September 18, 2005

Joy in Mudhenville, part 2

On Thursday night, there was finally joy in Mudhenville. After a 38 year drought that saw all 13 other franchises in the league win at least one Governors’ Cup, the Toledo team at last got its opportunity to sip from it. It’s a story that parallels the Boston Red Sox of 2004 in a lot of respects. They broke the "curse of the Bambino", and the Mud Hens broke the "karma of Terry Felton." But more on that later.

I was born in 1964, which was the last year without baseball in Toledo. After having a series of American Association franchises from the late 19th century into the 1950's, Toledo was left high and dry baseballwise after the 1955 season, when that version of the Toledo Mud Hens (also known in that era as the Toledo "Sox" or "Glass Sox") relocated to Wichita. It was truly the end of an era, as even the Mud Hens stadium, Swayne Field, would be leveled to build a shopping center, the first large-scale shopping outside the immediate area of downtown Toledo. (Part of the old outfield wall remains behind what is still called the Swayne Field shopping center.)

But eventually the call was heard for Toledo to get a baseball team back. And, through the efforts of a county commissioner, Ned Skeldon, Lucas County (which Toledo is the seat of) assisted in forming a corporation that bought the former Richmond franchise in the International League. A stadium was needed and what originally was a horse racing track at the Lucas County Fairgrounds in suburban Maumee was renovated in time for the April 1965 debut of the rechristened Toledo Mud Hens.

It was a halcyon time for the city of Toledo. The city was rapidly growing as they annexed many of the former suburban areas of central Lucas County, reaching an all-time high of over 380,000 residents by 1970. Jobs were plentiful as the auto industry was booming in the era of powerful muscle cars. It was a time where prosperous middle-class factory workers could afford the family entertainment of a ballgame, and tens of thousands took advantage of watching the team out at the Rec Center, as the stadium became known. Surrounding the stadium was a host of ballfields (a few of which I played on as a 10-year-old) and a swimming pool complex, as well as the actual fairgrounds. It was a parklike setting for the team, which settled into its suburban home well.

In 1967, this team became affiliated with the nearby Detroit Tigers. That affiliation paid immediate dividends as a pitching staff featuring future big leaguers like Jim Rooker, Mike Marshall, John Hiller, Dick Drago, and Pat Dobson helped lead Toledo to the IL pennant. Many of the same players remained in 1968 as the parent Tigers were also loaded enough to win the AL flag. The 1968 version of the Mud Hens won the regular season but were surprised in the playoffs.

That would be the end of the brief playoff era for Toledo. Eventually the affiliation with the Tigers went sour because of discord between the Mud Hens management and Detroit’s. After a six year relationship with the Tigers ended, Toledo became an affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies in 1974.

Meanwhile, Toledo was starting to show signs of becoming a member of the "Rust Belt." The auto industry that lined the pockets of its workers with extra spending money became more stingy as cheaper cars imported from Japan slowly began to gain market share. One by one, some of Toledo’s largest employers closed up shop. DeVilbiss, Champion Spark Plug, Toledo Scale, and others bolted the city, leaving behind shuttered factories in deteriorating urban neighborhoods.

As the Seventies dragged on, the fortunes of both Toledo and the Mud Hens ebbed. The Phillies tenure as parent team was brief, as the Cleveland Indians followed them in two years later. The Tribe proved to be short-termers as well, as they abandoned the Mud Hens as well after two forgettable seasons. In all, the Mud Hens failed to reach the upper division of the International League for 11 straight seasons beginning with the 1969 campaign and following through to 1979.

It’s not that there weren’t bright spots. One was getting a guy who would make Cal Ripken, Jr. envious. Starting in 1975, Jim Weber has been the Mud Hen radio broadcaster in every aired game. That would be over 3,800 - the number only being fewer than the 4,200 or so games the Mud Hens have actually played by the simple fact that radio broadcasts were only part-time in his early days. It wasn’t until 1983 that all games were broadcast.

And the city of Toledo would get one of its most famous boosters, a guy who indirectly helped the Mud Hens get on the map. Weekly on the TV series M*A*S*H, Jamie Farr’s character of Klinger reminded people of his old hometown of Toledo, Ohio. And someplace along the line, he appeared on the show in a vintage Mud Hens jersey. America did eventually find out that the Mud Hens were real and not made up by a Hollywood scriptwriter. Since then, the Mud Hens have always been one of the better souvenir sellers in the minor leagues, and Jamie Farr became the namesake of an annual LPGA golf tournament held just outside Toledo.

That was also the time I made it to my first Mud Hen games. Back when I played Little League at the age of 11 and 12, my team would make a pilgrimage to see the Mud Hens. Two things stick out from those games. In 1976, the Mud Hens had a player named Jim Norris, which just so happened to be the name of our assistant coach. I found that to be pretty cool. The 1977 game was one where I actually got a program and had it autographed by a couple players. That game also had a home run by a Mud Hen named Dave Hilton. I liked him because on his baseball card he was pictured wearing glasses like I did (and still do.) Still think of the guy as "Home Run" Hilton because of that game.

Better times were ahead for the Mud Hens and the city. A new affiliation with the Minnesota Twins brought better players in, players that enabled the Mud Hens to break a long postseason dry spell in 1980. The team made it through the first round of the IL playoffs before succumbing to instate rival Columbus in the final. Again in 1984 Toledo would see playoff baseball, as well as a short Mud Hen tenure by future Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett, who played in Toledo for about half the season before being called up to the Twins and never looking back. But the 1984 Hens were swept out of the playoffs. That would be the playoff memory for some time.

This brings me to the karma of Terry Felton. Felton was the #2 draft choice of the Twins in 1976, and rapidly ascended through their minor league system until he got to Toledo. As it turned out, he became the team’s modern-era leader in victories with 33, a record that stood until 2004. It’s not that Felton never made it to the Show...but when he did make it, he lost. And lost. And kept losing. His 0-13 record in 1983 closed the books on what was a 0-16 big league career for the Twins.

But what he did on a frustrating night in 1980 changed the feel of the Rec Center. After being pulled from a rough start, Felton took a spare bat and proceeded to smash his steel locker to an unrecognizable mass of metal about 3 feet high. That locker became replaced by a wooden locker that became a poetry board of sorts.

By this time, the Rec Center, and by extension, the Mud Hens, was becoming known as "the morgue," a place where careers came to die. It was a stadium that had seen better days as a racetrack. There was time and effort put into a renovation in 1988 that helped matters along for awhile, but still the park was annually thought of as the worst in the International League. (As part of the 1988 renovation, the stadium was renamed for Ned Skeldon to honor his efforts at returning baseball to Toledo.)

The city of Toledo was also trying to find its way in a post-manufacturing world. While Jeeps and GM transmissions were still being cranked out, the remainder of the manufacturing jobs and population continued fleeing the city. The population of Toledo fell over 10% in a 20 year period, although the bulk of that loss simply spread out to the rapidly growing suburbs. One ballyhooed idea was the Portside Festival Marketplace, a retail and entertainment center fronting the Maumee River. Opened with great fanfare in 1984, it barely survived its first winter and closed for good by 1990. The building did eventually become a tourist attraction with the opening years later of COSI, a hands-on science museum. But Portside was an embarrassing flop and a punch in the gut to Toledo’s pride.

Meanwhile, I was off in Oxford, Ohio, at college. Since my playing days were long over by then (I played through my sophomore year in high school, although most of the time I was a benchwarmer) I was simply a fan and made it to a lot of Miami University baseball games. So I lost touch with my hometown team for a few years. But once I graduated I had more time on my hands, and my dad’s company had season passes to the games. Naturally I became a big fan again, attending about 25 games in my first year back from school. They just gave me the season passes by the end.

This was right before the 1988 renovation, but even that didn’t do a lot for the amenities of the ballpark. The only thing that was good for the fans (but the players hated) was a separation between the dugouts and clubhouse. To get from one to the other, a player had to run a gauntlet of 20 to 30 yards between the field and the clubhouse. (And some guys literally did run it.) It was just a prime place to get autographs. Around that time I also got back into collecting baseball cards, so I took advantage of the concourse to get quite a few cards signed. In this timeframe, starting with the 1987 season, the Mud Hens once again became the Detroit Tigers AAA affiliate, which continues to this day.

While it was a good marketing tool to have the future Tigers in Toledo, the results on the field continued to suffer. In the space of time that the Tigers kept their AAA team elsewhere, that was when the great Tiger players of the 1980's - guys like Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammell, Jack Morris, Lance Parrish, and Kirk Gibson - played in the Tigers system. These guys were replaced in the Detroit minor leagues by the likes of Billy Bean, Scott Livingstone, and Steve Searcy. None of these guys became household names.

But things were slowly changing in the International League. Starting with Richmond in 1985, teams began to build new stadiums or franchises moved to locations with new parks. Even some of the older parks had serious renovations to a much larger degree than Toledo’s.

It was in the early 1990's that rumors began to spread of the Hens’ eventual demise because of the poor facilities at Skeldon Stadium. While the county continued to make a profit from the club, attendance was stagnant if not slowly sinking. The rumblings were generally of the county selling the Mud Hens franchise to a private owner who would move the club. Other talk had the Mud Hens remaining in their location, but the International League and Midwest League would switch franchises...the Toledo team becoming a class A Tiger affiliate while West Michigan became a AAA team.

But the city wasn’t in a position of strength economically. The recession of the early 1990's hit the city hard, including a young man working in the architectural field. I lost my job the very day that my wife and I were slated to move into our house. While I did get my job back eventually, the city of Toledo suffered through a long period of job losses. Complaints about the state of the Mud Hens continued to mount from the league and the local newspaper, who wanted to end the Tigers affiliation as they saw the success of Cleveland’s farm system.

By 1998, Lucas County decided to act in an attempt to quell the rumors and save the Mud Hens. They proposed a temporary 35 month sales tax increase to pay for a new downtown stadium as well as a new water park at the Recreation Center site that would be vacated by the team. The issue went to the voters in November of that year and, led by resistance from Maumee residents bitter about losing their ballpark, the ballot issue was soundly defeated. I didn’t vote for it myself. It wasn’t that I was enamored with Skeldon Stadium, but I thought the water park was a waste of money.

After the voters rejected the measure, the future looked bleak for the Mud Hens. Enter Ray Kest, the Lucas County treasurer. He proposed a different method of funding that did not need nearly as much taxpayer money, as things like stadium naming rights and commemorative bricks would defray the cost, as well as leveraged money from the State of Ohio. The final piece of the financing puzzle would be completed the next year when it was announced Fifth Third Bank had bought the new stadium naming rights.

This would begin a new and exciting era for the Mud Hens and the city of Toledo. After over 40 years without baseball being played in the city, construction of the new Fifth Third Field ensured that Toledo baseball would be played inside the city starting in 2002.

I attended the final game at Skeldon Stadium on September 3, 2001. The Mud Hens, as usual, lost the game to the Columbus Clippers 12-11. Over the winter the anticipation began to build in earnest as Fifth Third Field was evolving into the newest IL ballpark. Additionally, a long-moribund part of downtown slowly began to come back to life as a few eateries and nightspots began opening around the stadium area in anticipation.

So I was among the thousands jammed into Fifth Third Field April 9, 2002 to watch Toledo make its return downtown. Despite an opening 1-4 roadtrip, spirits were high as the Hens took on the Norfolk Tides. They won that game 7-5, swept the four game series, and continued to win. Part of the reason was solid players who were acquired as six-year free agents, attracted by the chance to play in a brand spanking new ballpark. The other part of the equation was good pitching by guys like Mike Maroth and Andy Van Hekken, both of whom ended the season in Detroit.

It looked in late August, though, like the Mud Hens had run out of gas. With 12 games to go, they trailed division leader Louisville by 2 ½ games. But a 10-2 late season surge that included 5-1 marks against Louisville and archrival Columbus enabled Toledo to pass Louisville and net their first ever West Division title, and first playoff berth in 18 years.

Sadly, the Mud Hens disappointed two straight sellout crowds (yes, I went to the playoff opener) by dropping the games to the Durham Bulls. They would lose the third game in front of a half-empty stadium in Durham to be swept out of the playoffs. The playoff losing streak would roll on.

But the signs of life in downtown also continued. It was a minor improvement, but an improvement nonetheless. Trouble was, the effort that was put together to build Fifth Third Field couldn’t or wouldn’t be duplicated for other places in need of facelifts or all-out renovation like the old Steam Plant or SeaGate Centre. Plans for each were made but never followed through as marketing failed. While some of the Mud Hen fans remained downtown to sample the nightlife, most went back to the suburbs. I was a person who did that as I bolted Toledo for the suburbs in 2002.

Toledo did get one honor from the 2002 season, as Fifth Third Field was selected by Newsweek as the best new ballpark in the country. Compared to old Skeldon Stadium, it was a baseball paradise with great sightlines and the Toledo skyline as a backdrop.

But the Mud Hens simply continued to lose in 2003 and 2004, they just did it in front of larger crowds at Fifth Third. 2003's version of the Mud Hens started out with promise, but half the team ended up playing in Detroit by season’s close for the hapless Tigers. The 2004 season ended with a thud, as the loss that day put them in last place in the entire league. It was a season that stood out for a memorable August collapse, as the first place Mud Hens who were confident enough to start selling playoff tickets at the end of July absolutely butchered the month of August, a 5-24 house of horrors.

I was at the final game of the 2004 season on Labor Day, a gorgeous sunny afternoon. I recall thinking it was a long way until April of 2005, but I was looking forward to coming back.

But at last the Toledo economy, stagnant for most of the last 20 years as politicians came and went without solving the city’s problems, took its toll on me. The Friday after Labor Day, I was asked to come into my supervisor’s office and informed that it would be my last day. There was no more work for me to do.

So the 2005 version of the Mud Hens started without me being there. Being far away, I really didn’t notice how well they were doing. They did win the two games I managed to attend, one of them Memorial Day weekend in Toledo against Columbus, the other in Norfolk in July. By that time I had seen the Mud Hens were leading their division and having an awesome year.

The skeptic in me, while hoping they’d continue to win, kept waiting for the collapse that was sure to occur, right? Well, the 2005 Mud Hens didn’t collapse. They got stronger as the season wore on and on a magical Saturday night in front of their fans, they clinched a playoff berth. Two nights later I watched online as they won the division title and had their second champagne celebration in three days.

So step one was complete. They would face Norfolk in the first round of the Governors’ Cup playoffs. And in Game 4, they played a seesaw battle as I watched from afar. That night my skeptical side saw Gookie Dawkins blow a sure out, the error allowing Norfolk to take the lead. Then the fan in me saw the horrendous ending, the phantom tag at second ending what should have been a tied game.

Game 5 was nerve-wracking, although the Hens got an early lead. I’d seen too many games like that to be comfortable. But they ousted Norfolk 5-3 and got their date to face the surprising Indianapolis Indians, who won 3 straight at Buffalo to advance after losing the first 2 games at home.

We know how that series came out. Game 3 was a case of chasing away the bad karma, the black cloud that had enveloped a star-crossed team for those many years. Each hit pounded on the hex like Terry Felton’s blows to his locker, smashing it to oblivion. Each home run took away the thoughts of a thousand blowout losses that Jim Weber still had to broadcast and keep interesting, allowing him to watch a team he had devoted over half his life to finally grab the elusive brass ring. The Hens celebration erased my disgust of watching everyone else get yet another win over the league’s doormat. For the first time in my adult life, I could say that my hometown team was a champion.

Whether this success will translate to a transformation to the city it calls home is yet to be seen. While championships feel great, the city goes about its business as usual day after day. It’s good to see that we will be the reigning IL champions when the AAA All-Star Game makes its first appearance in Toledo next July, but what will the visitors and television viewers think of the city where it’s played?

Toledo can be a championship city in more ways than just sports. But it needs two things it seems to lack: a cohesive plan to take advantage of the natural asset of its location, and leadership to put together a plan and implement it. It is a city where 90% of the time the "we’ve always done it this way" method of thinking rules its actions.

The Mud Hens had "always done it this way" for 38 years. Once they got a plan to take advantage of their natural asset (a great ballpark to play in) and leadership to implement it (in this case superb team chemistry), they cast away an entire mindset of losing and placed themselves into consideration as possibly the best Mud Hen team of all time.

I was born in Toledo. It was a bit sad, but I made the choice to leave because the city didn’t meet my needs. And it’s pretty likely I won’t return except to visit on occasion. But I still care about my old hometown enough to root for its team. And I care enough about a lot of the people I left behind to hope that someone will think about how the Mud Hens escaped their resignation to losing and apply that to what could be a great city, one that is worthy of hosting a great team.