The Iowa Cubs’ most memorable games

4/5/2023

As minor league baseball seasons go, the 2022 campaign more or less resembled most others for the Iowa Cubs. Until, that is, the very end. Trailing as they loped in from their positions for the bottom of the ninth on Sept. 28, the “local boys” as they’re labeled on the manually operated scoreboard at Sec Taylor Field, could have been forgiven for going through the motions and getting the game and the long season over with. After all, the team’s record going into that last game was a lackluster 67-81. Nothing rode on the outcome. 

When a solo homer tied the game at two, an awkward dynamic presented. No way, you figured, did the ballplayers and the coaches and the umpires want to go into extra innings in a meaningless finale, game No. 149. The fans, though, would just as soon baseball season was never-ending. Now there was the prospect that this one might continue a while longer. The crowd cheered like kids who’d been granted a stay of bedtime. But for how long?

Not very. Two batters later, another homer probably made everybody happy, even the defeated visitors (with the possible exception of the pitcher who served up those long balls). If the season had to end, how better than this? The fans headed home to hibernate with visions of walk-offs dancing in our heads.

They didn’t last. If six games per week get to be a grind for the boys of summer by the time September rolls around, it’s nothing compared to what we fans endure in the offseason. By November, I’m jonesin’ hard for a matinee at the ballpark on a lazy summer day. In lieu of one, any excuse to visit there will do. I shopped the Black Friday sale at the I-Cub souvenir store. Besides the discount deals inside, I scoured the steep riverbank on the Raccoon River side of Principal Park and found three weathered foul balls, exposed now that the underbrush that saved them from watery graves and camouflaged their hiding places was gone. In December, I went back for the annual holiday open house and got another ball, this one a complimentary Christmas ornament. But, by the post-holiday bleak midwinter, all I had to fall back on was recollection of that dramatic exclamation point that ended the story of the 2022 I-Cubs. It had to rank No. 1 among the ballclub’s, and my, most memorable games. Among which others, I wondered. The answers are these that follow, in no particular order, I decided. 

Mark Prior on a school night – May 7, 2022

Few I-Cub debuts are as ballyhooed as Mark Prior’s was on May 7, 2002. Great pitching was expected of him, and he delivered in that department, striking out 10 batters in the seven innings he threw. Great hitting was not, but he stole the show at the plate, too, clouting a pair of homers in an impressive display of multitasking. I was there with our two sons, who were 10 and 8 at the time. It was a Tuesday, a school night. They probably don’t recall that aspect, and neither did I, until I looked it up. But they both still remember that game as one that stands out among the many we attended when they were ballplayers themselves.

The championship – Sept. 15, 1993

It was cold the mid-September night in 1993 when the I-Cubs won the only championship in their history. That’s one thing I remember about that game. A homer to win it in 11th inning walk-off fashion is another. So is jumping out of the stands onto the field to celebrate. And somehow wandering into the team clubhouse afterwards where pandemonium reigned, and beer and champagne sprayed. By then, I’d already had my fill of beer. That title led to one of the great gate promotions in team history when the I-Cubs gave away replica championship rings one night in 2018 as part of their season-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of Triple-A baseball in Des Moines. Until last year, 1993 was the only other one that ended with a walk-off homer. 

My last beer – April 20, 1994

What I said back there about having had my fill of beer? Not exactly. Actually, my last beer wasn’t until the night of April 20, 1994, an evening that began at an I-Cubs game, one I really have no memory of. I had to read the newspaper account of it to be reminded that it started raining. That’s probably when my buddies and I left to continue drinking elsewhere — indoors. So that game was special for me, even though I can’t remember it.

Andre Dawson and a downpour – June 30, 2018

June 30 in 2018 was a sweet and sour occasion. Prior to that night’s game, I snapped a selfie with hall-of-famer Andre Dawson, one of my favorite former C-Cubs. He was there signing autographs for a charitable fundraiser of some sort. While we struck our pose, I reminded Dawson about his homer off Roger Clemens in the MLB All-Star game on July 9, 1991. Right after that my wife, Chris, went into labor with Max, the eldest of our three kids. He was born in the wee hours of July 10, which happens to be the birthday of Dawson, who was born in 1954, my rookie year. 

I took a seat in the leftfield corner in time for the first pitch of the game and remember thinking what a pleasant evening it was looking to the south beyond home plate. Then I turned around and saw a bank of black thunderheads bearing down on the ballpark from the north. By the time I got home, less than half an hour later, a biblical deluge was underway. The creek bed across the street from our house that’s typically tantamount to a bead of sweat trickling down my face while I mow the lawn in the summertime was flash flooding at a whitewater pace. Nine inches of rain pelted the Des Moines area that Saturday night in only a few hours. Sunday morning revealed lots of wreckage all over town in the wake of the midsummer monsoon. But it was a beautiful day for a ballgame, and there was one at Sec Taylor, one for which our family had reserved an outfield skybox to celebrate our July birthdays. That show went on as scheduled.

So, I guess this entry goes down as a doubleheader that straddled two dates.

The Road to Wrigley game – Aug. 9, 2009

I-Cub trivia time: What was the venue for the largest “home” crowd in team history? Wrigley Field! On Aug. 9, 2009, the “Road to Wrigley” game pitted the local boys against the Las Vegas 51s and drew 16,280 to the historic park that holds 40,000 and change. Luckily for me, the limited media credential I’m granted every season as a contributor to a C-Cub blog called The Cub Reporter was not limited to games the I-Cubs host in Des Moines. My personal road to Wrigley ran first north to Minnesota for our family vacation where I abandoned the rest of the team to head east and cover that minor league game with big league trappings. Access to the playing field, team clubhouse and press box were especially fun for me as I spent a day playing sportswriter. Who won? I felt like I did.

All the naturalization ceremonies 

Since 2009, part of the I-Cub celebration of the Fourth of July has been a pregame naturalization ceremony for new citizens. I’m not sure, but I may have seen them all. No one in particular is most memorable. Each of them rendered the ballgame that followed a tad anticlimactic. There’s always a big crowd on hand for these occasions, though, in truth, the postgame fireworks shows are a bigger draw than the pregame lineup of rookie Yanks. The team’s list of all-time biggest crowds is highlighted by fireworks promos (the walk-off win in Game 7 of the 1993 playoffs isn’t even listed among the top 40 crowds in team history in the I-Cub media guide). But 421 newly minted Americans in 14 years is a number to be proud of, one that continues to grow as part of the legacy of Michael Gartner, the former longtime majority owner of the team.

The game that never happened – May 2, 1930

Next on my list is a game that was scheduled but never happened. In 2020, Wichita was to join the Pacific Coast League and make its first visit to Principal Park in early June. The Wichita Aviators were the opponent on May 2, 1930, when the Des Moines Demons hosted the first professional ballgame ever played under permanent lights, at a ramshackle old park that once stood where North High School’s Grubb Stadium does now. When I first learned of that historic distinction for Des Moines by reading about it in an I-Cub yearbook, I was inspired to write “Versus the Demons,” a novel that uses that game as its jumping-off point. I was excited about the prospect of a rematch of sorts 90 years after the fact of that notable first. Of course, the entire 2020 minor league season was ultimately cancelled on account of a global pandemic. Wichita never did take the field for a Triple A game as members of the PCL. In fact, the team owner died as a result of the COVID-19 virus, and the city was reassigned as a Double-A franchise when MiLB reorganized under the auspices of MLB prior to the 2021 season.

Chicago Cubs game televised live on video screen at Principal Park – Oct. 7, 2015

Lastly, in order that there will be nine counting last year’s dramatic finale and inasmuch as nine’s such a key number in baseball, is a game I watched at Principal Park even though it wasn’t played there and didn’t involve the Iowa Cubs. On Oct. 7, 2015, the C-Cubs faced the P-Pirates in a National League Wildcard playoff game. The I-Cubs hosted an “open house,” as they called it, with the game televised live on the giant rightfield video screen. It was a beautiful night in both Des Moines and Pittsburgh. As was the case in No. 2 on this list, the Mark Prior Triple-A debut, I was there with our two sons. Max and Ben, by this time, were 24 and 21, respectively, instead of little leaguers. The game couldn’t have played out better. Jake Arrieta pitched a complete game shutout. This was him at his peak. On Father’s Day earlier that season, we’d seen him beat the Twins in Minneapolis in the game that began his improbable run of untouchability that lasted the rest of that season. Besides Arrieta’s dominance from start to finish, the other highlight of the game was a lightning bolt homerun off the bat of Kyle Schwarber, one that might have reached the Des Moines River if he’d hit it at Principal Park instead of PNC Park. As it was, the ball must’ve landed in the Allegheny. 

I’m still playing

If you’re in the habit of ballgames at ballparks, you expect, on some level, that occasionally something unprecedented and unforgettable will happen right before your eyes. But, especially in a minor league town, that’s not why you go. You’re there because it’s summertime and the livin’ is easy. Like the old philosopher Harry Caray liked to say, “You can’t beat fun at the ol’ ballpark.” And as the much older philosopher Aristotle noted, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” 

Any one game out of 150 on the schedule isn’t likely to be special, but every season is — and here comes the next one. 

Opening Day for the I-Cubs was March 31, my long-gone dad’s birthday. Sometimes when I was a teenager, he’d come home from work with tickets to that night’s game, courtesy of a colleague who was a season-ticket holder. In those days, the local boys were known as the Iowa Oaks, and Sec Taylor was the proving ground for key cogs of the dynastic Oakland As teams of the early 1970s. I can still picture young Vida Blue standing on the mound, grinning at batters before he fanned them, like an executioner who enjoyed his job. Blue was called up in 1970 after the Oaks’ season ended, and I went back to high school. He promptly threw a no-hitter and later proved he was more than a flash in the pan by winning the 1971 Cy Young and MVP awards. He retired in 1986 after a distinguished big league career. 

I’m still stuck in Triple-A — but I’m also still playing. ♦

Michael Wellman is the author of four books, most recently “A Scavenger’s Digest.” His work has also appeared in The Iowan, Iowa Magazine and on Iowa Public Radio. Since retiring in 2020 as staff writer in the communications department for Des Moines Public Schools, he spends a lot of time chasing baseballs in and around Principal Park. This is his first piece for CITYVIEW.