80
2025 La Crosse Loggers Baseball There’ s No Place Like Copeland
80
leading the way for the Spitters was starting pitcher, Cam Schuelke( Florida Gulf Coast) who finished the season with a 0.68 ERA to lead the League in that department.
Also making the playoffs were the Kokomo Jack Rabbits who fell to Traverse City in the Divisional playoffs two games to one. The Madison Mallards won the second half and beat the Fond du Lac Dock Spiders before falling to the Pit Spitters in the Great Lakes Division finals. In the Great Plains St. Cloud won both halves and defeated the Mankato Moon Dogs two games to zero before defeating the Waterloo Bucks( who also won both halves and beat the Duluth Huskies) for the Great Plains crown.
The annual Northwoods League All-Star game held in Mankato, MN featured a wonderful luncheon with former Minnesota Twins great Tony Oliva as the guest speaker. Oliva would be voted into the MLB Hall of Fame later in the year. In front of a record crowd of 2854 fans in Mankato, the Great Plains defeated the Great Lakes 7-3 behind the St. Cloud Rox, Otto Kemp( Point Loma Nazarene) who was 2 for 4 with a home run to take MVP honors.
Most Valuable Player honors were split between Chandler Simpson( Georgia Tech) of Fond du Lac who hit. 377 and set the Northwoods League single season record with 55 stolen bases and Matt Higgins( Bellarmine) of Mankato who hit. 355 and drove in 50 runs for the Moon Dogs. Simpson would lead the NCAA in hitting for Georgia Tech the following spring.
In similar fashion, Justin Janas( Illinois) of the Kenosha Kingfish led the Big Ten in hitting before leading the Northwoods League with a. 402 average. Alex Iadisernia( Elon) led the Northwoods League with 10 Home Runs for the Madison Mallards.
In keeping with the Northwoods leadership in technology at the lower levels of baseball, the League became the second sports entity in America( behind the NBA) to offer a marketplace for its own NFT’ s( non-fungible tokens). The NFT’ s featured the Northwoods League’ s current players and alums as digital trading cards.
For the second consecutive season the Minnesota Mud Puppies( a team made up from players in the Minneapolis, MN area) filled the void left by the Thunder Bay Border Cats of Ontario, Canada by playing their respective road schedule.
2022 The first post-Covid season saw growth both on and off the field as the Northwoods League drew 1,174,255 fans to its games, more than twice as much as any other Summer-Collegiate baseball League. Playing with 22 teams, the Northwoods League saw an uptick in its video coverage as two games daily were broadcast on the highly popular ESPN + streaming channel, as well as, every other game webcast, free of charge, to over 1.4 Million unique viewers.
Driven by the Northwoods League’ s in house developed real time scoring system and data display on its websites, 17 Million views came to Northwoods League team and League websites over the course of 2022, an average of almost 50,000 per day!
In addition, the Northwoods League became the first Summer-Collegiate Baseball League to have its games given betting lines to a national and international audience. In a partnership with DraftKings, NWL games were covered daily, as sports wagering exploded on the American scene being offered online and in person in many States.
Celebrating it’ s 29th season, 35 NWL alumni made their MLB debut in 2022. 20 years ago, in 2002, three NWL alums made their MLB debut. In 2002, eight Northwoods League alums played in MLB. In 2022, 117 NWL alums played in MLB. Of the 30 MLB teams, seven awarded their Minor League Player of the Year to a Northwoods League alum!!!
There were many outstanding performances in the Northwoods League in 2022 both on the mound and at the plate. Ben Ross( Notre Dame College) of the Wisconsin Rapids Rafters led the League in hitting with a. 421 average with 10