UWM baseball team finally will get its field of dreams
FRANKLIN – Scott Doffek doesn’t know how many recruits he’s lost over UW-Milwaukee’s home field, which bears the name of one of baseball’s alltime greats but, if we’re going to be brutally honest, might be the worst Division I facility in the nation. Dozens?
“Hundreds, for sure,” Doffek said. Henry Aaron Field at Lincoln Park, the Panthers’ home field since 1994, isn’t much more than a glorified high school diamond. The outfield is a bad hop’s paradise, and it floods in the spring because the drain tiles are broken.
Doffek, in his 12th year as head coach at UWM, has lost track of the times he’s shown up to find the field has been broken into or vandalized. “It’s just a tough situation,” he said. He’s gotten his hopes up plenty of times over ideas that have been floated for a new ballpark for the Panthers, only to have them dashed when reality got in the way. Either the site wasn’t right or the time wasn’t right or – in most cases – the money wasn’t there.
All of which is why Doffek was feeling like he’d won the lottery Tuesday. He and athletic director Amanda Braun were at a news conference unveiling plans for Ballpark Commons, the sprawling sports and entertainment complex being developed by ROC Ventures on a former landfill north of Rawson Ave. and west of 76th St.
Ground will be broken this spring on a stadium that will open in 2019 and will be the home of an American Association of Independent Professional Baseball team … and the Panthers. The field will have synthetic turf in the infield and outfield and the stadium will seat 4,000.
UWM will be able to practice next door in a 76,000-square-foot indoor facility with an infield and 24 batting cages.
Details of the contract have yet to be finalized, but Mike Zimmerman, the CEO of ROC Ventures, said it would be a multi-year lease arrangement.
“UWM is the only D-I program to not have (decent) facilities,” said Zimmerman, a lifelong baseball fan who joked that he had an “unhealthy” relationship with the game. “What Scott has been able to do in the absence of that is amazing.”
It’s beyond amazing. Doffek has compiled a 309-304-1 record, is a two-time Horizon League coach of the year and has had 11 players drafted by majorleague teams in the last seven years, including Daulton Varsho, the first catcher taken in the 2017 draft (by Arizona in the second round).
He’s done it despite his home park being a recruiting deal breaker. Never mind getting in the front door of a recruit’s house; he can’t even get talented prep players to call him back.
“Players, recruits, buy with their eyes,” Doffek said. “That’s the very first thing that’s going to come up in a conversation. That’s the reality. It’s an understatement to say it’s been a source of frustration. We drive and fly all over the country and you get to see what it is that we’re competing against.
“We haven’t been on the same playing field, unfortunately. We have to be exceptionally good at player development because we’re not going to get the top of the line recruit the way it is now.”
UWM’s baseball season ends about the time the American Association season starts. The professional league has 13 teams in cities such as St. Paul, Minn., Wichita, Kan., and Lincoln, Neb. Franchises are not affiliated with majorleague teams and players are typically ex-college players who have not been drafted but hope to be or, in some cases, ex-major-leaguers who aren’t ready to call it quits.
According to Zimmerman, Ballpark Commons also will include a golf entertainment complex, a Wheel & Sprocket bike shop, restaurants, office space and an apartment complex. The site already is home to a snow park and The Rock, which has six replica baseball diamonds.
A lot of people are excited about the project, but none more so than Doffek. Braun joked that he’s still only half convinced it’s going to happen.
“I know the product we put on the field will take a step,” Doffek said. “We’re right there as it is, and this one more step will help us compete at a really, really high level.”
One more season at “The Hank.” Then the Panthers will at long last get their field of dreams.