Double Play

The Doubledays, set to open their 2008
season on Tuesday, June 17, 7:05 p.m., are a hand-in-glove fit for
their small upstate city just as their 13-year-old, municipality-owned
facility captures the blue-collar character of Auburn. It’s an easy
place to get comfortable, especially for fans raised on the smell of
frying hot dogs and the soothing caress of a summer breeze, all wrapped
around the crack of wood on leather and the excited shouts of local
partisans as their diamond darlings take on the likes of the
Williamsport Crosscutters, the Brooklyn Cyclones and, their
opening-night opponents, the Batavia Muckdogs.

 

Although manager Dennis Holmberg’s team
is two rungs below the Syracuse Chiefs on the Toronto Blue Jays’ minor
league ladder (the Double-A team is the New Hampshire Fisher Cats),
Syracuse fans have reasons to envy their neighbors to the west,
starting with their 2007 New York-Penn League championship. Plus, the
club is perennially popular as budget-conscious fans pack the stadium
to enjoy its free parking, cheap tickets ($4.50 for general admission
and $7 for box seats for adults; $4 and $6.50 for children and seniors)
and bargain refreshments. But it’s the little park’s atmosphere that
warms the heart of baseball purists. 

While it took the Chiefs 11 years to
catch on that genuine grass is the best playing surface for America’s
game, the fresh livestock fodder that carpets Falcon Park is lush and
meticulously manicured. Like Alliance Bank Stadium, there’s no seating
beyond the outfield fences 330 feet down each of the foul lines and 400
to straightaway center field. Every one of its 2,200 seats is close to
the field with green plastic box seats separated by an aisle from nine
rows of aluminum bleachers with backs. The park’s Division Street
locale is a quiet neighborhood where willows and pines serve as a
scenic backdrop beyond the outfield walls. {mospagebreak}

The baby-faced players who call Falcon
Park home are generally playing in their first year or two of pro ball,
serving an apprenticeship while harboring major-league dreams. “I think
they enjoy Auburn as a starting place,” said Doubledays general manager
Carl Gutelius. “It’s the perfect place to start off. It’s not
glamorous, but it’s a nice quiet town to play baseball in. It’s not a
New York City where it’s a hassle to live and survive. Here the living
arrangements are pretty simple. It’s cheap and you can really focus on
baseball.”

Gutelius, a 1995 graduate of Auburn High
School, is himself in the enviable position of hometown boy starting
his ninth season working for the community-owned club, his fourth as
GM. After completing internships with the Chiefs as well as the Buffalo
Bisons and two National Hockey League teams before coming to Auburn,
future advancement will likely land him in another sports organization,
but probably not too soon. 

“I’m pretty happy right here right now,”
he admitted. “Being from here, it’s a great job. I’ve got family
around, so I’m not in a real hurry to move on.”

Li’l Abners

The D-Days’ home uniforms are
classic-look, button-up white with blue piping and red and blue logos
and lettering. Fans can get into the act by purchasing team polo
shirts, T-shirts, sweat shirts, caps, souvenir baseballs, mini-bats,
pens, pencils and programs, all featuring a caricature of Abner
Doubleday, who is credited with having invented the sport. 

While players and fans look sharp in
official Doubledays apparel, Falcon Park is likewise dressed for
success. Paid advertising from local restaurants and bars, radio
stations, pizza shops and even Cayuga County office holders like state
Sen. Mike Nozzolio and Assemblyman Gary Finch cram billboard space. {mospagebreak}

One politician actually did a little
campaign flesh-pressing one evening last summer. “It’s a good place for
exposure,” said Jon Budelmann, who was running for Cayuga County
district attorney. “It’s a great little ballpark and it’s good to be
seen doing community events.”

Team management plays up community
connections, too, last year bringing in the state champion Auburn
Maroons High School football team for a guest appearance at one August
game. “This is a family-

oriented park,” Gutelius explained. “Ages range widely. We have a lot
of supporters that come to every game. Box seats are filled basically
every game. Big days are Dollar Thursdays, with dollar beer, dollar hot
dogs, dollar Coke and dollar admission.”

D-Days brass assures that cheap beer
doesn’t lead to problem behavior because they limit purchases. “If we
ever notice things getting out of control, we cut off service for that
night,” Gutelius asserted. 

Fans don’t have to catch a foul ball to
get a souvenir most evenings. “We try to make sure whenever you come,
you get something,” Gutelius said. “We don’t want you to walk away
empty-handed. Tonight was mini-bats and when we ran out of them, we had
some photos left over from earlier in the year. We’ve got a bobble-head
night coming up and when we don’t give something away, usually it’s
like a free general admission night or a dollar night, so you’ve always
got some reason to come out. You either get something or you get a
great deal on the game.”{mospagebreak}

Every game is also packed with plenty of
contests, races and silly games, from musical chairs to balloon-toss,
with modest prizes. “Promotion is the name of the game around here,”
Gutelius acknowledged. “Every game we do that on-field stuff. Then we
try to occasionally come up with some unusual theme nights. We had the
useless-skills Olympics earlier this year where people were competing
in rock-paper-scissors, watermelon seed spitting and stuff like that.
Maybe it doesn’t get a ton of people in the park, but it gets you in
the headlines. The more coverage you get, the more people hear about
you and they hear it’s fun. Then it’s kind of a progressive thing.”

One fan who is thoroughly convinced
Doubledays games are a good time is “Dancin’ Bill” Jayne, the team’s
unofficial mascot and head cheerleader. Each game, he rises from his
seat behind home plate to lead his fellow fans in the traditional
singing of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Last year the team even gave
away a bobble-head doll bearing his likeness. 

Jayne and all of the fans get to know
their players, although each season most of them start out as
strangers. Every one of them is under contract to the parent Toronto
organization, getting early experience and development on their way up. 

“For 60 percent to 70 percent of our
players, this is their very first team,” Gutelius said. “They’ll come
right here from college and the draft. The high school guys and the
college guys that are lower-round draft picks go to the Gulf Coast
League, a developmental league, for a year and then they’ll come to us.
That’s where we get most of our players. We get them from down there
and then if they do well here they’ll move up to Lansing, Mich.”{mospagebreak}

Blue Jay Way

Likewise, Doubledays management has
signed on the dotted line as a Blue Jays affiliate, recently inking a
two-year extension of their contract to continue with Toronto until
2010. “It’s called a player development contract,” Gutelius explained.
“You can do a two- or four-year contract with a major league team.
We’ve always chosen to do four years with Toronto because it’s been a
great relationship.”

Serious Blue Jays fans who follow their
organization’s fortunes in the annual baseball draft know that their
team’s future is in Auburn and often visit to get a preview. “We do get
a lot of people like our catcher J.P. Arencibia and our pitcher Brett
Cecil {both have since moved up to higher level teams}, who were first-
or second-round picks,” Gutelius acknowledged. “If they’re one of the
top picks in the draft, they’ll have a million bucks in their pocket
with signing bonuses. A lot of Chiefs fans come here when the Chiefs
are out of town, just to get familiar with the players before they move
up because 60 percent to 70 percent of the Syracuse roster is former
players here.”

More casual fans also head to Auburn and
are rewarded with a pure, old-fashioned baseball experience. “We love
it,” gushed Jennifer Infante of Ithaca, who attended a game last summer
with her husband and two young kids. “It’s small. Every seat’s a good
seat. You can bring the kids and you don’t have to worry too much about
it being really crowded or really rough. It’s a really great family
outing and it’s affordable.”

The 6 p.m. starting time on Saturdays
and Sundays makes it even friendlier for small fry and the kids’
activities area has been expanded for 2008. Youngsters can try out
their skills firing pitches clocked by a radar gun, launching
basketballs or trying to ring the bell while wielding a sledgehammer. {mospagebreak}

“I have a co-worker who would come here
and say it was great,” said Infante’s husband Bill, as his young son
Ben viewed the field upside-down by looking through his legs. “He’d
take his sons and for $20 get the best seats in the house and dinner at
the same time. It’s an affordable family outing. Most of the major
leagues now, {the cost} is unreal. Here the baseball’s just as good and
you get more enjoyment knowing you don’t have to spend 300 bucks.”

For longtime Doubledays loyalists like
Mike Malinowski of Auburn, the games are a great getaway from the
workaday world. “I’ve been coming for 30 years,” he said. “I enjoy
coming here. I don’t always get to come because I work nights, but on
my days off, we come when they are at home.”

Like many fans, Malinowski likes to
relax and order refreshments from the waitresses that patrol the Falcon
Park box seats. “It’s all the comforts of home,” he sighs. And it’s
just the kind of hospitality these hometown fans have come to expect.                                            

—Kevin Corbet

Diamonds are Forever

Ray Kinsella, the character played by Kevin Costner in the baseball movie Field of Dreams,
had to construct a diamond in his Iowa cornfield and travel halfway
across the country to reconnect with his late father. Jodi Mekeel of
Cayuga just has to walk into Falcon Park, where she works as a
waitress, to feel the presence of her baseball-loving dad.

“The reason why I picked this section to
waitress is because my family had box seats here,” Mekeel (scooping
condiments) said. “My dad was a season ticket holder for eight years
and he got to be friends with Dennis Holmberg and he loved the game. He
passed away in June 2006 and that was the first time I began
waitressing. It was one of those things where I felt like I still
needed to be here. I know he’s proud I’m doing it. He loved baseball so
much.”{mospagebreak}

Mekeel, a teacher assistant and
volleyball coach in the Union Springs School District, was preparing
for her first season serving concession stand fare to fans when her
dad, Bob, was unexpectedly stricken. “That Saturday we had come to pick
up our season tickets here at the ballpark,” Mekeel recalled. “They
have people come get their season tickets and they offer hot dogs and
drinks. And he went to pick up his tickets and that Monday, he passed
away suddenly at home. So he never got to see me work here, but he knew
I was going to and he was pretty proud of that.”

The family’s baseball legacy continues
as they maintain their loyalty to the Doubledays, and Mekeel’s mother
occasionally bakes cookies for the players. “There’s a name plaque on a
seat in memory of my father,” she pointed out. “He was a very loyal
fan. That’s why I have a little bit more of a tie-in to this place. The
manager showed up at his calling hours and everything. It was a neat
thing that they really supported him.”

—Kevin Corbet