Not since the1940s when Cincinnati leaders ridiculously proposed a fog-bound and flood-prone Lunken Field to be Greater Cincinnati’s major airport, has Northern Kentucky been given so great a gift.
We’re talking, of course, about the “Where they gonna’ go?” statement of Cincinnati Reds President Phil Castellini prior to his budget-basement team’s 3-21 record from that moment through this weekend.
“Where they gonna’ go?” How about 12 miles south into Northern Kentucky to Florence, where it took the minor league Y’alls’ marketing people less than a nanosecond to start printing up the t-shirts.
Competing for pro baseball fans with their major league partners is hardly a new challenge for the 16-team Frontier League, the largest in independent minor league baseball. There are three teams in the metro Chicago and New York City areas, one in St. Louis and another in Pittsburgh – along with the Y’alls.
But none of them has had the kind of preseason boost the Y’alls have gotten from the son of the major league team’s owner.
Check out the Y’alls’ twitter feed, which is up to more than 10,000 followers now, if you doubt it. One of the first recommended “You might like” sites is: “Did the Reds win?” We started reading the tweets but after “No,” then “No,” then “Nope,” then “You know the answer,” we headed back to the Y’alls’ site.
Where we noted how fan-friendly and straightforward about things like the awful spring weather or what the fans want the Y’alls’ uniforms to look like. Also liked this tweet from the team: “The last of our ‘Where Y’all‘s gonna go’ shirts will be shipped out on Monday! Thank y’all so much for your patience and support.”
Thank you too, Mr. Castellini. Baseball – MLB Baseball at least – is pretty much pricing itself out as a family fun day outing with Reds’ ticket prices of a high of $305 with tickets behind home plate going for $129, $115, $103, $92, and $84 for Sunday’s Pirates and Monday’s Brewers games. Head down the lines and they’re $54. Right field? $43. Left field upstairs $28 and $24. And yes, if you go out into the outfield far enough and up high enough, like to Row V (that’s Row 23), you can get tickets for $12 and $14. There aren’t many of them. And bring binoculars.
In contrast, you can get most Y’alls’ tickets for $11 in advance ($13 at the gate) with the VIP section tickets $15 ($17 day of game). And for kids 12 and under, thanks to Republic Bank, admission for the eight Sunday games is free. So is parking.
And then there’s this: Unlike the Reds, the Y’alls are trying to win. And sure, the money is a lot less but it does take an investment of some $825,000 to get a franchise in the Frontier League so it’s not just for laughs. And owners better be prepared to meet an annual budget of $2.5 million or so for each team through the league’s 768-game regular season, most games ever, starting Thursday and finishing up Sunday, Sept. 4.
The players don’t make a lot and most of them live with host families who get free tickets for the season. They make as little as $1,600 a month or as much as $2,500 for veterans (and $4,000 for the three top-tier guys) with $85,000 the team’s salary cap.
To put that into context, the average Reds’ player’s salary is $4.4 million, nearly two million above the Y’alls’ entire annual budget. Mike Moustakas, at more than $16 million this season, will make more each day — $88,888 — than the entire Y’alls’ roster will make in a month. And that’s for a Reds’ payroll that’s an estimated $20 million less than last year’s.
Only three players above the age of 29 are allowed on each Frontier League roster. And 10 of the players must be rookies.
What they’re really playing for is a chance. And there is a chance. Some 40 former Florence players are playing up and on affiliated MLB minor league rosters with six on a Major League roster this season. And the Frontier League, the oldest (29 years) independent minor league, boasts 1,000 such players who have moved up in its history.
Something else to like. The nicknames. Way better, for example, than the ones the USFL came up with this year. Washington (Pa.) Wild Things, Schaumburg (Ill.) Boomers (they’re prairie chickens), Lake Erie Crushers, Trois Rivieres Aigles, Quebec Capitales, Tri-City ValleyCats, New Jersey Jackals (seems about right), New York Boulders (huh?), and of course, your own Y’alls, named after a “monument to hydration” as the t-shirts in the General Store proclaim.
The Y’alls will get it going Thursday at home in the newly named Thomas More Stadium on Thomas More Night against the Tri-City Valleycats out of the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area of New York.
But as much as they have one goal to get back to the playoffs and win it this time, here’s our goal for Northern Kentucky’s finest. On one night – or day — this season when the losses are piling up and the ticket prices make absolutely no sense across the river, how about there comes a moment when a contending Y’alls team draws more fans into their cozy 4,500-seat stadium than the Reds draw into Great American Ball Park. Don’t say it’s not possible . . . JUST SAYIN’.
*** NORTHERN KENTUCKY LOST A SPECIAL GUY this past week when Kirk Wisher Jr., a member of the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame, passed away much too young at the age of 78. But the St. Benedict’s kid from Covington Catholic, Thomas More, and Xavier, was much more than that. He was a great opponent in baseball and softball and an even better teammate. In re-telling games he played in, Kirk would always tell the story that made you look good even if it was to his detriment. He made it about you. In everything, his friends remembered, citing one kindness after another.
To the large group who gathered for his funeral mass Friday, Kirk was much more than a sports Hall of Famer. Outgoing, generous, loving and upbeat with an enthusiasm for all things sport and a whole lot more, Kirk spent decades volunteering at the Parish Kitchen. As a rep for GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals, if there was an award for the nation’s best rep, Kirk would be in contention every year.
Thomas More AD Terry Connor took Kirk an autographed team basketball poster a couple of weeks back. And don’t let those photos of Kirk in the Kentucky Wildcats jerseys fool you, he was – as the funeral celebrant noted in eulogizing Kirk – (long pause) . . . “a Duke basketball fan.” And yes, working for a company headquartered in the Raleigh-Durham area, Kirk worked his magic on one Mike Krzyzewski just as he did everyone else. Maybe it was shipping Graeter’s Ice Cream down to the Duke basketball people. On occasion, you could see Kirk behind the bench at Cameron Indoor for a game. And when Kirk’s late wife, Billie, got sick, she was brought to Duke Medical Center. Nothing Kirk wouldn’t have done for any of the people in his life. “He was a good dude,” TMU’s Connor said. A very “good dude,” indeed . . . JUST SAYIN’.
*** LUDLOW’S JACK AYNES CELEBRATED his 90th birthday at the dedication of the beautiful new Lemker Field at St. Elizabeth Ball Park Thursday with stories of so many of the great moments there, highlighted by Jack’s throwing the first two no-hitters for Ludlow High even though he was mostly a catcher. But baseball didn’t end there for Jack, who played in the Buckeye League at the age of 16, one of the youngest ever to do so.
And since his return from the West Coast in 2000, where he worked for Nestle and lived in Southern California for 30 years, Jack has been the man behind the 10 college scholarships the Ludlow Sports Hall of Fame awards annually as well as those of the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame, for which the proceeds of the organization’s annual golf outing (July 16, Kenton County Golf Course) are directed.
But Jack’s three-decade sabbatical in Southern California was not without sports – baseball, actually – interest. He often found himself in Palm Springs for spring training, where he became a good buddy of Jimmy Reese, who had been a roommate of Babe Ruth’s with the Yankees before going on to become the oldest coach in Major League baseball with the Angels, also at the age of 90, Jack notes. Reese was considered the greatest fungo hitter in baseball history. So accurate was his fungo artistry, he could “pitch” batting practice with a fungo bat from the mound. The Angels connection also earned Jack a friendship with the Angels owner, Singing Cowboy Gene Autry.
As for roommates, Jack often was able to use the legendary Billy Martin’s hotel room. “He wasn’t using it,” Jack says with a laugh. Jack became such a close friend to former major leaguer Pete Whisenant, an ex-Reds player and coach among his six MLB teams and then manager of the A’s Modesto farm team, that he traveled with them. And on occasion, at a place like the Yankee Clipper Restaurant, he would get to sit down and talk baseball with the DiMaggio brother for whom it was named – Joe.
And despite Joe’s reputation for standoffishness, Jack recalls a time when a youngster asked for an autograph from Johnny Bench, who didn’t have time at the time, and Joe stepped in, grabbed Johnny and said “how about a photo of two No. 5’s in the Hall of Fame together” – and made it happen just like that.
But his favorite moments, Jack says, might have been the times he got to sit down and talk baseball in Arizona with Hall of Fame pitcher Carl Hubbell, who famously struck out five straight Hall of Famers in the 1934 All-Star Game – Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin – with his screwball.
From Lemker Field and back to hanging out with Hall of Famers on the Coast, not a bad baseball life for Ludlow’s Jack Aynes . . . JUST SAYIN’.