Major Fun in the Minor Leagues
August 20, 2010
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If you're sick of the big leagues, but not baseball, check out your backyard.
Here in Michigan you can watch the Beach Bums in Traverse City, the Lugnuts in Lansing, the West Michigan Whitecaps near Grand Rapids, the Great Lake Loons in Midland, and the Kings in Kalamazoo. Michigan fans can see six minor league teams if you count the Toledo Mudhens; and seven if the Tigers start slumping again. Michigan baseball fans haven’t had it this good in decades.
In 1949, the U.S. boasted almost 500 minor league teams, supported by forty-two million fans. But their ranks shriveled when major league baseball expanded, TV blossomed and air conditioning made staying at home much cooler. In just three years, attendance dropped almost 80-percent.
But when major league baseball turned its back on its fans with strikes and lockouts, the minor leagues aggressively courted them. Almost every fan-friendly custom you see at major league stadiums today they stole from the minors, including fancy food, daily promotions, pop music and endless stunts to keep the fans coming back, win or lose. As a result, the minors have grown back to a robust 176 teams nationwide.
Visit one, and you understand why. You park your car for a couple bucks, and in a couple minutes, you’re in your seat. Every employee you meet seems to be working overtime to keep you fat and happy. They remember the season ticket holders’ names, and welcome them back each night.
The workers shower the fans with free frisbees, candy bars and bunched-up t-shirts fired from sling-shots. Between innings, they sponsor the usual potpourri of minor league gags, including the dizzy bat race, the hula hoop contest and a sumo wrestling match -- always involving fans pulled from the stands.
A minor league baseball park is no place for the self-conscious. You should expect to let your hair down and join the show.
Kids play on the grass embankments, stand on the dugouts and sing "Take me out to the Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch -- while waving to their parents -- and get to run around the bases when the game's over.
Fans don't leave minor league games early, because they’re enjoying the whole experience, not just the outcome.
In the minors, even the players aim top lease. Unlike the lolly gaggers in the majors, the bush leaguers take their at-bats as if they're being timed, they don't whine about the umpire’s calls and they actually run all the way to first base on hopeless ground balls. Of course, they’d better, or they’re gone.
The players put their hearts in their work for less than they could make flipping burgers at McDonald's. So, why do it? Because after four or five years of flipping burgers, McDonald’s will never give you a big league contract. Do any of these guys really have a chance? As one manager told me, "If you got a uniform, you got a chance."
These guys are doing what they've dreamed about all their lives: playing baseball.
Some dreams are a little more modest. I met two brothers who had good jobs at Oldsmobile, but asked the Lansing Lugnuts if they could walk around the park with trash cans. They only got minimum wage – and all the cans they could find. "If it wasn't fun,” one told me, “we wouldn't be here."
He then picked up his trash can, turned toward his buddies in the stands and bellowed, "Get yer trraaaaaash. Cold trash here! Get yer trash!"
And that, in a peanut shell, is the difference between the majors and the minors: Everyone in the minors is making less money, and having more fun.
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Download | Duration: 00:03:36
If you're sick of the big leagues, but not baseball, check out your backyard.
Here in Michigan you can watch the Beach Bums in Traverse City, the Lugnuts in Lansing, the West Michigan Whitecaps near Grand Rapids, the Great Lake Loons in Midland, and the Kings in Kalamazoo. Michigan fans can see six minor league teams if you count the Toledo Mudhens; and seven if the Tigers start slumping again. Michigan baseball fans haven’t had it this good in decades.
In 1949, the U.S. boasted almost 500 minor league teams, supported by forty-two million fans. But their ranks shriveled when major league baseball expanded, TV blossomed and air conditioning made staying at home much cooler. In just three years, attendance dropped almost 80-percent.
But when major league baseball turned its back on its fans with strikes and lockouts, the minor leagues aggressively courted them. Almost every fan-friendly custom you see at major league stadiums today they stole from the minors, including fancy food, daily promotions, pop music and endless stunts to keep the fans coming back, win or lose. As a result, the minors have grown back to a robust 176 teams nationwide.
Visit one, and you understand why. You park your car for a couple bucks, and in a couple minutes, you’re in your seat. Every employee you meet seems to be working overtime to keep you fat and happy. They remember the season ticket holders’ names, and welcome them back each night.
The workers shower the fans with free frisbees, candy bars and bunched-up t-shirts fired from sling-shots. Between innings, they sponsor the usual potpourri of minor league gags, including the dizzy bat race, the hula hoop contest and a sumo wrestling match -- always involving fans pulled from the stands.
A minor league baseball park is no place for the self-conscious. You should expect to let your hair down and join the show.
Kids play on the grass embankments, stand on the dugouts and sing "Take me out to the Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch -- while waving to their parents -- and get to run around the bases when the game's over.
Fans don't leave minor league games early, because they’re enjoying the whole experience, not just the outcome.
In the minors, even the players aim top lease. Unlike the lolly gaggers in the majors, the bush leaguers take their at-bats as if they're being timed, they don't whine about the umpire’s calls and they actually run all the way to first base on hopeless ground balls. Of course, they’d better, or they’re gone.
The players put their hearts in their work for less than they could make flipping burgers at McDonald's. So, why do it? Because after four or five years of flipping burgers, McDonald’s will never give you a big league contract. Do any of these guys really have a chance? As one manager told me, "If you got a uniform, you got a chance."
These guys are doing what they've dreamed about all their lives: playing baseball.
Some dreams are a little more modest. I met two brothers who had good jobs at Oldsmobile, but asked the Lansing Lugnuts if they could walk around the park with trash cans. They only got minimum wage – and all the cans they could find. "If it wasn't fun,” one told me, “we wouldn't be here."
He then picked up his trash can, turned toward his buddies in the stands and bellowed, "Get yer trraaaaaash. Cold trash here! Get yer trash!"
And that, in a peanut shell, is the difference between the majors and the minors: Everyone in the minors is making less money, and having more fun.
Copyright© 2010, Michigan Radio
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John —
AMEN!
Excellent points about the Minors.
During my years in Oregon I went to many games at Civic Stadium, the 41-year home of the S.D. Padres' "Eugene Emeralds." The Ems is a Short-Season A team, where Jim Bunning got his start -- 8 years before his first no-hitter for the Tigers, and 14 before he threw his perfect game for the Phillies. Former Padres' manager Greg Riddoch is the shrewd and wise Emeralds' boss.
Sadly, Civic Stadium is about to disappear. It's the oldest pro baseball stadium west of the Mississippi — solid wood with massive steel cables holding it all together. Despite the Ems' loyal fans' funding-raising & petition drives, Civic cannot be saved. She is just too ancient to make renovation financially feasible. Last September, after the Ems' bitter-sweet final game at Civic, the sold-out crowd of 6,800 was invited onto the field to hobnob with the players & staff and to take away anything we wanted as a Civic Stadium remembrance. There was no wild scramble, only quiet as we made our way out of the stands. With respectful affection fans carefully cut out pieces of turf, unscrewed light bulbs from the elderly scoreboard, and gently removed line-up posters. I took a picture of a guy on his knees with a pair of scissors, carefully collecting grass clippings and putting them between the pages of his program.
So, the beloved Ems are playing this season in PK Park, sharing the brand-new stadium built by Phil Knight for the return of PAC-10 baseball to the U.O. Ducks.
But Ems games will never be quite the same. You are so right: a minor league night at the ballpark is a family and baseball lover's summer-evening paradise. At Civic, "Logging Night," "Fireworks Friday," "Bi-Mart Give-Away Tuesday," and "Kids Run the Bases" night were pure fun. And not only that — the beer & hot dogs at Civic were twice as good as they are in the Big Leagues.
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Minor league baseball more and more is where real fans of the sport congregate, as the major leagues compete to attract the jet set with ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds...and games that boringly increasingly depend on the long ball for victory.
But you've left out a Michigan Minor League team. The Oakland County Cruisers, a largely road club, led the Frontier League East Division by as much as seven games for most of the season, until losing out to the hard-charging Traverse City Beach Bums in the divisional championship. What the Cruisers presently lack in venue, they more than make up in good pitching and superb managing. They deserve watching over the long haul -- never mind that their present focus must perforce be on the construction of a ballpark.
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