Reese Kaplan -- The Bad News Bears as a Minor League Team

Recently I was forwarded a story about the alleged worst professional baseball team of all time, an independent league motley crew known as the Yonkers Hoot Owls.  

They were in the Northeast League, a rough equivalent of the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball that includes such luminaries as the Somerset Patriots and the Long Island Ducks.  The Northeast League included the Albany Diamond Dogs, the Adirondack Lumberjacks of Glens Falls, the Newburgh Nighthawks, the Mohwawk Valley Landsharks of Little Falls, the Sullivan Mountain Lions of Mountaindale, as well as the aforementioned Yonkers Hoot Owls.

The Northeast League sprung up in the year of 1995 and lasted in various incarnations until 1998.  In 1999 until 2002 the Northeast League merged with the Northern League, but then spun off on its own again for the years 2003 and 2004.  It was then moved into the Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball in 2005, but the Yonkers Hoot Owls were long gone by then, folding as a team after a single season in the now former Northeast League in 1995.  The single highlight of that league for me personally were the New Jersey Jackals who played in Yogi Berra Stadium in Little Falls, NJ, the town adjacent to Fairfield where I grew up.

How bad were things at Fleming Field in Yonkers?  Well, there was no locker room, so players often changed into their uniforms and game gear in what was part of foul territory.  There were no dugouts, just the chain link fence and bleacher seat plank reminiscent of what people had in their high school days.  Transportation from game to game on the road meant piling into a discarded school bus with no air conditioning which ensured the players were warmed up by the time they arrived at the opponent’s stadium.  (That photo above is the actual Yonkers Hoot Owls home stadium, Fleming Field).

Growing up in northern New Jersey, I was no stranger to the independent league brand of baseball, including the Newark Bears, Somerset Patriots and many others.  The experience of sitting at a game was more about being entertained by on-the-field stunts, t-shirt giveaways, music, fireworks and theme nights.  

Oh yeah, there was baseball played, too.  It was always interesting to see a former major leaguer either managing, coaching or hanging on for a very last breath playing the game they loved but which no longer loved them.  I remember vividly seeing Sparky Lyle managing, sharing a beer with Rick Cerone, owner of the Newark Bears, and seeing minor level players like David West on the field as well as former stars like the Canseco brothers and Rickey Henderson.  

The commissioner of the Northeast League was former Met Lee Mazzilli.  Former big leaguers Ken Oberkfell and Dave LaPoint were two of the first-year managers.  The team in Yonkers tapped Paul Blair to lead their assorted collection of ex college undrafted players that made up their 20-man roster.  Originally they wanted to use Mt. Vernon’s Memorial Field which was used in that award winning Coca Cola ad with Mean Joe Greene, but the city condemned the field and Yonkers became Plan B.

Terminated former New York Mets Director of Marketing, Randye Ringler, was hired to be the GM for the Yonkers Hoot Owls.  Before joining the Mets she had served as an Assistant GM and as a Sales and Promotions Director at the A and AA levels, so this gig was not new to her.  

However, the ball park was indeed new and in sore need of updating.  A relative in the fire department allowed them to open up hydrants to provide water for the diamond and the lack of plumbing resulted in porta-potties being used for toilets.  Instead of a glitzy, flashing scoreboard, the Hoot Owls used a large dry-erase whiteboard and hired a student intern to be it’s official operator by hand writing the scores and other relevant game data.  After the game ended, the board was taken down, stored and remounted with zip ties before the next game began.  

In the outfield where grass demanded to be maintained, there was no grounds crew.  The players themselves borrowed lawnmowers from fans and friends in the area to cut the grass and remove the clippings.  The infield was all dirt without grass, but the team didn’t have the equipment or personnel to maintain it.  They experienced a lot of very nasty hops on the batted balls as a result of the bumps and rocks that were never smoothed out or removed.  GM Ringler visited a local Home Depot to rig up a makeshift set of drag mats to use on the dirt infield but not to a very effective level.  

For fans it wasn’t any better.  There was no parking at the field location, so it required fans to go to a lot 2.5 miles away and then take a shuttle van over to Fleming Field.  The location was picked partially because it could accommodate a large number of 1000 fans, but the Hoot Owls averaged about 170 fans per night.  Even the highly touted showcase day in which the team was going to showcase its players for Mets GM Joe McIlvaine and other baseball honchos, the game was canceled due to a lightning storm.  It seemed that just nothing could go right at Fleming for the Hoot Owls. 

The ballplayers on the roster were kept at below-poverty level.  A few stars earned a whopping $700 per month but most were in the $500 per month range.  Bear in mind that being on the team meant not just the game hours, but the many additional hours practicing, traveling and thus being away from the opportunity to earn additional income with a second job in the Yonkers area.  

After losing 15 games in a row at one point, the Hoot Owls finished the season with a record of 14-54, a .206 winning percentage that would make the 1962 Mets look like dominant champions by comparison.  GM Ringler left with a $20,000 credit card bill unpaid by the soon folded team.  Contractors were unpaid.  The team that took over for the Hoot Owls were led by pitcher Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd who was a star for them, but they were now based in Bangor, Maine as the Blue Ox.  The balance sheet of debts never made it to Maine, so a lot of folks in Yonkers went unpaid entirely.  

Baseball like it oughta not be...