First pitch: a journey through ceremony and baseball

I threw the worst pitch of my life on a Saturday afternoon in Gary, Indiana. My brain lagged behind my body as it went through the motions that should result in a clean throw; everything went sour once my torso began to twist in the direction of home plate and I became fully conscious of my every movement. I wanted to stop, but my right arm had other plans as inertia propelled it toward the catcher. I stood on the mound at U.S. Steel Yard and watched as my ball veered to the left; it bounced past the catcher and ricocheted into the backstop. I sheepishly trotted off the mound towards the catcher and apologized for my errant throw. 

I hastily left the infield about a minute after I approached the mound. The Gary SouthShore RailCats had to stick to their pregame schedule, and six of us were signed up to throw out a ceremonial first pitch. Four people completed this task before me, and as I left the mound, a child no taller than two feet walked onto the infield to throw the final ceremonial toss. He stood significantly closer to the catcher than I did, but he managed to get the ball across home plate without any trouble; I found myself ever so slightly envious of a child. But I took comfort in the knowledge that I would have another chance to throw out a first pitch; in fact, I’d have several more opportunities. 

At the start of the summer, I told my colleagues about a story idea I had been mulling over for at least a year: I wanted to throw out a first pitch at as many minor-league baseball games as I could manage. Turns out, I could manage a half dozen opening tosses. I threw out a ceremonial first pitch for the Windy City Thunderbolts (on June 2), the Gary SouthShore RailCats (June 10), the Rockford Rivets (July 12), the Chicago Dogs (July 16), the Schaumburg Boomers (July 25), and the Kane County Cougars (August 1). 

This pregame ritual stretches back to 1910. Washington Senators’ owner Clark Griffith convinced U.S. president William Howard Taft to toss a baseball to star pitcher Walter Johnson to kick off the team’s opening day game on April 14. (Taft did this from the comfort of his box seat.) Since then, baseball teams from the majors down to the little leagues have enlisted politicians, athletes, and celebrities to participate in the tradition. I felt honored to participate in this grand tradition, even if I had to ask to do it.

I wanted to document the experience for the Reader, of course, and I also wanted space to reflect on this pregame tradition and the minor leagues. This would be my low-commitment Paper Lion. I don’t have time to embed myself with a team, since I keep busy with my routine Reader work—writing about music made by locals, often by artists whose work does not get considered or documented in any meaningful way. (Besides, if I wanted to get the full scope of a season in the minors, I wouldn’t have suggested a story after opening day.)

I harbor no aspirations to play baseball at any level. I never took part in the game growing up, and I can’t recall ever expressing an interest in joining a team, but I loved attending professional games. I grew up in the suburbs of D.C., which didn’t have a baseball team during my childhood. Baltimore, a short drive from Bethesda, gave me the Orioles. I grew up idolizing Cal Ripken Jr., I sported an Albert Belle shirt when he joined the team in 1999, and I was absolutely tickled when Brady Anderson made a cameo on the ABC sitcom Sabrina, the Teenage Witch in 1997. In the mid-to-late 1990s, I could not imagine anything bigger than the Baltimore Orioles.

The team also felt just beyond reach. Oriole Park at Camden Yards is the most intimate MLB stadium I’ve stepped foot in, and the way it frames the city skyline has always filled me with wonder, but it also felt huge and imposing to me during my childhood. The players, too, felt far away even when I wasn’t stuck in the nosebleeds. I’d sometimes show up to games early in the hopes that I could get an autograph from Ripken; I never did.

Sometime in elementary school I went to see a minor league Orioles affiliate called the Frederick Keys. Before that first Keys game, I don’t think I’d ever made it out to Frederick, Maryland, which sits almost an hour northwest of where I grew up. The Keys’ Harry Grove Stadium felt like a playground, partly because I’d gone out to the game to celebrate a friend’s birthday; our gaggle of school pals could careen around the small park without worrying our parents too much, and we could walk right up to the players and talk to them. 

I felt a sense of ownership with the Keys that I never quite had with any major-league team, even if my age and lack of personal responsibility rendered the concept of ownership foggy at best. In 1999, my infatuation with semi-pro and professional-adjacent baseball grew when Bethesda got its own collegiate summer team, the Big Train—that was one of Walter Johnson’s nicknames. (Bethesda has a habit of naming things after Johnson, who settled in the area after he led the Senators in their 1924 World Series victory.) Bethesda Big Train had all the markings of a professional endeavor—a manicured stadium built for the team, crisp uniforms, players who could hit a ball harder and faster than I could’ve mustered on my own—and I relished the novelty of experiencing a new variation of big-time baseball near my home.

My interest in the minor leagues waned as I went through four years at Walter Johnson High School, and in college my interests drifted further away from sports. I moved to Chicago in 2009, and within a handful of years I found myself taken by minor-league baseball once again. My friend Tanveer started me on this journey; he liked to wear T-shirts for minor league teams from places I’ve never been, with names, logos, and mascots I didn’t think a professional team could possibly use. I grew curious about the Rumble Ponies of Binghamton, New York, the Chihuahuas of El Paso, Texas, and the Kernels of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I loved the fact that there were entire constellations of baseball teams that exist outside the major-league system. I saw parallels to my professional life, since I’ve spent so much of it documenting musicians and scenes that thrive outside the major-label apparatus for an alternative newsweekly. Maybe the Omaha Storm Chasers could be my life too.

In May 2018, Tanveer and I went out to Rosemont with our respective partners for the debut opening night of a minor-league baseball team called the Chicago Dogs. They play at Impact Field, a sleek, $60 million ballpark that sits right on top of Interstate 294 across from a cluster of restaurants and venues that Rosemont calls its entertainment district. This setting intensified the feeling that I had stepped into an alternative universe: the quieter moments of this slightly sloppy game were broken up by the sight of planes descending into O’Hare nearby and the constant whirr of highway traffic. My affection for the team was immediate, if not predictable. If your team superimposes the Chicago flag on a hot dog for its logo, I will likely cheer for you—and probably buy a hat.

In the ensuing years, I evangelized the Chicago Dogs and made sure to trek out to Rosemont to see the team. In 2019, the team gave away hot dog costumes as an opening night promotion, and I’ve since made plenty of use of mine. My friends Tiffany and Nick made plans to marry in Horner Park on Halloween 2020, and I showed up in my hot dog costume to officiate. 

In early 2020, the Chicago Dogs launched a Twitter contest to promote the upcoming season: they asked fans to name their favorite hot dog topping, and whoever had the best answer won the chance to throw out a first pitch. My response? Another hot dog. Whoever ran the promotion named me one of two winners, and I was told I’d hear from the front office about scheduling a first pitch closer to the season opener. 

Then the pandemic hit. The Dogs play in an independent league called the American Association of Professional Baseball, which hosted an abbreviated season that summer; I was highly cautious about COVID and did not attend any games. I tried, in vain, to follow up about my first pitch opportunity the next two seasons, but I never had much luck securing a date. I jokingly suggested to my colleagues that this story would be a revenge tale: if I couldn’t participate in a pregame ritual I rightfully won in a pre-pandemic social-media contest, I would find my way to the Impact Field pitcher’s mound through journalism. 

Mostly, I wanted to have a small part in the culture of a minor-league baseball game alongside the stadium-specific foodstuffs, the between-innings entertainment, the mascots, and the promotions intended to drum up attendance. After years of experiencing the minor leagues from the stands, I wanted to know how it feels to stand in the center of the infield and fling a baseball towards home plate—and to do so free of the professional stresses and consequences that weigh on a pitcher with every throw. A small part of me also wanted to be wanted for the ceremonial role, to be seen as worthy enough to help open a game. 

Bill Waliewski, assistant manager for the Windy City ThunderBolts in suburban Crestwood, certainly made me feel invited. He responded to my email request to throw out a first pitch before anyone else. He had a deep familiarity with the Reader; he used to pick up a copy every Thursday the ten years he lived in Lakeview, before I moved to Chicago. And just like that, I scheduled my debut first pitch for June 10.

A handful of monsters came stuttering out of the elevator on the concrete concourse behind home plate at Ozinga Field just after 6 PM. I caught sight of a zombie with an exposed skull, a bloody shirt, and fresh jeans. The zombie was followed closely by a clown with a crown of bright red hair and a bloodied lab coat wielding a chainsaw, which also bore signs of blood. Several more creatures filed out of the elevator behind them. The Windy City ThunderBolts were hosting their annual Fright Night promotion, and attendees were encouraged to wear costumes for a parade around the field before the game. The team wore black-and-red themed jerseys that featured a bleeding font and the official artist rendering of the night’s honored guest: MeTV horror-movie host Svengoolie. 

Ozinga Field holds a little more than 3,000 people, and I estimated a little more than two-thirds of the seats were filled. Of those couple thousand attendees, it seemed like half showed up specifically to see Svengoolie; most of the evening he sat at an autograph table on the concourse near home plate, and the line to meet him remained strong for at least six innings. The ThunderBolts also enlisted Svengoolie to throw out a first pitch, and he would be the last of six of us to do so. That took off some of the pressure I felt for what would be my first time on the pitcher’s mound at a minor-league ballpark.

The ThunderBolts debuted in 1999 as the Cook County Cheetahs. (Crestwood’s mayor at the time, Chester Stranczek, who played in the minors in the 1950s, threw out a first pitch, as did then-governor George Ryan.) The Cheetahs joined the fledgling Frontier League, then in its seventh year as an independent association operating outside the typical Major League Baseball farm system. In 2004, the Cheetahs became the ThunderBolts, and three years later they won their first Frontier League championship; they’d repeat the feat the following year. In 2020, the Frontier League became an MLB Partner League, which gave the association a new line of financial support. That summer, my buddy Daniel invited me down to a Tuesday night ThunderBolts game, and I couldn’t say no to a $2 ticket and $2 hot dogs.

My ThunderBolts first-pitch game would be my third time at the ballpark in as many years. I’d like to say I trained for the task, but I thought about practicing my throw more than I actually did. I made something of an attempt. I purchased an unused youth baseball during the annual Ravenswood Manor Garage Sale in May, though I never got around to finding a mitt to play catch with the thing. I did practice my toss, though throwing around a tennis ball with my wife and our friend Diego in a park did not fully prepare me to step on a pitcher’s mound. Whatever training regimen I dreamed of got lost in the slipstream of summertime activities sometime between camping in Door County and watching a Barbie matinee. 

I arrived at Ozinga Field with about 15 minutes to spare before the first pitch, and as my anxiety about running late dissolved I began to worry about my ability to throw. Some of that self-imposed pressure dissipated once I walked onto the field and noticed three of the other people who were signed up to toss a ceremonial ball were children. I could do worse than a child, as I’d find out in Gary, but in that moment I felt OK about my task at hand. 

One of the ThunderBolts workers brought out a bucket of lightly used Frontier League baseballs and all of us held onto our ball till we were called up to the mound. I wasted no time as the announcer ushered me onto the field with, “Now from the Chicago Reader, here’s Leor.” I barely took any time to notice how the stadium looked from the mound, or register much beyond my burning desire to send the ball in my hand into the catcher’s mitt. I should have taken a moment to prepare myself once I arrived on the mound, but I found myself propelled through the motions thanks to a giddy mix of disbelief and anxiety. I threw my arms behind me, lifted my left thigh up towards my torso as I pulled my right arm back, and then launched the ball towards home plate. It floated upwards on its forward journey for a moment, but quickly gave in to gravity and bounced a few inches short of home plate. 

I left the infield just as fast as I arrived, retrieving my ball as I made way for the next first-pitch participant, another child whose throw made me feel pretty good about my effort. I’m not quite sure about Svengoolie’s fastball. After he went up to throw, the catcher, Peyton Isaacson, beckoned him closer and closer to home plate till, finally, Isaacson lobbed a rubber chicken at him.

In 1953, president Dwight D. Eisenhower threw a first pitch that hit an umpire in the back. A 1954 United Press wire story told of how the president had also planned to golf in Georgia on opening day of that year, rebuffing a presidential tradition so well-established that his absence from the Senators’ Griffith Stadium apparently upset people. Even the anticipation of the presidential first pitch qualified as news—hence the UP story, “Eisenhower Promises Control of Ceremonial First Pitch.”

In anticipation of the 1980 season, the Cincinnati Reds held a contest to come up with a creative idea to bring the opening-day baseball to Riverfront Stadium. Keen Babbage, a 25-year-old fan, suggested bringing the ball from the place it would be manufactured: Saint Louis. The 430-mile walk also functioned as a fundraiser for March of Dimes. When Babbage arrived at the park, he gave the ball to Cincinnati’s March of Dimes poster child, 5-year-old Jason Edwards, who had the honor of throwing out the first pitch.

I’d dreamed of putting together a comprehensive history of the ceremonial first pitch. I might have had an easier time training to play baseball in a few months than attempting to dig through 113 years of baseball history in search of every opening toss in the same amount of time. I certainly had no trouble finding examples of public figures who’d made a cameo on the mound. 

YouTube, obviously, is rife with footage of first pitches. I would be lying if I said I didn’t spend some time watching montages of the “worst” celebrity first pitches. Did I take comfort watching Carly Rae Jepsen send a ball into the ground a few feet away from the mound, or MLB great Nolan Ryan make a wild toss that veered too far right of his intended target? Sure, a little; there’s solidarity in public embarrassment. 

I do take some enjoyment in trying an activity I’m not particularly good at just to see if I can do it, but I also realize the stakes are different for me. If I make an errant throw in front of a half-full minor-league ballpark, that memory largely stays with me. I can take ownership of my failure in this article. After 50 Cent goofed up at a 2014 Mets game, GQ published an oral history about it. The headline came from a quote from field reporter Kevin Burkhardt, who called the pitch, “The worst thing I’d ever seen.”

This project isn’t entirely novel, either. My research led me to stories written by columnists who also had an opportunity to throw out a ceremonial first pitch. In 2001, Naples Daily News columnist Brent Batten tossed one out for a single A team called the Fort Myers Miracle. Batten sought advice for his time on the mound, and Daily News general manager Bob Burdick kept it brief: “Just don’t bounce it up there.”

I could not afford to bumble my first pitch at the Rockford Rivets game. As much as I wanted to improve over my horrendous performance in Gary, my ego didn’t compel me to throw well here. When the Rivets announcer called me up to the mound, the home team and the visitors (the Kalamazoo Growlers) were queued up on the first- and third-base lines for the national anthem. The players formed an arrow directing me towards home plate. I feared a cockeyed throw would cause a career-ending injury for one of the promising athletes before me.

The Rivets have been around since 2016, and play in a stadium that previously hosted two different Frontier League teams, first the RiverHawks and then the Aviators. In February 2016, a company called Rockford Baseball Properties announced the Rivets would debut later that summer as part of the Northwoods League, a collegiate association whose teams are made up of pre-draft undergraduate players. That might not qualify as professional to most discerning baseball fanatics, but these guys are on a professional track and play at a level that I, a minimally athletic 37-year-old with flat feet, simply cannot.

I drove through a torrential downpour on my way to Rivets Stadium; when I arrived I noticed Cook County had issued a tornado warning. The rain didn’t return to the ballpark, but it delayed the game. A handful of Rivets workers (including a couple players) were attempting to ameliorate the muddy patches around home base with large bags of Turface Quick Dry, an absorbent compound made with clay—folks on the infield spread the Turface onto the ground with shovels and rakes. 

The delay gave me the chance to chat with the person tasked with catching my pitch, Matthew Mebane. He plays for South Georgia State College during the academic year, and he’d already spent a summer with the Rivets in 2022. In the summer of 2016, Mebane won the MLB’s Junior Home Run Derby in the lead up to the All Star game. He might have had dingers on his mind because former Oakland A’s star José Canseco rolled through Rockford a few days prior to participate in a home-run derby on the Rock River. The Rivets recruited Canseco to throw out a first pitch for that evening’s game; he tossed the ball to Mebane.

I couldn’t compete with a guy who hit more than 400 homers in the MLB, nor did I intend to try to make a bigger impression on my catcher. I just wanted to send that ball across home plate without forcing Mebane to scramble. The mix-up that sent both teams onto the infield for the National Anthem while I threw out the first pitch provided me with guardrails. I kept both feet planted on the ground and threw high, sending the ball on a trajectory that brought it down into Mebane’s mitt.

Curtis Haug’s ambition to play baseball ended in 1988. He’d been a pitcher at Florida Southern College, but after he injured himself his junior year, Haug’s throw lost some of its speed. Haug’s father encouraged him to pursue a career in baseball anyway, so he sent his resume to any minor-league team that caught his eye. He landed a job with the Wheelers, a single-A team based in the capital of West Virginia. “My starting salary was $800 a month,” he says. “[I] did everything; clean toilets, painted the fence signs, painted the seats, I was the PA announcer. It was a real small operation.”

In the early 1990s, his parents told him about a new minor-league team operating near his Naperville hometown: the Kane County Cougars. Haug estimates he called general manager Bill Larsen at least 30 times via a payphone before Larsen took his call. Haug began working for the Cougars in 1993; at the end of the team’s 2011 season, he became their general manager. The Cougars are the oldest operating minor-league team in the region, and they’d be the last team I’d throw out a first pitch for this summer.

As much as this story is about my experience—on the mound and as a fan of minor-league baseball—I did want some insight about what went on behind the scenes. The minors are historically seen through a subservient relationship to the MLB; these scrappy leagues exist to mold talent and prepare them for “The Show.” But even as players cycle in and out of the minors, the teams maintain a full roster and packed schedule, and play to communities that exist outside the domain of an MLB team. If I saw my time as an alt-weekly journalist as some sort of mirror to minor-league lifers, what exactly went into maintaining a team?

The Cougars’ front office employs 25 people. October through April, they prepare for baseball season. That means organizing around the team’s schedule, drumming up sponsorships, and finding people to buy tickets for large groups or for an entire season. “Probably the number one thing that a person that works in minor-league baseball does is sell,” Haug says. It’s a 40-hour work week till summertime. “During the season, it’s long hours,” he says. “When we have a six-game homestand, you’re going to be here 14, 15 hours a day, six days in a row.”

In 2020, the Cougars and the rest of the Class-A Midwest League canceled their season due to the pandemic. “We lost 98 percent of our revenue,” Haug says. “We were on life support. We had to reduce the staff to four or five people.” They survived renting out the ballpark for events and hosting movie nights. The following year, the MLB reorganized its minor leagues, slimming down the number of affiliated teams from 160 to 120; the Cougars were cut. 

The Cougars joined the American Association of Professional Baseball for the 2021 season, the league’s first as an MLB partner. “Back when we were affiliated, the players were provided to us,” Haug says. “It was, ‘Here you go, here’s your team.’ They get off the bus and you figured it out from there. In this league, we put the rosters together. We put the coaching staff together. We pay for their salaries, their workers’ comp, their pre- and post-game meals—everything.” 

Haug says the new league has given the Cougars a different type of player. When the team was affiliated with the MLB, it featured athletes on their way to the minors. Now their roster includes more seasoned players—people who are generally a little stronger and skilled but likely already peaked. For much of the season, the Cougars roster included Pete Kozma, who won a World Series with the Saint Louis Cardinals in 2011. (The Cougars released him on August 8.) 

As Haug sees it, the people who come to the park haven’t been too distraught about the change in the team’s affiliation. “Ninety-five percent of the people that come here don’t even know, probably, and don’t even care,” he says. “They’re here for the fun. They’re here for the atmosphere. They’re here to run the bases after the game. They’re here for the great fireworks.”

And for the ceremonial first pitch. “First pitches have been a major part of what we do,” Haug says. The first pitch is an income stream—big sponsors have the opportunity to throw one out, along with people who buy a package of tickets to celebrate their birthday at the game. Sometimes the Cougars offer a ceremonial first pitch as a prize in a contest. Haug sees it as a good way to engage with the community, to let longtime fans be part of the game and celebrate public figures.

After our conversation, Haug emails me a photo from a 2004 ceremonial first pitch. In it, future Oakland A’s pitcher Dallas Braden stands on the mound next to the guest of honor, Illinois state senator Barack Obama. 

I finally got the chance to throw out a pitch before a Chicago Dogs game on July 16. I would like to tell you my time on the mound at Impact Field was victorious. That would be half true. Three years after winning that contest, and five years after deciding the Chicago Dogs were the team (or “a team”) for me, it did feel great to be out on that mound. My wife roped in a bunch of friends for the occasion. I wore an oversized Dogs jersey the team offered as an opening night promotion this season, and it clung to parts of my body like a wet tarp. I felt ready.

I followed a teenager who delivered a clean throw from just in front of the mound. I probably should have followed suit and tried my toss on the infield grass. Instead I went up to the mound and threw a lowball that curved downward and left. It bounced just before home plate, kicking up a little dust before it arrived in the catcher’s mitt. My friends cheered me on like that’s exactly where the ball was meant to go all along. We spent the rest of the afternoon baking in the sun, watching as the Chicago Dogs eventually lost to the Lake Country DockHounds. I would’ve liked a better outcome—for the team, and for my pitch. I’ve found this summer I’ve suffered from option paralysis, frustrated by having too many events to attend and not enough time or energy or the ability to multiply myself to witness all of it. But that day, I had no complaints about how I chose to spend my time.

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My friend Mike offered to help me with my throw. He’s not only played baseball, he’s also coached kids. We met volunteering for 826 Chicago, and I saw firsthand how his gentle encouragement and easygoing temperament put students at ease and helped them gain confidence. He’s what I needed to try to improve my throw. We met on a hot mid-July evening about 24 hours before I was due to appear on the mound in Schaumburg. He took me through each step required to complete a clean throw. At one point early in my lesson, Mike apologized for potentially over-explaining anything I might already know about the basics of throwing. I told him to talk to me like a child who was learning all this for the first time; I had to get it right.

I arrived in Schaumburg the next evening before the gates at Wintrust Field opened. The Boomers are named after the greater prairie chicken, and the team fashioned the bird’s bulbous neck and elvin-like crown of feathers into a logo about as fearsome as a prairie chicken could aspire to be. The team is certainly formidable; since they debuted in 2012, they’ve captured four Frontier League championships. 

Canadian wildfires had drifted back into Chicago the day of the game. AirNow’s website told me the air was dangerously unhealthy, though Schaumburg’s skies were clear and sunny; I felt all 89 degrees of heat bear down on me as I walked around Wintrust Field, and I prepared for my throw by noshing on a $1 hot dog. The stadium seats more than 7,000, and even though it was a Tuesday night, people poured into the stadium by the hundreds, particularly for the inexpensive food; I had a hard time maneuvering around the main concourse as crowds clumped around concessions windows. This would be one of the largest crowds that would witness—or barely register—me throw out a first pitch.

I went over what Mike told me as I stood by the entrance to the field with the other two people scheduled to throw out a baseball. I made a “C” shape with my thumb and index and middle fingers; I placed my top two fingers above the ball’s horizontal seam, and bent my ring and little fingers to buttress the ball. I’d throw the final ceremonial pitch.

When I got to the mound, I remembered to take a deep breath and focus on the catcher. All of my previous times on the mound were brief enough for me to barely consider the perch I stood on or the crowd before me, never mind the catcher; the setting sun hit my eyes from the right, and helped me focus on my target. I heard Mike’s voice tell me to forget all the steps of making a pitch and to just throw.

My baseball drifted up and slightly rightward, but I’d sent it on a trajectory that placed it right in the hands of the catcher, Hunter Hoopes. When I jogged off the field towards him to retrieve the ball, he complimented me on my throw. He signed my baseball, and scrawled his number (22) just right of his autograph. Long after I left the park, after I threw my last pitch for this story, I tracked down his information on the Boomers website. That’s how I realized Hoopes is one of the team’s pitchers.

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A few hours before I began my trip out to Geneva for the Kane County Cougars game, I spoke with 48th Ward alderperson Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth. In June, she threw a first pitch to kick off a White Sox game, and I wanted to learn about her experience—and get her advice. 

I’d noted a lot of people who took part in the game-opening tradition this year I could have talked to for the story. Actor Thomas Ian Nicholas, who played a pre-teen whose fastball lands him on the Chicago Cubs’ roster in 1993’s Rookie of the Year, appeared on the mound at Wrigley Field on July 2 to celebrate that movie’s 30th anniversary. Mayor Brandon Johnson also threw one out for the Cubs back in May. My routine work covering music has made me aware of artists who’ve been invited to lob a baseball for an MLB team outside this city; this year, I noticed Yo La Tengo guitarist-vocalist Ira Kaplan threw one out for the Mets in June, and all four members of Turnstile shared the honor of tossing out the opening ball at an Orioles game in August. 

I have a shared history with Manaa-Hoppenworth, who worked as a Reader sales representative till she decided to run for public office. She’d been one of ten candidates vying for the 48th Ward’s aldermanic seat; she won the runoff in April, becoming the first Filipino-American elected to city council. As the White Sox began planning a Filipino heritage day celebration for June 24, the team reached out to Manaa-Hoppenworth to participate in the game-opening ceremony.

“It was an experience that was probably the most stressful moment in my aldermanic career—up to that point,” she says. Manaa-Hoppenworth grew up watching the Sox with her family in the south suburbs, so being asked to represent the city’s Filipino community for a home game brought pride and pressure. And then there’s the size of the stadium; Guaranteed Rate Field can fit a little more than 40,000 fans in the stands, dwarfing even the largest stadium I’d visit for this project (Kane County Cougars’ Northwestern Medicine Field, which can seat almost 11,000 people). “I wanted to be there, I wanted to represent, but I also didn’t want to fail,” Manaa-Hoppenworth says. “I had to think to myself, ‘What does it mean to be successful?’” 

She came up with a goal: don’t bounce the ball. She sought out pointers from friends and family, and practiced her throw in the weeks leading up to the big game. “The biggest thing that I thought that was most useful is you can’t just let your arm do all the work,” she says. “You have to involve your whole body.” Out on the infield at Guaranteed Rate Field, sporting a Sox jersey that brandished her last name above the number 48, she dashed out to the pitcher’s mound, touched it with a foot, then ran closer to the catcher to toss the ball. “And it landed right in the mitt,” she says.

Manaa-Hoppenworth suggested I should perform a pirouette before my pitch at the Cougars game, but I’m afraid to say I was a little too discombobulated to pull it off. I was the third of four people to throw out a ceremonial ball that evening. Just before my turn, the Cougars employee who guided us onto the infield told me I couldn’t throw from the mound—the grounds crew liked to keep it untouched for the actual game. I hadn’t practiced since my throw in Schaumburg, and I gripped the baseball a little too tight. My throw went high, to the right, and into the backstop. At least it didn’t bounce. 

As I walked up the stairway leading me from third base to the main concourse, an elderly Cougars fan turned to me to say, “Good job.”

“I tried,” I responded. That got a laugh.

When a baseball player ascends to the majors, the minor-league teams that once housed and incubated and sculpted said athlete usually pay homage to the rising star. The Windy City Thunderbolts, for example, were once home to David Axelrod, who played a couple seasons for the White Sox in the early 2010s. Three Kane County Cougars alumni—Willson Contreras, Albert Almora, and Kyle Schwarber—were on the Cubs’ 2016 World Series roster. 

I understand the minor leagues offer ticket buyers the chance to see a potential MLB star in the making on his ascent, but prospecting doesn’t draw me to the ballpark. I’m there to razz on the Chicago Dogs ketchup mascot, or because the Kane County Cougars and Rockford Rivets let fans bring their dogs to their respective games as part of a promotion called Bark in the Park, or because the Schaumburg Boomers let people run into the outfield to participate in a marshmallow fight after a game, or because, in general, the tickets are affordable and it’s a nice way to spend a few hours outdoors with friends. I go to see athletic feats and sloppy errors up close, because it doesn’t matter how big of a stadium I’m sitting in or what kind of baseball I’m watching if the play on the field surprises me. 

This summer, I spent a lot of time considering the parallels between minor-league baseball and alternative newsweeklies. The Reader has a history of helping talented writers, editors, photographers, and art designers with their respective crafts—plenty of whom have been whisked away by bigger news outlets with larger budgets. But this paper doesn’t exist to mold talent for larger outlets. The Reader has a distinctive voice, which is constantly shaped by staffers and contributors who have the kind of deep expertise required to publish stories you can’t find in any other local news outlet. We have a legion of fans too, and while the size of our readership is smaller than that of the dailies, I think we’re still able to give the people who read us a reason to pick up every new issue. I also like to think our work can still surprise our readers too. 

I thought back to the night I went to Rockford to throw a first pitch for the Rivets. It’s difficult to draw people to the ballpark on a weeknight, and even harder a couple hours after the skies have drenched the ballpark. The Rivets’ website notes 473 people attended that game, though when I surveyed the stadium after I left the infield it looked like no more than 100 fans were around. It reminded me of all the times I spent pouring energy and time into stories that went virtually unnoticed—it can make working on the next story just a little more challenging. But I felt encouraged by the sight (and sound) of the Rivets players cheering whenever one of their teammates successfully earned a hit; these players were there for each other regardless of who showed up to watch them. The Rivets ended up losing to the Growlers by three runs.

The Gary RailCats played a miserable game following my disastrous ceremonial toss on June 10. But in the bottom of the 8th inning, first baseman Emmanuel Tapia hit a pitch with such authority that the sound caused me to leap up before I could see the ball sail over the outfield wall. His homerun gave the RailCats their first, and only, two runs. They’d lose to the Cleburne Railroaders by seven. The final score couldn’t scrub the euphoria I felt seeing Tapia smack that ball out of the park any more than his performance could undo the numbing sting of defeat. Baseball at any professional level sure knows how to twist up my emotions.

Sixty feet and six inches separate the back of home base and the plate on top of the pitcher’s mound. For six games, I planted my feet on that plate—or as close to it as the Kane County Cougars grounds crew allowed me. Would I have liked to have pitched better? Sure. But even my poorest performance couldn’t erase the gut-churning thrill of hearing the announcer call me on to the mound as if I belonged on that perch. And, for a handful of moments this summer, I did.