76
2025 La Crosse Loggers Baseball There’ s No Place Like Copeland
76
of baseball, the League hired a full-time IT Executive to its front office to oversee the ongoing development of its in-house ticketing system with integrated CRM, along with its oversight of all team and League websites. Following, the League introduced its own free APP during the season, allowing Northwoods League fans unprecedented access to teams all year long. The League also continued its pioneering of webcasting at the lower levels of baseball, outfitting nine teams with 4-camera, High Definition productions, allowing local news outlets to provide viewers seventy-two games worth of video by grabbing highlights from the cloud and inserting into their own news productions on a nightly basis. The League drew over 1.1 Million fans for the third consecutive season, far and away the most in Summer Collegiate Baseball. During the season, the League came to terms with the Wisconsi n Timber Rattlers, Midwest League Class A Affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers, on their purchase of the Fond du Lac, WI territory to become the 20th team in the Northwoods League. They became the second Midwest League member to purchase a Northwoods League team, joining the Cedar Rapids Kernels who own the League’ s Waterloo Bucks. The Northwoods League’ s 22nd All-Star game was hosted by the Kenosha Kingfish in historic fashion. The preceding evening featured“ Home Run Derby at the Harbor”, the Northwoods League’ s home run derby, in which Northwoods League players deposited baseballs into Lake Michigan, hitting off a pier into a buoy laden, boat filled harbor in front of over 3,000 fans witnessing this unprecedented event won by Marty Bechina of the home town Kingfish and Michigan State University. The following night, the North Division jumped out to an early 7-0 lead and held on for a 9-5 victory as Mason McCoy( Iowa), the 2015 League MVP from the La Crosse Loggers, and Steve Passatempo( UMass-Lowell) of the Wisconsin Woodchucks shared the“ Star of Stars” award as 5,362 fans attended the Home Run Derby and All-Star game. The story of the season was the Wisconsin Rapids Rafters who won both halves of the South Division, before defeating the Lakeshore Chinooks, Battle Creek Bombers and winning a very competitive Summer Collegiate World Series, 2 games to 0 over North Division Champion, the Eau Claire Express. The first game of the Series featured a two-out, bottom of the ninth, game winning home run by Rob Calabrese( Illinois-Chicago) in one of the most dramatic moments in Northwoods League history. Alumni continued to make history in MLB as former La Crosse Logger, Max Scherzer, won his second Cy Young Award, while former Wisconsin Woodchuck, Ben Zobrist was the MVP of the World Series won by the Chicago Cubs. Seventy-two former NWL players played Major League Baseball in 2016.
2017 The Northwoods League began play, in 2017, as the largest organized baseball league in North America, if not the World, as it welcomed first year teams Fond du Lac, WI and Bismarck, ND. It then finalized its webcasting upgrade, as all 20 teams now featured a 4-Camera High Definition webcast that was sold as a subscription service to interested viewers. The Major League Baseball First Year Amateur Draft saw 181 players and alumni drafted in June, including 45 in the top 10 Rounds, and two former La Crosse Logger pitchers( Scherzer and Sale) went headto-head as the starting pitchers in the MLB All-Star Game, creating a World-Wide Northwoods League-awareness that may have been unprecedented. Twenty-Three Northwoods League alumni made their MLB debut in 2017, highlighted by National League Rookie of the Year runner-up, Paul DeJong. DeJong, a former Wisconsin Woodchuck, tied the Single Season Home Run record, with 20, during the 2014 Northwoods League season. Three years later, as a shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals, he hit 25 Home Runs in his MLB rookie season. The Northwoods League had now had 65 of its alumni enter MLB in the last three years. Former La Crosse Logger pitcher Chris Sale was runner-up in the American League Cy Young Award Voting, while former La Crosse Logger pitcher, Max Scherzer, won the National League Cy Young Award, his third Cy Young Award, while throwing his third MLB no-hitter and virtually assuring his place in Cooperstown. The Northwoods League drew over 1.1 Million fans for the fourth consecutive year, far outdistancing its closest rival in the Summer Collegiate Baseball World. In fact, the Northwoods League drew more fans than 3 of the 4, Short-Season Affiliated Professional Leagues in 2017. On the field, coming off their Northwoods League Championship in 2016, the Wisconsin Rapids Rafters, won both halves in the ultra- competitive South Division and finished with an incredible 52-20 record, setting a Northwoods League Record for wins in the regular season. In the North Division, the St. Cloud Rox won the first-half, then defeated the Wilmar Stingers before outlasting second-half winner Mankato, who had beaten Eau Claire, as St. Cloud knocked in a run with two outs in the ninth to tie the game, and then won in extra innings to claim the North