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| PERSPECTIVE |
Dreaming of the Big Leagues
Reported by Brad
Penner, STATEWIDE Correspondent
This year the Beatrice Bruins are celebrating their 25th anniversary. Through
the years they've established a winning tradition and become one of the top
semi-pro teams in the country. This year they're leading their league and
playing on a newly renovated field thanks to a booster group who support the
bruins and the legion baseball programs. The Bruins are made up of college
players on summer vacation and older guys who can't give up the game. Beatrice
isn't a glamorous place, but as we found out, it is a place to play.
[Players collecting admissions at the field:] "Hi there.
How're you doin'? $2 please."
"Is that all?"
It's a summer evening at Christenson Field. The Bruins are
playing, and it's a special night.
"Can I get your names and put you in the raffle here.
It's Little Caesar's Pizza night."
Ticket takers Travis Smith and Scott Sasser also do a little
pitching for the Bruins. Travis came from Texas Tech. Scott goes to school
in California.
[Scott:] "Small towns, you know, a lot of people wouldn't
think there'd be much fun around here. But, you know, we're a pretty tight-knit
group. So keep close. Hello. Got your tickets? Do you want to get in the raffle
here?"
[Pitcher Craig Sanders:] "Anybody would tell you that
summer ball is not quite the same intensity, I guess, you could say."
The team's having a pretty good year, and more people are
coming out to watch them play teams from Manhattan and Salina and Clarinda
and Topeka.
[Pitcher Travis Smith:] "Actually this year our crowds
have doubled or tripled from last year. Our average games -- like tonight
there'll probably be 70 or 80 people here -- 60, 70, 80 people. Last year
we might have been lucky to get 20 when we were playing a great team."
The Bruins lineup is filled with players from Texas and
California, places far away from Beatrice.
[Travis:] "I had no idea what to expect."
[Brad Penner:] "Where the hell's Beatrice?"
[Travis:] "I knew I was coming to corn country."
But they don't come here for corn. The Bruins have earned
a winning reputation.
[Jason Parsons:] "I just want to go somewhere in the
summertime where there's a lot of hard-nosed players, you know, who play good
baseball. And there's a small amount of players on a team so you get to play
every game. It's not a glamorous place, you know, like the Cape Cod League
or the, you know, league up in Alaska. But we'll kick any other teams' butts
any day."
Bob Steinkamp manages the Bruins. You could call him the owner, too, but there's
really not much to own. Steinkamp founded the Bruins 24 years ago because
he wanted a team to play for.
[Bob:] "All these small towns around here had baseball
teams. Beatrice didn't and so I got to thinking one day maybe we ought to
have a team in Beatrice so went out and got a few hundred bucks together and
started a local team and kind of grew from there."
[Brad Penner:] "Is this the trophy room here?"
[Bob:] "Yeah, all this stuff is stuff that I've kind
of accumulated over the last 20 years."
It grew into a hardware business -- trophies, plaques, and
pictures symbolizing success.
[Bob:] "We played the best amateur teams or semi-pro
teams in the United States. We've been able to hold our own the last five
years I think that we've been to the National Tournament. Three of those five
years we finished in the final four with a fourth, a third, and last year
a national runner-up finish."
[Chad Dembisky:] "Bob's an interesting character. 'cause
what he'll do -- he'll sit there and act like he doesn't see or hear anything.
You know, not say a word. He's pretty quiet in the dugout unless you get him
fired up but the man hears and knows every single thing that goes on."
Chad Dembisky is a rookie assistant coach from California.
He's also the stat man and groundskeeper, and he wouldn't have it any other
way.
[Chad:] "It's absolutely a throwback to what baseball's
supposed to be. We have uniforms that are five or six years old. Our facility
compared to other facilities is just garbage. It really is. But we have players
with pride, we have players that want to go out and play hard every single
day. And it all starts from the head guy."
[Bob working with kids:] "Work hard again today. I
want everybody to hustle. Again I want to emphasize we don't want to get anybody
hurt."
Every summer, Steinkamp and some of his players put on a
clinic for area kids. Chris Belding's been here before as a student.
[Chris:] "When you're little, you come out to the camps.
You do everything and you never know if you're good enough to play with them
and it's just exciting to get to play for them after wanting to all through
high school and everything and getting a chance."
Belding's done with school now. He thought about getting
a job in Texas, but he came back for another summer.
"For one, it's hard to give it up. And two, I'm just
hoping for a chance to play minor league ball somewhere and just looking for
a chance to play pretty much. It's hard to give up once you start it."
Most of the Bruins are still chasing big league dreams.
Steve Drent is slowly letting his dream go. He had his shot at pro ball in
the Class A Northern League. Now he's back with the Bruins.
[Steve:] "It's a great opportunity for young players
as well as myself. You know, I'm a little old. I'm probably the oldest one
on the team. It's a good opportunity and not so much to get -- for me to get
picked up but for me to play, play really serious baseball. And it's really
good baseball. The level of competition here I would say is about A ball.
I think we could hang with some of the Northern League teams. Whether it be
the Sioux City, Sioux Fall, I think we could play 500 baseball with those
clubs."
Last summer Drent earned his paycheck playing baseball.
This summer he works for a livestock equipment firm in Beatrice. Bruins don't
get paid to play, but they do get help finding summer jobs with flexible hours.
[Steve:] "I think Bob's done a great job of setting
up like with businesses and stuff like that as far as places for us to work
that understand that we're ballplayers, and that's why we're here."
And when the workday's done or the game's over, most of
the Bruins go home to their families. Dick and Kay Genrich opened their home
to Jason Parsons and Chad Dimbisky.
"It's better than my family back home 'cause my parents
are never home. So, you know, it's like having the parental units around all
the time keeping us under control."
"These people are opening their house to you and saying,
come on in and be part of our family. That's the neat part about it."
The Genrich's daughter Mickey has become a substitute sister.
"I got a 17-year-old sister back home in Montana, but
I left home when she was probably 13 years old. So the years that I missed
for her, Mick kinda makes up for me."
[Kay Genrich:] "They've been wonderful with Mickey.
They really, really do treat her just like a little sister. And so that has
been really fun for me to watch them treat her so good."
Without families like the Genrichs, there wouldn't be a
Beatrice Bruins baseball team. Financially, it's a shoestring operation, something
that's easy to see when the team goes on the road.
[Craig Doss:] "It gets kind of tiring."
There's no team bus.
[Craig Doss:] "Got to get up at 6:30 in the morning
to go work."
No first-class hotels.
[Craig Doss:] "And then you got to come back later
in the afternoon and play ball."
Rarely do they even spend the night on a road trip.
[Craig Doss:] "We're on the road until sometimes 1:30.
That's been about the earliest we've gotten home, I think."
On this day, the destination is Clarinda, Iowa. It's about
a three-hour drive. Plenty of time to talk about baseball. Steinkamp, who
just got a job as a scout for the Chicago Cubs, told a story about one of
his pitchers.
"He pitched for us twice, and I said, you know, this
guy deserves a chance to play some pro ball and so I just signed him at my
kitchen table."
"He was so excited, he misspelled his first name on
the contract, you know. I said, you sure that's right? No, it's wrong."
There aren't any fancy facilities in Clarinda, but it's
good baseball, and that's what matters. It's another place for Beatrice native
Craig Doss to see how he stacks up.
[Doss:] "I hope to play Division One someplace, and
I hope to get drafted. That's what I've been working for since I was about
two or three years old."
Another late night, a long drive home, but no one complains.
"If I want to get drafted, I better play so that's
what I gotta do."
Doug Tegtmeiers has been where Craig Doss wants to go. After
a couple seasons in the minors, he came back to his hometown where a pitcher
is expected to know how to handle a rake.
[Doug:] "This is one of the rare places where you can
just -- they're out here to play ball and they're just working their butts
off just trying to do better. And it's one of the few places in any level
I've played at where they just do it because they love it. The Cinderella
story happens year after year and it's fun being a part of that."
Last year the Bruins set a team record for wins, but they
broke their string of top five finishes at the National Baseball Congress
Tournament. They lost a couple of close games and wound up 11th. The sights
and sounds of summertime are back at Christenson Field this year. Youngsters
hoping for a big league break and veterans putting off the real world for
another summer.
"Baseball is a kids' game. You gotta be a kid and you
gotta love it and you gotta love to play, and it is -- it's just hold onto
your childhood and one more year of not growing up yet."
Reporting for STATEWIDE, I'm Brad Penner.