There is a scene from that Kevin Costner baseball movie (not the one about Iowa and building it and they will come) that speaks to America’s reverence for its national pastime.
Susan Sarandon’s character in “Bull Durham” explained: “I’ve worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms and Isadora Duncan. . . . And the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.”
This, for better or worse, is baseball in small-town America, where the game is played with the most passion, where ballplayers are not yet jaded by agents and endorsement deals–all hoping to one day make it to the big show.
In this neck of the woods, the Cubs and White Sox get top billing. But to experience baseball at its purest, consider driving an hour outside the city limits to five of the area’s minor league clubs. In Joliet, Geneva, Schaumburg, Gary and Crestwood, a trip to the ballpark is cheaper, the food tastes better, the entertainment is more entertaining and the players actually sign autographs for kids, every last one waiting. We visited five and experienced the ballparks through the eyes of those who know them best.
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Joliet Jackhammers
Jammer is more than 7 feet tall, with shag blue fur and a gigantic snout. He looks like the love child of the Philly Fanatic and Blueberry Violet from “Willy Wonka.”
Kids adore him. He is the pied piper of southwest suburbia, skipping carefree across the concourse of Silver Cross Field.
Nestled in downtown Joliet, Silver Cross Field is as picturesque a ballpark as you’ll find in any small town. Church steeples jut out beyond the outfield, and the passing train’s blare adds to the ambience. Just over the left-field wall, members of the Joliet Fire Department sit atop a fire engine, watching the game as the warm spring evening slips lazily by.
For the couple thousand fans in attendance this evening, Family Night Tuesdays, Jammer is the star attraction.
From the first pitch to beyond the final out, Jammer is hugging fans and dancing on the dugout. He’s racing kids around the base paths (Jammer always seems to fall behind at the last moment), or signing autographs. How he has such excellent penmanship with his oversized, orange four-digit hands is a wonder.
While other mascots might show up once or twice during a game, usually with some promotional stunt, Jammer is almost always present–hence the team’s marketing campaign: “Jackhammers Entertainment . . . and the Baseball Ain’t Bad Either!”
Most families here can’t tell you the name of the starting pitcher. They’re more likely to tell you who won the in-between inning sprint between the chicken and the egg, in the “What came first race.” There’s the jousting competition between two fans–one dressed as a cockroach, the other as an ant–trying to knock each other’s detachable heads off. Behind home plate, four fans are chosen to sit in large, cushy leather armchairs with an outdoor air conditioning system. Then there’s the fan hanging in a Velcro Suit above right field who wins a truck if he or she catches a homerun ball.
And of course there’s Jammer showing his love for Jackhammers baseball–part of the independent Northern League–by shaking his big, blue rump in the face of a gleeful fan.
“It’s definitely an unconventional profession,” says the man inside, Scott Adams, 26, of Joliet. “$65,000 for school and here I am dancing around in a suit.”
Adams is a substitute teacher, filmmaker and the man who has played Jammer since the team’s inaugural season in 2002. During the game, he is a walking, dancing, kinetic blur. Last season, he lost 30 pounds during the four-month baseball season.
By the second inning, Jammer and his human assistant, Shawn Domanic, 16–“Joliet Catholic football rules!”–are traversing the crowd. Because of Family Night, the game started at 6:05, an hour earlier than usual, and kids are invited to run around the bases after the game.
Jammer and Shawn work out a system of hand signals, since Jammer is a non-speaking character. A shake of the wrist means Jammer needs a marker to sign an autograph. A tap on the watch means it’s time to go. Shawn is also on the lookout for unruly teenagers, who should think better than to tug at Jammer’s head or kick him in the nether regions.
Four hours later, after Jammer signs his last autograph, Adams is recovering in the locker room, his white T-shirt translucent from the in-costume steam bath. He chugs down a huge bottle of blue Gatorade, the color of the drink matching Jammer’s fur.
“It’s so nice to be able to appeal to 2-year-olds and 80-year-olds,” Adams says. “It beats the nine-to-five office job.”
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Kane County Cougars
In Kane County, where towns mark their territories with water reservoirs and the sky just seems bluer, one might be led to believe life goes on at a more relaxed pace.
But for the Kane County Cougars, the single-A affiliate of the Oakland Athletics, multitasking is more than a virtue, it’s a necessity.
Take Kevin Sullivan, or “Sully” as his colleagues call him. He’s the Web master, updating the team Web site before and after games. He selects the music that’s played over loudspeakers at Philip B. Elfstrom Stadium in Geneva, the Cougars’ home field. He plays video clips of cartoons and player introductions. He’s the sound effects guy, pressing the F4 button on his computer for “Boing” (incidentally, F5 is “Boing 2” and F12 “Boing 3”).
And then there’s his main job as public address announcer.
Sullivan, a burly, 34-year-old ex-jock from North Aurora, hasn’t missed a game since joining the Cougars in 1997. He doesn’t consider this a job, as much as it is a blessing.
“It’s been the happiest eight years of my life,” Sullivan says. “How many people could say if they won the lottery, they’d still be doing their job tomorrow?”
Sullivan’s day begins at 9:30 a.m. Today is Kids Reading Day at the ballpark, and students will be bused in for the noon start time.
Going over his pre-game music, Sullivan realizes the Steve Miller Band might not go over for kids as well as Usher.
Having checked the Billboard charts, Sullivan selects his play list, including “Since U Been Gone” by Kelly Clarkson, “1985” by Bowling for Soup and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day, for which he edited out a four-letter word.
By 11 a.m., the students and teachers are streaming into the ballpark. Blankets are laid out in the grassy areas, and the sweet, smoky scent of burgers and pork chops waft out of the barbecue pits on either side of the foul poles. The umbrella-covered table benches in the outfield are quickly filling up. And the lines are especially long for the Dippin’ Dots–the flash-frozen beads that turns to ice cream in your mouth. It’s a day so glorious it would be criminal to stay indoors.
The kids make the baseball players, most of them a year or two out of high school, feel like superstars. Even the backup catcher from the opposing team, the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, is mobbed by a sea of children, signing everything from tickets to sneakers.
It’s an atmosphere that Sullivan said can’t be replicated anywhere else.
“The Cubs and White Sox gets the hardcore baseball fans, we get the families and that’s the way we like it,” Sullivan says. “They don’t know who we’re playing, and it’s OK, because they’re gonna have a good time. They love the team, win or lose.”
Sullivan doesn’t have the deep, gravelly voice you’d associate with a stadium announcer. He pronounces the team by elevating the pitch of each word. “Your, Kane, County, Coooooougars!”
At one point, Sullivan reads the name of each school present. High-pitched cheers come from different corners of the ballpark with each shout-out.
This is the allure of Sullivan’s job: He’s the voice of authority and knows he can fire up a crowd with a click of a button.
Around the seventh inning, he pulls out the secret weapon.
With a click, the insanity begins:
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
The children scream:
SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!
Absorbent and yellow and porous is he?
SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!
And on and on it goes. The students go crazy.
Says Sullivan: “They’re gonna have to drag me out of this both feet first.”
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Schaumburg Flyers
Think of all the ways you can hawk beer to a thirsty customer. Tell them it’s ice cold and refreshing on a hot summer day. That it goes perfect with hot dogs and peanuts.
But is a 15-minute conversation about the job market the best business model?
That seems to work for Josh Bazon, 27, a beer vendor for the Schaumburg Flyers.
His method–establishing relationships with his customers, chatting with them, asking how their day went–has brought him repeat business, Bazon says.
Bazon and his beer vendor colleagues have perhaps the most fan interaction of anyone at the ballpark. They walk up and down the stairs, across empty rows dozens of times throughout the game, all while carrying plastic tubs stocked with 16-ounce plastic bottles of beer. On a good week, Bazon can make $300 in tips.
“Buuuuuuuuud, Bud Light!” Bazon bellows.
He does this three or four times a week during home stands at Alexian Field, located half a mile from the Schaumburg Regional Airport. Arriving biplanes glide above the ballpark about once every 20 minutes, like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest.”
You would never guess that Bazon, an unassuming, amiable goateed fellow from Darien, is a high school teacher’s aide and studying for his master’s degree in guidance counseling at Lewis University in Romeoville.
But he is and says this part-time job is helping him understand more about human relations and communication.
“My whole goal at the ballpark is get to know the customer, their background, just like it is with the students,” Bazon says.
When it’s not too busy, Bazon chats with his regulars.
Bazon sees Mike McNeil of Elk Grove Village, one of his favorite customers who is sitting along the first-base line. He sells him a bottle, and the two chat politics, real estate, the job market and a little about the Flyers. A biplane buzzes overhead, and the handheld scoreboard operator notches another zero above leftfield.
After their conversation, which stretches across one full inning, McNeil tips $2 and Bazon is off to his next customer.
“When you have individual people to talk to, he builds his clientele and that’s good,” McNeil says. “He’s probably one of the best ones out there.”
Spending time with his prospective customers doesn’t cut into his business. In 35 minutes, Bazon sells out his first batch of 12 bottles. There’s not a lot in attendance on this weeknight, perhaps 500 or so. By the end of the game, he’s sold 12 more.
Bazon insists it’s not the quantity of units pushed, but quality of relationships built.
“They like to get things off their back,” he says. “I’m just there to listen, react and occasionally throw my two cents in.”
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Windy City ThunderBolts
Bernadine Biela-Alfano can see it clearly, as it once was. The corn and soybeans grew in the outfield. The wheat sprouted by homeplate. Just over the left-field fence, near the barn that once stood, was where the cattle grazed.
Biela-Alfano once called this piece-of-land-turned-field-of-dreams home, before it became Hawkinson Ford Field.
It was in 1939 when her grandparents, Andrew and Mary Biela, bought the 40-acre plot in Crestwood and turned it into a family farm. Biela-Alfano remembers tending to the crops and feeding the pigs, chickens and turkeys.
Today, at a spry 66, Biela-Alfano looks over the field where she once toiled on hot summer days, except now young men from the Windy City ThunderBolts run fielding drills and take batting practice.
“Never, never, never. We never visualized this,” says Biela-Alfano, a greeter and ticket-taker for the team since 1998. “I beam when I come out here.”
Located 7 miles south of Midway Airport, Hawkinson Ford Field is the smallest of the five main minor league ballparks in the Chicago area, seating around 3,000 fans. Still, it sports a beer garden, three picnic areas, a sun deck, even upper-deck seating.
The parking lot sits beneath several power line towers, an unintentional tie-in with the ThunderBolts’ electric motif. And on this Sunday afternoon, a storm front passes overhead several hours before the game, sending lightning crackling to the ground.
But the sun makes a reappearance just in time for the ballpark gates to swing open.
“Hi, welcome, how’re you doing?” Biela-Alfano says with an infectious smile. “Great night for a ballgame, isn’t it?”
Biela-Alfano retired last year as principal of St. Albert the Great School in Burbank, a position she held for 16 years. Before that, she spent the previous 18 years teaching 8th-grade math and science.
“I miss the kids like you’ll never know,” she says. “I’m waiting for Mayor Daley to open up an orphanage. I’d be first in line.”
Biela-Alfano has a penchant for calling her kids “munchkins” or “pumpkin” or “sweetie.”
She asks questions like: “How old are you?” “What school do you go to?” “Are you out of school yet?”
Then one man walks in carrying an umbrella, just in case the bad weather returns.
As always, Biela-Alfano thinks positive.
“I hope you don’t intend to use that,” she says, tearing the perforated dots of the ticket. “You’re gonna use that for the sun.”
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Gary SouthShore RailCats
She begs, and begs, and begs some more. Tonight will rank among Claire Biesboer’s most memorable nights, and wouldn’t you know it, she forgot to bring the camera.
Her daughter, Jamie, is about to be proposed to by boyfriend Bob Chapman in Section 113 at U.S. Steel Yard, home of the Gary SouthShore RailCats. Jamie doesn’t know that her parents, of nearby Chesterton, Ind., are in the ballpark. And on this big day, the first day of the rest of her daughter’s life, neither Claire nor her husband Jerry have a camera.
Which brings us to Roger Wexelberg, the man on the receiving end of Claire Biesboer’s begs and pleads.
Wexelberg, the general manager of the RailCats, handles everything from player contracts to the type of hot dog buns used. Most of his work takes place before the players hit the field. During the game, he calls himself a “troubleshooter,” in case any problems arise.
Problems like giddy parents who forgot to bring their cameras.
Wexelberg was the first man hired for the RailCats, the newest team in the Northern League. His job description, with the good parts, also comes with the unenviable. How does one make downtown Gary a commercial destination?
It starts with the U.S. Steel Yard, situated off the Indiana Toll Road, a $45 million facility that city officials hope will be the catalyst for the area’s economic recovery.
Up and down 5th Avenue, abandoned towers and churches sit in a downtown that shuts down at 5 p.m. It makes the ballpark something of an oasis, with its elegant brick facade and green steel beams.
“There are people in northwest Indiana who have never been in downtown Gary,” says Wexelberg, a South Holland, Ind., native. “You have 3,000 people, you show them it’s safe and it will hopefully spur them to come back again.”
Police patrol on Segway vehicles outside U.S. Steel Yard, as a band plays through another chorus of “Margaritaville.”
Inside, the ballpark is even more impressive. Seats are tilted toward home plate at a 15-degree angle. The picnic area along the third base line is staggered on different levels for an unobstructed view. The stadium concourse is as wide as it is clean–a vendor’s dream. A children’s wood-chipped play area sits behind centerfield, and, like in Joliet, the U.S. Steel Yard has a hot tub deck in the right field, available for $200 a game for a group of eight.
But on a night when love is in the air for at least one couple (there’s also a faint smell from the nearby United States Steel plant), the only amenity Claire Biesboer wants is a pillar to hide behind.
Wexelberg springs into troubleshooting mode. It’s the third marriage proposal in four games, and Wexelberg is used to this. He puts a call out over his walkie-talkie for the team digital camera. Minutes later, a camera arrives, and trouble is averted.
The big moment will come in the middle of the 6th inning. For now, Biesboer takes in the surroundings.
“I was scared to come here, but I didn’t expect this. I’m so impressed,” Biesboer says. “I love that people bring their kids here.”
The moment arrives, and the Biesboers watch on the video scoreboard. A member of the promotion team announces the winners of a giveaway. What do you know, it’s two seats in Section 113, where Jamie and Bob are sitting. The camera focuses on the couple. Bob reaches into his left pocket and clutches the ring box.
“Do you have something you wanna say, Bob?”
He gets down on one knee, and you know how the rest goes. She says yes, of course.
Mom is “overwhelmed and proud that he stood up to the plate.” Dad shakes his future son-in-law’s hand heartily.
Wexelberg looks on with a smile.
“You want people to go home happy,” he says, before heading off to his next troubleshoot.
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Come to the game, do silly stuff
The fun factor of minor league baseball: Lots of fan bonuses between innings, after the game — at all times really. Here are the coolest promotions:
Joliet Jackhammers
Every Monday, the first 1,000 fans receive an envelope with cash inside, ranging from $1 to $100.
Schaumburg Flyers
Cowbell giveaway for first 2,500 fans on June 23.
Gary SouthShore RailCats
Every Thursday, the first 1,000 adults get a 16-ounce souvenir cup. For the rest of the night, draft beers are $2 per refill.
Windy City ThunderBolts
Campout Night, where kids and parents sleep out in the outfield grass and the movie “The Sandlot” will be shown, on July 9.
Kane County Cougars
Former Cougar, current Florida Marlins pitcher Dontrelle Willis Bobble-Leg Night for first 2,000 fans on July 29.
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Parks, by the numbers
JOLIET JACKHAMMERS
Silver Cross Field, One Mayor Art Schultz Drive, Joliet; 815-726-2255 or www.jackhammerbaseball.com
Distance from Loop: 45 miles
Parking: Free
Most expensive ticket: $9
Large beverage
Large soda: $3.75
Large beer: $4.25
Jumbo hot dog: $3.50
Best food: Frosted nuts–cinnamon-glazed almonds served in a paper cone. $3.50
Souvenirs
Pennant: $5
Jammer doll: $11
Average cost for family of four*: $86
Next home game: Thursday, vs. Gary; 7:05 p.m.
KANE COUNTY COUGARS
Philip B. Elfstrom Stadium, 34W002 Cherry Lane, Geneva; 630-232-8811 or www.kccougars.com
Distance from Loop: 41 miles
Parking: Free
Most expensive ticket: $10
Large beverage
Large soda: $4
Large beer (20 oz.): $4 (domestic), $4.50 (Specialty)
Jumbo hot dog: $3
Best food: BBQ pork chop sandwich–a 1/2 pound pork chop slathered with sweet BBQ sauce, served n a steamed bun. $5.50
Souvenirs
Pennant: $3
Cowbell: $6
Average cost for family of four*: $85
Next home game: June 16, vs. Burlington, Iowa; 6:30 p.m.
SCHAUMBURG FLYERS
Alexian Field, 1999 S. Springinsguth Rd., Schaumburg; 847-891-2255 or www.flyersbaseball.com
Distance from Loop: 32 miles
Parking: Free
Most expensive ticket: $10.50
Large beverage
Large soda: $3.50
Large beer (20 oz.): $4.75
Jumbo hot dog: $3.25
Best food: Foot-long corn dog. $4.25
Souvenirs
Pennant: $4
Foam airplane: $4
Average cost for family of four*: $86
Next home game: Friday, vs. Joliet; 7:05 p.m.
GARY SOUTHSHORE RAILCATS
U.S. Steel Yard, One Stadium Plaza, Gary, Ind.; 219-882-2255 or www.railcatsbaseball.com
Distance from Loop: 30 miles
Parking: Free
Most expensive ticket: $9
Large beverage
Large soda: $4
Large beer (21 oz.): $4.75
Jumbo hot dog: $3
Best food: Elotes–Mexican corn-on-the-cob, brushed with mayo and butter, dipped in cotija cheese and a dash of red chili powder. $3
Souvenirs
Pennant: $4
Mini-bats: $6
Average cost for family of four*: $83
Next home game: Monday, vs. Sioux Falls; 7 p.m.
WINDY CITY THUNDERBOLTS
Hawkinson Ford Field, 14011 S. Kenton Ave., Crestwood; 708-489-2255 or www.wcthunderbolts.com
Distance from Loop: 22 miles
Parking: $2
Most expensive ticket: $8
Large beverage
Large soda: $2
Large beer (16 oz.): $3
Jumbo hot dog: $2.75
Best food: Mitch’s wings–10 fried chicken wings in a spicy batter. $6
Souvenirs
Pennant: $5
Cap: $12
Average cost for family of four*: $75
Next home game: Saturday, vs. River City (Missouri); 7:05 p.m.
* Based on four tickets, four hot dogs, two sodas, two beers, two desserts and two souvenirs
— Compiled by Kevin Pang
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kpang@tribune.com
