7/29/2019

Dreaming in the Bush Leagues

“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone."

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



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.”


But are we now seeing the bull market of minor league baseball turn into a bear? “Attendance is down all over this summer,” Lee admits. “Part of it was that we had just horrible weather in June. That hurt, but yes minor league baseball is not as “hot” as it was a decade ago. Much of that goes in cycles. When an owner buys a franchise in our league, I sit down with them and help draw up a five year business plan for their team. I tell them to expect a honeymoon period of one are two years, then the newness wears off and you should expect a leveling out and maybe even a drop in attendance. It is how hard you work the third through fifth year that will dictate the stability of your investment.”

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.”



   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.”


“You could be a kid for as long as you want when you play baseball.”

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.”


Being the 90th player chosen overall that June day should have been a harbinger of a supposed long and lucrative professional career. It has not gone as supposed.

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.

“The great thing about baseball is the causality is easy to determine and it always falls on the shoulders of one person. So there is absolute responsibility. That's why baseball is psychologically the cruelest sport and why it really requires psychological resources to play baseball - because you have to learn to live with failure.”

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.


Rascal’s Manager Steve Brook likes the idea of age limitations. “It keeps the game fresh and the players with a more hungry desire. For example, the Northern League (a rival Independent League) has no age limits. You get a lot of guys in their mid to late 30’s, many of them just hanging on, their name more of a draw than their talent. I just don’t think they give the same effort that you see in the Frontier League. It has just been in the last few years that the league has allowed for the one veteran player per team who can play up until the age of 30.”

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.
















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