Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball

by John Feinstein

  Toledo had the Mud Hens long before any of those teams—or names—existed. In fact, the name dates to 1896, when the team played in a place called Bay View Park, which was next to some marshland that was inhabited by American coots—also known as marsh hens or mud hens. People in Toledo took to calling the team the Swamp Angels or the Mud Hens. It was Mud Hens that stuck, and it became the team’s official name when it rejoined the American Association in 1902.

  Prior to that, the Toledo Blue Stockings had been “promoted” to the American Association in 1884. In those days, before there was what is today’s American League, the American Association was a major league, and minor-league teams were occasionally invited to join. The Blue Stockings had two African Americans on the team, Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother, Welday Walker.

  According to historical accounts, the Hall of Famer Cap Anson, then with the Chicago White Stockings, told management he wouldn’t take the field to compete against the Walker brothers. Soon after, the brothers were gone from Toledo, and the next African American who played major-league baseball was Jackie Robinson—sixty-three years later.

  The Mud Hens have been in Toledo for most of the last 110 years. They won a Double-A championship in 1927, when Casey Stengel was their manager. There were two brief periods when they played under other names, and there was no team in Toledo at all from 1956 to 1964—after the Milwaukee Braves moved their Triple-A farm team from Toledo to Wichita. In 1965, the Yankees moved the Richmond Virginians to Toledo and rechristened them the Mud Hens, and there has once again been Triple-A baseball in Toledo ever since. For the last twenty-six seasons, the Mud Hens have been the Tigers’ Triple-A team, which makes geographic sense since Fifth Third Field, their home since 2002, is fifty-eight miles south of Comerica Park, a straight shot up I-75.

  Nowadays, the Mud Hens embrace their unique name. Their mascots are named Muddy and Muddonna, and their newsletter is the Muddy Times, except online, where it is the Mud-E-Times. The kids’ club is, you guessed it, the Muddy’s Buddies Kids Club.

  The second reason for the popularity of the Mud Hens is one man: Jamie Farr. The actor grew up in Toledo, and when he became one of the stars of M*A*S*H, his character, Max Klinger of Toledo, Ohio (also of Lebanese descent like Farr), often wore a Toledo Mud Hens baseball cap. Farr frequently referenced Toledo and the Mud Hens during the nine years he was a star on the show (he appeared in six episodes the first year and in twelve episodes the second).

  To this day, Farr remains Toledo’s most famous celebrity. Starting in 1984, his name was on the LPGA golf tournament that is played in Toledo, and the most popular bobblehead night of the year at Fifth Third Field is—not surprisingly—Jamie Farr bobblehead night.

  “The 2012 version was the second one they’ve done,” Farr said one afternoon from the apartment he was renting in Hamilton, Ontario, where he was starring in a play called The Last Romance. “They’re doing a third one for 2013. I told [general manager] Joe Napoli I wanted to be in a tuxedo. Very un-Klinger-like, I guess.”

  Farr still gets back to Toledo and to a Mud Hens game at least once a year. He grew up as a fan of the Mud Hens and the Detroit Tigers, going to games at Swayne Field, which was the Mud Hens’ home until 1955.

  “I was part of what they called the Knot Hole Gang,” he said, laughing. “You paid fifty cents and they let you watch the game through a hole in the fence. I loved going to games back then. I worked as a paperboy for the Toledo Blade and the Toledo Times. The guy who was in charge of the neighborhood I worked would take us to a Tigers game in Briggs Stadium whenever we sold a certain number of subscriptions. I loved that too. I was a huge baseball fan then; I’m a huge baseball fan now.”

  Farr’s real name is Jameel Farah. His dad was a meat cutter who opened his own grocery store—Farah’s Meats—when Jamie was a teenager. The grocery store still exists but, according to Farr, isn’t in very good shape. “It’s like a lot of places in Toledo,” he said. “Hit hard by the economy.”

  Farr is seventy-nine now—thirty years removed from the last episode of M*A*S*H. He considers himself lucky to have played Klinger, although like many actors who have had an iconic role, he finds that it can be a burden at times.

  “It’s not an issue in the theater,” he said. “I’ve been lucky that way. But TV and film are different. If I want to be cast as, say, a murderer, the fact is a lot of directors, even now, will say, ‘How can I cast a guy who is famous for dressing in women’s clothing as a murderer?’ ”

  “Alan [Alda] tells me to this day, for all he’s done since M*A*S*H when he’s onstage someone will invariably yell out, ‘Nice going, Hawkeye.’ It’s a blessing to have had a role like that, but there are times when it’s a bit of a curse. I love that I was Klinger. I’d just love for someone to call and say, ‘Okay, here’s that next great role.’ ”

  When Klinger was created—initially for one show before the character took off—it was M*A*S*H’s co-creator Gene Reynolds, who was from Cleveland, who suggested having him come from Toledo. Larry Gelbart, who co-created the show with Reynolds, decided to name him after an old friend of his and make him Lebanese, in honor of the great comedian Danny Thomas, who had also grown up in Toledo, under the name of Amos Jacobs. Farr, who had first come to Hollywood in 1955 and had been a second banana on (among others) The Red Skelton Show, read for the part and got it almost instantly.

  “It probably helped that I am Lebanese American and that I’d been in the army and was in Korea on a couple of occasions,” he said. “Or maybe it was just meant to be.”

  Ken Levine, one of the show’s writers, also dabbled back then in baseball announcing. He had worked for the Tidewater Tides (and has since worked for several major-league teams, most recently the Dodgers) and was familiar with the Mud Hens. He began writing references to the Mud Hens into the script for Klinger. When Gene Cook, then the Mud Hens’ general manager, sent Farr a Mud Hens cap, he began wearing it on a regular basis.

  “Gene told me that they began getting calls from all over the world from people looking for Mud Hens gear,” Farr said with a laugh. “A lot of people weren’t even sure it was a real team. Once they found out it was real, they wanted caps and T-shirts and coffee mugs—everything. Joe Napoli tells me they still get calls all the time for stuff.”

  In the meantime, Farr is always welcome at Fifth Third Field. “I love Muddy and Muddonna,” he said, laughing. “Where else but in Toledo could someone famous for cross-dressing throw out the first pitch at a baseball game?”

  Where indeed?

  16

  Slice of Life

  WEEKEND IN TOLEDO

  Fifth Third Field is like many of the newer Triple-A parks. It sits smack in the middle of downtown Toledo, and as with Victory Field in Indianapolis the local skyline can be seen behind the outfield fences.

  Because the Mud Hens have been part of Toledo’s fabric for so long, special events are frequently held inside the ballpark—including weddings, church services, and graduation parties. On a Saturday in July 2012, several Mud Hens arrived at the ballpark early one afternoon to take extra batting practice prior to a game against the Louisville Bats and found a wedding party standing on the pitcher’s mound having their photographs taken.

  “Happens all the time,” manager Phil Nevin said, feet up on his office desk. “You get used to it after a while.”

  Nevin might have been tempted at that moment to see if any of the groomsmen might be available to pitch for his team that night. By any definition, the Mud Hens were having a tough summer, and they had bottomed during a five-game series in Columbus earlier in the week.

  “We caught them while they’re playing well at a time when we’re playing badly—and pitching badly,” Nevin said. “All you can do is hope you pull out of it soon. If not, it can be a pretty miserable August.”

  Minor-league managers dread the month of August—especially when their team isn’t in contention. August 1 is a tough day in Triple-A for everyone, because the tr
ade deadline has passed. No one has traded for you. Your team hasn’t made a trade that has opened up a spot for you. You are in the minor leagues, and if you aren’t a prospect, chances are good your season will end in early September without a September 1 call-up to the big leagues.

  “August 1 is the day it really sinks in with guys,” Nevin said. “All season they’ve told themselves they’re either going to play their way onto the big-league club wherever they are, or someone else is going to notice them and trade for them. That’s why you hear guys around here say, ‘I’m playing for thirty teams, not just one,’ all the time. August 1 comes around, they know they’re pretty much stuck where they are. They can do the math. They know which two or three guys on the team are considered prospects by the organization. That means the other twenty-two or twenty-three guys are playing for maybe one or two or, at most, three September call-ups. Those numbers are real—and they aren’t encouraging.”

  The Mud Hens were not going to be contending when August rolled around. They had managed to win the second game of a five-game series in Columbus, but then had given up forty runs in the next three games. Nevin had used twelve different pitchers in those games, and each had failed more miserably than the previous one. The Hens had limped home on Saturday morning with a 42-66 record. The only good news was that they were starting a four-game series with the Louisville Bats, the one team in the league that had a worse record than they did.

  “Baseball, especially when things are going like this, is a motherf——,” Nevin said. “It will just tear your heart out.” He smiled.

  “Of course everything I’ve ever gotten in life—going to college, meeting my wife, making the living I’ve been able to make—is because of baseball. So it’s tough for me to complain.”

  Nevin had played an indirect role in shaping baseball history. In 1992, he had been the College Player of the Year at Cal State–Fullerton, capping a three-year career in which he had hit .364. Since he was twenty-one and considered not far from being ready for the major leagues, he was very high on most draft boards that spring.

  The Houston Astros had the first pick in the draft. Their lead scout, Hal Newhouser, had told them they had to draft a high school infielder from Michigan named Derek Jeter. The Astros weren’t sure that was the right move: For one thing, Jeter and his family were telling people he was going to college, specifically the University of Michigan. For another, the Astros had lost their No. 1 pick, John Burke (whom they had taken at No. 6 in the first round), a year earlier when he had opted to turn down their offer of a $500,000 bonus in order to go to college. Jeter, the Astros figured, would cost at least double that and even that might not be enough.

  So they passed on Jeter and took Nevin. Four other teams passed on Jeter before the Yankees took him at No. 6. According to legend, when concern was expressed in the Yankees’ predraft meetings that Jeter might go to Michigan, Dick Groch, who had scouted him for the team, answered by saying, “The only place Derek Jeter is going for sure is to Cooperstown.”

  Jeter ended up signing with the Yankees for a $700,000 bonus, and the rest, as they say, is history. The other players taken before Jeter became—along with Nevin—the answer to a trivia question. The answer is Nevin, Paul Shuey, B. J. Wallace, Jeffrey Hammonds, and Chad Mottola. It is not all that different from the Portland Trail Blazers’ decision in 1984 to take Sam Bowie ahead of Michael Jordan, because they didn’t think they needed another guard. When his team passed on Jeter, Newhouser, the Astros’ scout, was so angry he quit his job.

  Nevin had the best career of the five players taken before Jeter. But it wasn’t easy. After playing on the U.S. Olympic team in 1992, he was sent to Triple-A to begin his pro career. “I thought I’d only be there a little while,” he said. “I figured I was passing through. I never thought it would be such a struggle to get to the big leagues and stay. I got sour pretty quickly and was probably pretty bitter about the whole experience before it was over.”

  Nevin ended up playing a total of eighteen games in the majors for the Astros. He was traded in 1995 after he and the team had a preseason dustup over his refusal to work out with so-called replacement players, the nonunion players brought in by owners during the 1994–95 players’ strike. Like a lot of younger minor leaguers, Nevin didn’t want to be involved with the replacement players, and that led to hard feelings between him and the Astros.

  They traded him to Detroit midway through the 1995 season, and the Tigers converted him into a catcher to try to find more playing time for him. Two years later, after bouncing between Triple-A and the majors, he was off to Anaheim—which produced more of the same. It was only after he was traded to San Diego prior to the 1999 season, and manager Bruce Bochy moved him back to third base, that Nevin finally blossomed.

  “One thing I learned through my own career is that guys find their potential at different times,” he said. “Not everyone does it at twenty-two or twenty-three. The best thing that ever happened to me as a hitter was becoming a catcher, because I had to learn so much more about hitting in order to try to catch.

  “I tell my guys every chance I get that there are lots of ways to improve and it may not happen for them right away. It didn’t for me. I was almost thirty before I got to that point. Problem is, a lot of times, you get to be twenty-four or twenty-five and teams give up on you. I was lucky because I had been the No. 1 pick once upon a time; people were willing to give me more than one chance.”

  He hit 24 home runs and drove in 85 runs in 1999 in San Diego. A year later those numbers were 31 and 107, and the following season, when he was an All-Star, they soared to 41 and 126. That led to serious big-money contracts. Over the last five years of his career, Nevin was paid almost $35 million. It took him a while, but in the end he beat the motherf—— that is the game he loves.

  “That’s why, without sounding corny, I like the idea of giving something back to the game,” he said. “I’d like to manage in the big leagues someday, but there’s a lot of gratification in this job. The best part is always sending a guy up for the first time. Thad Weber [one of his pitchers] sat in my office and wept when I told him he was going up.

  “The worst part is releasing a guy, because you’re killing their dream. I try to be very honest with them. If I think they’re still good enough to play, I’ll tell them that. If not, I’ll tell them that too. Sometimes the biggest favor you can do a guy is to tell him, ‘It’s time.’ They may not want to hear it, but sometimes they need to hear it.

  “The first year I managed in independent league ball [2009] I had a guy playing for me named Frank Lonigro. He had talked about going to firefighter’s school. I called him in one day and said, ‘You need to go to firefighter’s school.’ For some reason I knew there was a school starting the next week—maybe he had mentioned it. I told him it was time, that I was releasing him.

  “He was angry; he vented. A couple years later I heard from him. He said, ‘I hated you at the time, but you did the right thing for me.’ ”

  Nevin retired in 2007, tried broadcasting for a while, but missed being in uniform. That was how he came to manage the independent league team in Orange County in 2009. A year later the Tigers hired him to manage their Double-A club in Erie, before promoting him to Toledo in 2011. Although the Mud Hens had been 67-77 in Nevin’s first season and were struggling in his second, Nevin was still considered a prime candidate to succeed Jim Leyland whenever he decided to retire as the manager in Detroit. For the moment, that wasn’t Nevin’s main concern. Finding a pitcher who could keep the Louisville Bats in single digits on a July night in Toledo was far more important to him.

  “We’ll be okay tonight,” he insisted. “The guy we’ve got pitching gets people out.”

  That guy was Adam Wilk, and Nevin was right. For seven innings, Wilk shut the Bats out. The Mud Hens, in front of a packed house of 11,500 on a gorgeous night, built a 4–0 lead. Even with the team struggling, Toledo still loved its baseball team.

  The highlight o
f the evening came when John Lindsey, still very much enjoying being in Toledo after his stint in Mexico, hit a long home run over the left-field fence in the bottom of the first to put Toledo up 2–0. The ball flew out of the ballpark and landed on Monroe Street, which runs directly behind the fence. A man passing in his car at that moment apparently saw the ball clear the wall and bounce, because he stopped his car, jumped out, chased the ball down, picked it up, got in his car, and drove away.

  It had to be one of the most unexpected souvenirs in baseball history.

  Sadly for the Mud Hens, their worn-out bullpen couldn’t hold the lead for Wilk. The Bats scored eight runs in the final two innings, even though the Hens came within one out of holding on for the win. The final score was 8–4.

  The next day, the teams were scheduled to play a six o’clock game. Most minor-league teams move their Sunday games to evening starts in July and August to dodge the heat. On this afternoon, a daytime start would have worked just fine since the temperature was in the eighties in the afternoon.

  The first two men to reach the Toledo clubhouse that day were Lindsey, who had hit the Monroe Street homer the night before, and hitting coach Leon Durham. The two were markedly different men whose careers had also been markedly different.

  Durham had been a No. 1 draft pick for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1976 and had been in the big leagues before his twenty-fifth birthday. He had played in the majors for ten years, mostly with the Chicago Cubs. He had been in 1,067 games and had been to bat 3,587 times—hitting 147 home runs and driving in 530 runs. His nickname was Bull, because he was big and strong and had the kind of personality that came right at you.

  He was about as no-nonsense in dealing with his hitters as anyone you might meet in any walk of life. Outside the office he shared with pitching coach A. J. Sager, there was a whiteboard. On it, Durham had written his theory of hitting for everyone to see: “You can’t make a living looking to hit a breaking ball. You can make a living looking to hit a fastball … Look for a fastball.”