at 35 miles per hour with curves and hills
all leading every few miles to the main street of a small native village, all
necessary for passage through to the next game.
No minor
leaguer can ever truthfully say they have learned how to ride comfortably on a
bus. As Al Burian noted in Burn Collector 2, "You don't really sleep on
the bus; mainly you just contort exhaustedly, trying vainly to unlock the
secret yoga position that will facilitate comfort in the cramped seats."
But this
trip out of Marion would be an anomaly, a happy ride. The comradery and
brotherhood amongst these 24 of diverse backgrounds thrown together for a short
four months would never be more fraternal than now. Illuminated by the bright
stars of a cloudless Illinois night, the Rascals’ chartered bus rocked slightly
at 70 miles an hour as it rolled north toward upstate Michigan and a day after
tomorrow championship showdown with Traverse City. The Mississippi and Missouri
Rivers lay ahead, and beyond it the roads to Lake Michigan. But the beach side
resort town was miles away through the rich river bottom land that Interstate
57 now dissected, time to settle in. It was after midnight and the broad road
was mostly void of other vehicles.
It was
dark in the bus except for the pale glow of light from the dash in front of the
driver. It was a quiet time to smile, to relax and to reflect as a member of a
special group who in a few days would scatter to all parts, never again to be
one, but for tonight, bonded in triumph as brothers. It was a momentary reprise
from the stress of surviving on $150 a week, a rare moment in time when to be
an adult still playing a kid’s game made one feel special, a professional
baseball player with another game now waiting over the dawning of a new day.
Rascal
Manager Steve Brook will finish his 6th season at the helm of the
River City Rascals with a career record an even 100 games above .500, 340-240.
Brook’s winning % is the highest in the history of the league. He has gotten RC
into the championship round of the Frontier League playoffs four times in six
tries, an unprecedented feat for a FL manager. His first year as skipper saw
his scrappy 2010 team battle through the playoffs as a wildcard and defeated
the Traverse City Beach Bums three games to one to claim the league title.
Since
that initial success, the Rascals under Brook have won their way to the final
round three more times, falling in all three, winning only 2 of 11 championship
round games while finishing runner-up in 2011, 2014 and again in the just
completed 2015 playoffs.
For a
team that seemed to have all the momentum needed after a scintillating
semi-final come from behind series win over Southern Illinois, the Rascals feel
flat on their faces in the 2015 championship series against Traverse City.
In game
1 of the best of five series, held in Traverse City, the Beach Bums’ starter
Kramer Champlin breezed to a 6-0 win, striking out seven Rascals and scattering
six hits over seven complete innings. Champlin can lay claim to having the
number of the FL’s top hitting team, running his scoreless inning streak
against the Rascals to 22 innings.
Rascal’s
ace, Tim Koons, who had racked up a perfect 11-0 mark in the regular season,
allowed five runs on nine hits in just five innings of work and recorded his
first loss of the season.
Game two
will haunt Brook all winter.
The
Rascals maneuvered themselves into perfect position to steal home field
advantage, holding a 5-1 game two lead after six innings. But it was Beach Bum
Jose Vargas night to be a hero. The 30 year old from California has been a
favorite in the northern Michigan town since 2010 when in his first season he
was named the league MVP. Vargas’ six year tenure with the same team is unheard
of in independent ball. He is the unquestioned leader of the Beach Bums, the
most popular player on a team that has become a flag ship franchise for the
Frontier League, always at or near the top in League attendance. If any player
in the league has had job security, a
team official told me, it is Vargas. However, having reached the age of 30
during the 2015 season, he will be forced to retire at the end of the year. He
made the most of his fading Beach Bum career. Showing why time is of the
essence, it was apparent from game one that Vargas was playing his final series
as a Beach Bum with a sense of urgency. He started the comeback in game two
with a leadoff homer in the sixth inning cutting the Rascal’s lead to 5-2.
In the
seventh, Beach Bum Alex Tomasovich
launched a looping RBI double down the right field line. Jay Austin then
followed with an RBI single
to left, cutting the RC lead to 5-4.
In the
eighth, TC’s Greg Harris showed unexpected power by hitting a solo home run
over the left field fence, only his second round tripper of the year. The Bums
had chipped away all evening and now had finally tied the score at 5-5.
A
scoreless top of the ninth poised the Bums for some walk off heroics and their
leader and captain proved more than up to the challenge. With a display of
championship level hustle, Jeff DeBlieux punch a single to shallow left, caught
the Rascal defense napping and stretched the bloop single into a double,
placing the winning run at second base and now in scoring position. DeBlieux
was sacrificed to third. After a fouled pop up for the second out, the red hot
Vargas strutted to the plate and produced the game winner with a solid single
to right center field.
It was
an eight hour all night 604 mile bus ride for the dispirited Rascals back to
O’Fallon and game three to be held at T.R. Hughes Ball Park.
Back on
their home turf for a Friday night game 3 and needing three wins in a row to
claim the title, the Rascals showed little spirit, despite the efforts of a
surprisingly large and focal home crowd. The Beach Bums jumped to a first
inning 1-0 lead and never looked back. The Rascals put their first two hitters
in the bottom of the first on base only to have MVP Taylor Ard foul out and
cleanup hitter Zach Komeanti ground into a 6-4-3 double play.
After
the rally killer first inning DP, a malaise set in over the Rascals that never
faded as the visitors stretched their lead into a 4-1 championship clincher.
Rascals’
center fielder Curran Redal finished the playoffs with a disappointing 3 for 27
hitting performance. The four year RC vet seemed uncomfortable the entire
duration of the two week playoff run,
showing none of the energy that had for four years made the slightly built
player a crowd favorite. As a spark plug for the offense from his leadoff
position, Redal’s funk seemed to carry over from game to game, never being able
to shake his late season slump and jump starts his team. His hitting
deficiencies affected the rest of his game. Radel’s play in the field was more
conservative, his aggressiveness on the bases, more restrained. It was a sad and deflating way to end a
season, and perhaps a career, for a player who had led the Frontier League in
both at bats and hits over the course of the 2015 season.
“I am
probably done,” Redal said. “I will not say for sure just yet, but I am past
the 27 year age limit and the only way I could come back next year for the
Rascals is if I was the designated veteran player and Brook has not given me
any indication he wants me back in that role. I don’t know if I want to start
again all over in another town, with another team. The newness has worn off. I
have four years of pro ball and maybe that is enough. I will give it a week or
two to decide after I talk to my family and other supporters. I have played
this whole year with the thought that this is it, preparing myself to call it
quits, a career. I think it is time, maybe it’s time, I don’t know.”
Despite
a career of impressive statistics at
both the division I collegiate level and four years of independent baseball,
Curran Radel has never played an inning of affiliated ball and probably, it
appears now, never will.
Win or
lose, it is always sad near the end of any baseball season, the summer over
with the cold winds of fall not far behind. The Southern Illinois Miners have
had their championship run curtailed, having just been eliminated by a playoff
loss to the visiting River City Rascals. If you think about it for long, it
becomes very sad, like a kid’s last summer picnic before back to school, so you
don't. So when the season is over you just go on, like the Miners’ Niko
Vasquez, who, the last day of perhaps his last season and after the final out, having gathered his
glove and bats from the dugout and before making the long walk to the clubhouse
behind the right field wall and an uncertain future, took time to give one last
hug to four wide eyed young bleacher ladies. See you in the spring, they said.
Sure you will, replied Vasquez.
The
Frontier League is a classic American backroads cross between penurious
efficiency and timeless charm. The league’s structure within its mission –
“it’s not about winning, it is about entertainment,” – and the somewhat slightly off-kilter Peter Pan characters who
man the leading roles give the circuit the quaint glow that so entices those
who appreciate what baseball means to the American soul. Other American staple
sporting events: football, hockey basketball and soccer; they are about winning
- all about winning. But baseball is different, just is, always has been and
always will be; a timeless sport that will embrace the Cubs for their perpetual
ineptness as grand and readily as to lionize the Yankees for their consistent
dominance. There is no clock in baseball so time never runs out. Baseball is
about the summer of our youth, befuddling Captain Hook and never growing old.
That is why the Frontier League exists. Long live the dreamers.
