What would you think if I bought a baseball team?
His mom had died 10 years before, and his father’s recent death left him, an only child, with an inheritance of about $350,000. That was exactly the asking price for the Lumberjacks. Was this fate?
BRIGHT STRIPES AND BROAD STARS BY JAY BERMAN 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 57
The Franklin City Plumbers weren’t plumbers at all, they were a baseball team owned by Terry Martin. They were about to play in their first year in the Wisconsin-Illinois-Michigan (WIM) League, one of those independent organizations that offers false hope to pitchers who can’t pitch, hitters who can’t hit, and outfielders who think that, at 38, they still have a chance to play for the Boston Red Sox.
The team’s nickname was something of a misnomer. Franklin City had been an industrial hub of as many as 80,000 people on the Des Plaines River in Northern Illinois about a century ago. But just as water moves downstream, so did the city’s half-dozen plumbing supply manufacturers and most of their employees.
These days, visitors to the town of now 24,000 might be inclined by storefront signs into thinking that most businesses were called “For Rent”.
Terry Martin had been a second baseman in high school in Hoganville, just up the Des Plaines from Franklin City, about 20 years earlier. He often said that a shoulder injury kept him from playing college ball and maybe even something beyond that, but a .240 batting average was more likely to blame.
Terry was manager of the Northern Illinois Homeowners local branch (“Don’t Just Insure, Be Sure”) but, at 37, he was ready for a change. He and his wife, Linda, had no children. She taught sixth grade at Franklin City Elementary School.
He read every baseball league website, blog, and magazine he could find, from the majors on down. One evening, while Linda was watching a heartwarming Hallmark film about a young woman finding Mr Right in the big city, Terry read a story on the Wisconsin-Illinois-Michigan (WIM) League website that the Morganville Lumberjacks were going out of business.
Even though Morganville was a relatively prosperous town about 40 miles southwest of Franklin City, its fans had abandoned the club. It had drawn fewer than 800 per game in each of two seasons of play. The story said the franchise would be acquired by the league and its players would be scattered to other teams like mankind after the fall of the Tower of Babel. The story didn’t actually make that biblical reference, but that’s how Terry saw it.
That is, however, unless a new owner could be found. Terry was in no position to think about that, though, or was he? His mom had died 10 years before, and his father’s recent death left him, an only child, with an inheritance of about $350,000. That was exactly the asking price for the soon-to-be ex-Lumberjacks, according to the league website. Was this fate? Could he buy the Lumberjacks and move them to Franklin City?
He saw that Ernest Dixon, the league president, was based in nearby DeKalb, home of the DeKalb Destroyers, another WIM franchise. It certainly couldn’t hurt to email Dixon to get some information on how he might acquire the team.
Terry turned to Linda, who was absorbed in her film. Computer-generated violin music soared as Mr Right surprised his lady love with an engagement ring hidden inside a dish of ice cream at a Disneyesque soda fountain.
“Linda,” Terry said tentatively. “What would you think if I bought a baseball team?” Without missing a moment of Mr Right’s marriage proposal, Linda responded, “I’d think you were out of your mind.”