Better Days in Rockford

By David Marasco

The Rock river flows gently past the ballpark. A child could have quite a summer with a fishing pole and a season pass. It looked like rain the day I visited. Sadly, the clouds will not part for baseball in Rockford. That's a real shame. Today Rockford is a small city of less than 150,000 about an hour from Chicago. Years ago it was major league.

Back in the days before the major leagues, professional teams would barnstorm their way across the country. One of the most mighty was the Washington Nationals of 1867. They were undefeated as they roamed the West that year. In Chicago they met a team from Rockford and finally lost. Some in Chicago felt that the game was thrown by Washington in order to sway the betting odds for the following day's game against the Chicago Excelsiors, "Champions of the West." Others knew better. The sixteen-year-old kid on the mound for Rockford was a local boy named Al Spaulding. He would soon work in the city of Chicago as a grocery clerk, at the princely sum of $40 a week. At that salary we can guess that he didn't work too hard at the groceries. The Rockford boy would have a Hall-of-Fame career and founded the sporting goods company that still bears his name.

I make more that $40 a week, but the 130 years of inflation mean that I was quite happy to pay only $6 for a box seat, right behind the plate, three rows up. You have to like prices in the low minors. The sky grew ugly and a light drizzle misted out of the sky. The scouts in front of me packed up their radar guns and headed for shelter. It's a bad sign when the scouts jump the ship.

In the very first year of what historians consider to be the major leagues Rockford had a franchise in the National Association. Association is a more descriptive word than league. There were no schedules from a league office, only an agreement that teams would play against each other (they could still barnstorm against other teams), and the team with the most wins would be declared champion. 1871 was Rockford's only year as a member. They finished 4-21. It is written that the Forest Citys of Rockford saw the glow of the great Chicago Fire as they approached the city for a series of matches. The old Rockford team played at the Agricultural Society Fair Grounds. According to Lowry's Green Cathedrals the home field had little foul territory, due to trees planted close to the diamond. Also, third base was uphill from home plate, so runners coming in from third had an easier time than normal!

The scouts were wrong about the rain. After some dampness the sky cleared and the game got underway. Rockford, a farm team of the Reds, was playing Cedar Rapids, an Angels franchise. Last year Cedar Rapids was in the San Diego chain and had Gary Templeton as a manager. Not this time around, Mitch Seoane runs the show. Former reliever Greg "Moon Man" Minton runs the Cedar Rapids pitching. Rockford sports Mike Rojas as manager and Derek Botelho as pitching coach.

Al Spaulding was in Boston for the National Association's first year. Rockford did have a franchise player though. Their third baseman was a young man named Cap Anson. He would become legendary and later notorious. As a player he would anchor the great Chicago teams of the 1880's, back in an era when if you were blown out of a baseball game you were "Chicagoed." He was the first man to 3000 hits and was one of the 19th century's greatest stars. He is also the scapegoat for the Color Barrier. One day he decided that he would not play in an exhibition if the opposing team played their black player. Quickly African-Americans were banned from the game. While he may have been the trigger he didn't have to push hard. His actions and those of the men who ran the game were certainly consistent with the general rollback of rights for minorities that was seen in the fifty years that followed Reconstruction.

The Midwest League is a low-A organization. These kids are a far way from the bigs. Sometimes this is easy to see. In the second inning the Rockford left fielder had a ball bounce out of his glove for an error. Two outs later a homer was jacked to left for two runs. It isn't just the defense, it's also the baserunning. In the fourth Rockford had a runner in and men on first and third. The Cedar Rapids pitcher did the old "fake to third and go to first" move. You know, the one that never works? He had the man at first dead to rights. In the rundown the man at third broke for the plate; he was cut down like ripe corn. Like I said, these guys are far from the bigs.

After dropping out of the bigs Rockford floated around the various minor leagues. For the two months of the Northwestern League in 1879, Rockford was a member. Ditto the two months of the Central Interstate League in 1888. The leagues were a little more stable in the 1890's and Rockford saw franchises in the Illinois-Iowa League in 1891 and 1892, then the Western Association from 1895-7, and again in 1899. From 1901 through 1904 the Three-I (Iowa-Illinois-Indiana) League blew into town, and the period 1908-1914 saw the Wisconsin-Illinois League. The Three-I was back from 1915 to 1924, but 1918 was a war casualty for the entire league.

Cedar Rapids started a 22-year-old named Brandon Emmanuel. The Floridian mowed down Rockford for the first one and a half times through the lineup. He retired every man through four, and lost the perfect game on an error by his second baseman in the fifth. An out later he lost the no-no and the shutout on a triple to left. By then he enjoyed a 3-1 advantage, the propects for history were gone, but a win was still in the sights.

World War II sent millions of men overseas and brought baseball back to Rockford. Only this time it was the women playing. Rockford was one of the four original teams in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, Phil Wrigley's Girls of Summer. The league was an originally an attempt by the owner of the Cubs to keep interest in baseball high during the war. It turned into something more. While it never caught on in the bigger cities, the small burgs of the Midwest took these women into their hearts. The league saw its last games in 1954, and when it did Rockford still had a franchise. The Peaches were there from the beginning until the end, winning four titles. They even drove the men out of town. From 1947 until 1949 Rockford had a Central Association team. Only the women, following up a league crown in 1945, were champs from 1948-1950. The Central Association team failed due to poor attendance. Halfway through 1949 they were told by the league to play all of their remaining games on the road. The women were outdrawing the men.

Emmanuel gave up another run in the 6th. It was the result of a leadoff walk followed by a sacrifice and a single. The score would end 3-2 in favor of Cedar Rapids, Emmanuel going the distance. He surrendered only four hits (three singles) and a walk.

Minor League baseball took almost 40 years off from Rockford, it returned in the form of a Montreal farm team in 1988. The Midwest League had brought baseball back. The Royals took over the team in 1993, only to be replaced by the Cubs in 1995 and Reds this year. Some of the talent that's learned the trade in Marinelli Stadium: Greg Colbrunn, Delino DeShields, Mark Grunzielanek, Jose Nieves, Carlos Perez, Mel Rojas, Kirk Reuter, and Matt Stairs.

After the game there was a fireworks show. It started small, but built to roaring climax. One Hell of a show for a small town.

In 2000 Rockford will again be without professional baseball. Cincinnati is moving the team and renaming it "the Dayton Dragons." Rockford is the victim of forces outside of its control. Minor league baseball, even at the lower levels, has become big time business. Some of the teams in the Midwest League have luxury boxes and big screen TV's beyond the fences in the outfield. Rockford surely lost some of the Chicago crowd when the Cubs pulled their association. They lost even more when the fine people of Schaumburg, a North-West suburb of Chicago, built a state-of-the-art $16 million stadium. Needless to say, more money could be made in Dayton than Rockford. The Forest City will have to be content with a history that includes the likes of Spaulding, Anson and the Peaches. And be secure in the knowledge that it was once Major League.