Highlights from the Community First Fox Cities Marathon Presented by Miron Construction
The 34th running of the Community First Fox Cities Marathon Presented by Miron Construction was Sunday, Sept. 21, through seven communities in the Fox Cities.
The Wisconsin Timber Rattlers saw their highest attendance since 2016, despite a losing record on the field.A new ownership group, Diamond Baseball Holdings, took control of the team in April.Several Milwaukee Brewers players on rehab assignments and highly touted prospects helped boost fan interest.The team is planning for the offseason, which includes a holiday lights event and potential ballpark upgrades.
The season came to an end a few weeks ago for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, and while the team was not as successful on the field as everyone had hoped, it was a memorable season in many ways.
A new ownership group, Diamond Baseball Holdings, took control of the team in April. The team was again blessed with several Milwaukee Brewers players in uniform for rehab assignments, and the final few weeks of the season saw several highly touted prospects promoted to Wisconsin.
All of which led to a season attendance of 236,441 fans at Neuroscience Group Field at Fox Cities Stadium, the highest total since the 2016 season.
Rob Zerjav, the president, CEO and managing partner of the Timber Rattlers, spoke to the Post-Crescent about the highs and lows of a season that saw the Timber Rattlers finish with a 56-74 record in the Midwest League.
Is it weird to come to work at Fox Cities Stadium and not have people getting ready to play a baseball game?
No, because for us one week the fans are here and then there’s another where the fans aren’t here, so it’s kind of normal. This time of year it’s definitely quiet but it’s still nice to come to the ballpark and major league baseball’s going on, so it still feels like there’s something happening. Once it gets a little bit colder, then it starts to feel a little strange.
There are still plenty of things going on at the ballpark, like an organization had a meeting here today and there was a wedding a couple weekends ago.
We had the wedding this past weekend. We have the Packers show (Clubhouse Live) on Monday. So there’s always something going on. It’s just not baseball season anymore for us. The employees are engaged in stuff. We’re definitely busy and we’re already planning for next year. We have our holiday lights coming up. That’s going to be here on us a lot faster than we think. Lights get delivered the first week of October. We start setting up, so we have a month or so to set up and then holiday lights starts Nov. 14 and runs virtually every day until Jan. 3.
You had the best attendance this year since 2016, even though the team itself struggled.
And we play less games. We play 66 home games as opposed to 70 home games now, so it was great to see attendance continue to rise. The team on the field, it was a struggle but there obviously were some nice prospects towards the end of the year and that helped.
The I-41 construction didn’t hurt? There were nights where one had to wonder how people get into and out of the ballpark at night.
I would actually commend the DOT (Department of Transportation), they’ve been a great partner. Through all of this it’s been a surprise to us how the construction didn’t impact us as much as we thought and the DOT was great with just rescheduling when things were going to open and when they were going to close. They were really working with us and our schedules, but I’m going to be happy when it’s done. So next year it’ll be just smooth. But it was a pleasant surprise with the lack of issues that we saw because of the highway.
What was the impact of having all the Brewers players coming here to rehab? Having players like Brandon Woodruff here twice had to help juice up the fans?
That is what’s always exciting about it. To have Woodruff here this year and (Jose) Quintana here and even to an extent Robert Gasser was with us, so it’s always great that they’re here. It’s great for our fans to come out and see them up close and personal. … I think for Woodruff, that really reenergized him a couple of years ago when he came out here and just kind of developed the love of baseball again. And Quintana was here this year and had nothing but rave remarks for our ballpark and the clubhouse. (MLB.com writer) Adam McCalvy later wrote a story on it, so it was again just great for us here locally and our fans locally to see them, but also great for everybody in Milwaukee.
Sometimes with the rehab players, the next year there’s a bobblehead with them. Has that decision been made yet?
We have our bobblehead lineup securely put away in a safe right now, but we do have a plan for it. I’m not going to divulge if there’s any rehabs in that one quite yet, but yeah, they always can. It gives us a lot of opportunities and a lot of options with the number of prospects we have and former guys that actually played for us that are contributing so well at the big-league level. It’s a lot of options, which is great, especially like in the case of the month of August. We’ve got (Andrew) Fischer here, (Luis) Peña here, (Jesús) Made. It gave fans an extra reason to come and see just how good these hotshot players are.
Having those top prospects coming through Fox Cities Stadium has got to be a thrill for the fans.
(Jackson) Chourio was kind of at the forefront when he came. People knew who he was. And there’s so many years where you’re like, ‘Oh, I remember seeing that guy or when Alex Rodriguez was here that was a big deal back then.’ That wasn’t always the case where you’re like, ‘Oh, they’re big leaguers now. I kind of remember them when they were with the Timber Rattlers or the Foxes.’ But now people know who Chourio is. Everybody knew who Made was and they’re coming out specifically for him. For us to be able to sell tickets based on our players it is really exciting because it always hasn’t been the case. Now our fans just are so into minor league players and who’s coming up. It’s really been a help for us. It showed in August and it showed with our attendance increase this year.
Did that give you a pretty nice bump for August as opposed to previous years?
I think it definitely helped. Weather in August was beautiful this year and we always do really well in August, so I think it was just kind of stacking promotions or the players on top of each other and it just made for August to be off the charts for us. I think all of it played a factor in it, but definitely having these prospects was one of the reasons that we saw such a great turnout.
When you get these new prospects coming in like that, do you get to talk to them and what do they think of being able to play here?
We sat down specifically with Made and Peña. They don’t really speak any English, so it was through a translator but it was more just making sure that they’re comfortable here, that we’re here to take care of them, that we’re not going to ask anything of them that they’re uncomfortable with. And we want to make sure they have a great experience because fans want to come out to see them play, but fans also want to come out to try to get their autographs and being 18 and not speaking the language, we wanted to kind of make sure that they knew we had their back and in the clubhouse that’s their sanctuary. We’re not going to bother them there. And if they have any issues, we’re going to be there to help them out. We just wanted to make sure that they felt comfortable because I can’t imagine being 18 in a foreign country and just to know somebody other than your team has your back, I hope that went a little bit for them.
What’s the impact been this year of the new ownership group Diamond Baseball Holdings?
Honestly, it’s been very, very hands off. The ownership change happened at the end of April, so during our season Diamond Baseball was very cognizant. They told us, ‘You guys are doing a great job. We don’t want to get in the way. We don’t want to mess with anything.’ So everything was pretty much status quo. We had a lot of Diamond Baseball Holdings folks come into town to see how we do things and how they can take what we do here and make some of their other clubs better. They own almost 50 minor league teams now and they really look at us as doing it right. It was more they wanted to stay out of our way but then pick our brains.
Do you see it continuing that way going forward?
Yeah. They have a lot of resources, so we’re really excited about diving in now this offseason and what opportunities is that going to present for our organization? What are they going to be able to provide to our fans to have a better experience here at the ballpark? So again, the season just ended, Triple-A is still going on, there’s still some playoffs going on, so we really haven’t gotten into that too much. Minor league baseball has their fall business seminars coming up in two weeks. We’ll be going to that and Diamond Baseball is a part of that too. There will be some Diamond Baseball specific meetings coming up in October as well. It will be the budget planning and capital planning. I’m still just kind of dipping my toe into that water as to what their expectations are. Hopefully we’re going to have some new bells and whistles at the ballpark, but I think they’re trying to wrap their heads around where they’re going to spend money as well.
Do you have any major projects — building or remodeling — that can be divulged?
We have some ideas and that’s sort of in the capital planning stages with Diamond Baseball. So we’ve prepared what we want to, I guess, ask for. Now it’s just a matter of they’re trying to figure out how that all fits into the master plan, the budgeting, and hopefully in the next month or so we’ll have a pretty good idea of what we’re going to be able to do for next season. We fully anticipate we’ll be doing something here that will be of benefit to the fans.