Production funding for the field that Bosse built.

Evansville Historic Ballpark turns 100 is provided by the Cecil A and Mabel Lene Hamman Foundation, Inc., and by Wilfred C Bussing.

The third and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(music) I think Bosse feels very definitely a part of the fabric of the city of Evansville.

There were so many people who attended games here, played in games here.

And as an athlete, when you come in here, you you know, there's something different here.

Not only did I play here, that I manage here, that I coach here.

My son played here.

There's no other place like Bosse Field.

It says something about the fans of Evansville and the leadership through those years to preserve this park.

It's just great.

I just love it.

They fixed it up so we don't have the bomb it .

I think it's pretty, pretty awesome being 100 years old, still playing in the state because of the way things go.

You know, like in the big leagues at the stadium was like 20 years old.

They build another one.

We all felt a love for this place.

If you fall in love, it's like Wrigley Field.

When you walk in here for the first time, you go, Wow.

Every time I step in this place, I'm just proud to be here and I'm proud to look around and see what it represents for 100 years.

Bosse Field is special to a lot of people here in Evansville because of the men that have played here and gone on to be very successful.

(music) It's a humbling experience to think about the predecessors and the names of the people who've come here.

I mean, we're we're just passers through.

We’re just here for a brief period.

We're trustees handing it off to the next generation after receiving it from the previous generation.

(crowd) (crashing noises) I always say Bosse Field was born out of a tragedy in 1914 during the field day exercises at the league park that sat at the corner of Reed and Louisiana Street.

A temporary set of temporary stands collapsed and 50 people or so were injured.

Nobody was killed, but serious injuries.

Dislocated hips, bone fractures.

The what the newspaper described many times was like serious internal injuries.

And then this tragedy at the children's performance was the push that was needed.

The next day in the newspaper, there's an artist drawing of what this new stadium could look like.

And and if you look at it, it looks remarkably like what was built.

It was Evansville Mayor Benjamin Bosse who managed to gain enough support for a new facility.

He was known as a tenacious leader and the driving force behind the construction of Bosse Field.

When Benjamin Bosse became mayor, there was no park on the north side, and they've been trying for about 20 years to acquire a park.

And Thomas Garvin, the successful local attorney, owned 80 wooded acres on the north side.

And the city has been negotiating with Garvin for about 20 years.

He knew how to get things done, and that was the key to his success.

And the previous three administrations have been attempting to acquire this property from Tom Garvin and then Tom Garvin, the state without success.

Shortly after Mayor Bosse took office, he reached a an agreement with Tom Garvin's heirs.

He was short of money in the city budget, so he turned to the school corporation to make up the difference.

And that's why Garvin Park, of course, is owned by the city, and Bosse Field has been owned by the school corporation for a hundred years.

He was determined to do this and in a matter of weeks secured permission to acquire the land around here and build the stadium.

That was probably, if not the most amazing, the second most amazing was how fast this thing got done.

You know, he did it in less than 13 months, from concept to completion, less than 13 months.

You think about doing that in 2015.

You know, I talked to Mayor Lloyd Winnecke about it, and I threw that out to him.

And and and he cracked up.

He said, oh, you know, because he knew it was a ridiculous thought that anything could ever get done that fast.

In 2015.

On June 17th, 1915, the city of Evansville was introduced to a new ballpark.

It was named Bosse Field.

It was a half holiday.

All the businesses closed at noon.

They were running trains or trolleys out Main Street, taking visitors out to the park.

There were many dignitaries here.

The president of the National League, the president of the American League and the president of Cincinnati Reds and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

There was an automobile parade that came out Main Street.

And then the baseball game, the first pitch was thrown out by Mayor Bosse.

And he was he was given a big loving cup with the names of all the prominent people on the back of it.

Bosse Field cost $65,000 to build $10,000 for the land, $50,000 for the construction of the stadium and an additional 5000 in labor contributed by the city.

When the park was built, the president of the central league said that he should adopt the slogan and have it on the centerfield scoreboard.

And he adopted.

When everybody boosts, everybody wins.

And he was a major booster of all kinds of Evansville activities.

Hello.

Let's have a little tour of Bosse Field and see what it looks like.

Follow me on in.

This is where all the fans come in.

Our gift shop is to the right.

Our offices are to the left.

And we're going to start by heading down to where the home team spends a lot of their time.

This is a unique steel door right here, and I'm going to open it right now because this leads to the dugout.

And this is the way the players come out of their locker room and they come down here as we head down the hall farther.

On the right hand side here is the players clubhouse here on the right.

The training room is here on the left.

And then now we're going to head back to where the players really spend a lot of their non-playing time.

This is the players lounge and relaxation area.

As we walk all the way through here, you'll see a training table here on the left.

This is their little lounge area right here where they can sit around and do their thing.

You can see up here is still remnants of old construction from the old seats.

This is where the people that run our scoreboard and our video board and our announcer and the person that keeps score for the game, they are all sitting all up and down here.

We actually have this old picture and in memory of Marv Bates, it was at Roberts Stadium.

All those years.

They didn't have room to put it at the Ford Center, and they asked us if we wanted it.

And we said absolutely.

And we put it right up here where Marv Bates spent some time up here over his very expansive career over the past century.

Bosse Field has been host to baseball and football games, concerts, political rallies and home to many well-known athletes who grew up playing in Evansville.

Well, the first team was the Evas of the Evansville Evas.

I guess either being short for Evansville.

Their manager was Punch Nole.

He was a very popular manager, So sometimes they were called the punchers or the no lights.

It seems that early in the in the 1900s, baseball nicknames weren't as fixed as they are today.

So the Evansville Evas were there.

Sometimes through the years they were known by different names the Evansville Black Sox, the Evansville Pocketeers, the Evansville hubs,the Evansville Bees.

And I think the bees and then the Braves are when the names started to kind of match the team that they were affiliated with.

And in an era before Roberts Stadium and the Ford Center, it was really a community...

It was a place where large community events were held as well.

Politicians who came to town know running for president or governor would speak there.

Large pageants were held there.

So it was it was like Evansville’s Community Center in a sense.

It was more than just a baseball stadium.

Well, they had city, you know, song and music festivals here.

They had rock concerts back in the seventies.

There was, you know, in 1972 and 74, they had some massive rock concerts here where they filled up the infield during the season, which is mind boggling now and then had to resod the infield during the season after, you know, having that filled up with people during a rock concert.

And of course, it rained, you know, at one time they had a Turtle Derby out here.

They also had the Evansville Centennial.

They had the central High School Centennial, and they still had the field day exercises there in the early years, too.

So you'll see these great pictures of the the field just filled with with elementary school aged kids doing choreographed dances with Indian clubs or the the butterfly flags dancing around the maypole.

And then later in the sixties, the Evansville White Sox were here for a couple of years and then the Evansville Triplets.

Many people remember.

Evansville was a charter franchisee in the National Football League.

Today, that franchise would cost in excess of $1,000,000,000.

But Evansville paid $100 for its franchise team, only lasted two years.

It's really interesting that the Crimson Giants, they basically played one year Bosse Field and the year they played here, they were in the the professional league.

The B actually became the NFL the next year and the next year they had an NFL franchise with the Green Bay, Acme Packers and the Decatur Staley's, which became the Chicago Bears.

This was the first to two of the first landmark franchises in the NFL.

And they were in it.

They were in the NFL.

But that year they folded and never played a home game at Bosse Field.

But the year before, they had played the Green Bay Packers at Green Bay and got thumped by them.

And that was part of the part of the legacy of Bosse Field, as it was actually in the early NFL, the Bears and the Huskies.

In another heart wrenching at Bosse Field.

Central strikes first in this game, two runs in the bottom of the first one coming on this sacrifice.

Fly north... From the beginning.

Bosse Field has been owned by the Evansville School Corporation, later the EVSC, serving as the home for Evansville Central High School, baseball and football.

For much of the 20th century, almost all of Evansville schools have called Bosse Field Home at some point in their baseball history.

To this day, Reitz and Mater Dei high schools use Bosse as their home field and sectional and regional high school baseball.

Playoffs are held here every year.

Evansville, North High School, the Catholic high school Rex Mundi, which operated from 1958 to 1972, also used the field as its home gridiron.

Even the University of Evansville played at Bosse Field, using it for home football games in the forties, fifties and sixties and playing baseball there in the eighties and nineties.

With so many athletes passing through Bosse Field, quite a few have gone on to achieve great success, like Bob Griese, an all-American at Purdue and an NFL Hall of Fame quarterback with the 1972 undefeated Miami Dolphins.

He helped lead the first class of Rex Mundi High School to great success playing football at Bosse Field from 1958 to 1961 and pitched a no hitter there in Legion baseball.

Don Mattingly played high school ball for Memorial and helped the team to win the 1978 state championship before going on to several All-Star seasons with the New York Yankees as one of the best hitters of the eighties and Andy Benes, a pitching sensation who got a slow start at Central High School but took off while playing with the University of Evansville.

He was selected first in the 1988 Major League Baseball draft by the San Diego Padres and went on to win a gold medal in the 88 Olympics.

Andy To realize what he's accomplished.

Hank Greenberg was another big star who played for the Evansville Hubbs in 1931.

He was a hall of Famer, you know, with the Detroit Tigers.

He was I think they called him the Jewish hammer because he was I mean, in those days, you know, it was unusual to have a Jewish ballplayer of his caliber.

You know, I mean, there weren't that many.

And so it was notable and he was notable and he was proud of his heritage and never shied away from it.

And he and he embraced it.

People embraced him.

And it was part of one of those things like baseball breaking the color barrier, you know, with Jackie Robinson, you know, they had a baseball had to break a religious barrier too to start being more inclusive of people of Jewish descent or Catholics or whatever it was, or Irish-Americans or Scotch Americans or whatever, you know, baseball and sports played a very key role in all those inclusions and the fiber of what, you know, society is today.

But it's not just players who are well known at Bosse Field, even a regular fan has become a local legend.

Marvin Gray would be out of everybody.

I mean, Marvin Gray has been here through the whole history more group.

I've been here since I started here with the White Sox.

I was the 1968, the first one in 14 years.

That was from Triplets, one of the ones who took the scoreboard there.

Another part of childhood that was so fantastic of watching Marvin do the do the signs and do the numbers and and and take care of the floors.

Seeing him at all with all the different Evansville sporting events.

He loved the Aces, He loved the Eagles, but he loved the Triplets and he loved the Otters.

And boy, you better not criticize the Triplets.

You're going to hear from Marv.

He he always gets the same food every night and he gets a hot dog, a bag of popcorn and a Diet Pepsi.

Without fail, it never changes.

But Marvin loves the Otters.

He loves sports, and nothing he's more proud of is when the Otters win.

The first thing he does is grab his bag and he's got a victory flag and he waves it, waves it around.

I remember Marvin at my games as a Harrison player, and we're talking about, you know, 40 years ago and Marvin knew my statistics and Marvin knew Harrison's statistics going way back.

And Marvin’s still here today, from 1946 to 1957, countless players saw their rise or fall from the big leagues with the Evansville Braves led by manager Bob Coleman.

Back in those days, the Evansville Braves, under the direction of Bob Coleman, the manager.

If you were playing here in Bosse Field for the Evansville Braves, you were a major league prospect because Bob Coleman didn't take anybody that he didn't think was going to play in the majors.

And that's why they won so many games.

And he was such a great manager when Bob Coleman spoke.

The old expression they have in Wall Street, everyone listens.

Well you better believe from the Major League general manager to the custodian.

When Bob Coleman spoke, everyone listened.

And so so and if you made a mistake, you weren't here very long.

I'll tell you that.

The player that made a great impression on me was Felix Mantilla.

He was a shortstop here and one game he jumped up for a line drive and it looked like to me he was about six feet off, you know, maybe his only two feet.

But he jumped so high and as a nine year old, you know, I was so impressed.

Probably the greatest minor league player I ever saw and played with was Horace Garner.

And he was he was like an ambassador to the blacks in baseball.

He was he was a member of the old Boston Braves, a guy I always got to emphasize.

Boston Braves, Milwaukee Braves.

Today it's the Atlanta Braves.

But Horace was a fella that had one of the greatest arms you ever saw.

The one I remember most was Horace Garner.

He was a big guy.

He was like six four or something like that.

230.

And he when he hit a home run or any kind of any kind of hit, he had the longest strides.

I mean, it took him maybe four or five steps.

He was out first base line, not exaggerate, but that's how his strides were.

Horace would come over and talk to the kids and forget that there was a baseball game going on and Bob Coleman would remind him as far as hitting power arm only problem was, you never knew when the ball went to the outfield whether he was going to catch it or not.

That was probably his biggest problem.

So I guess one of the one of the best memories, the fondest memories that we have out here at Bosse Field is when I was a senior memorial.

Bob was a sophomore at Rex Mundi.

We didn't play him the first couple of years, but his senior year and my sophomore year, we had we had them on the schedule playing him here in Bosse Field and by that time we were pretty good and so were they.

And I was a middle guard.

I learned from the center and the first play of the game, you don't run a quarterback sneak the first play of the game unless your brother was on the other side of the line.

And so all week at home, you know, he knows that he's practicing after school to play me.

And I know that you know, I'm practicing to play him.

So the first play of the game, we came up to the line of scrimmage and he's the nose tackle who lines up defensively on the center and I can almost reach over and touch him.

My mother was sitting on the 50 yard line with a golden white pom pom in one hand and a blue and white pom pom in the other and she was ready to cheer for both of us.

But I tell one way he tells us the other one, they double teamed me, the guard and the center blocked me and he, he says he got ten yards, he only got five.

If he wants to tell you that, I'll let it go.

But we did gain ten yards.

I snapped the ball.

We ran a quarterback sneak.

He was double teamed.

Okay.

The guard in the center and we won the game seven to nothing and I scored the winning touchdown on a run.

That's the story and I'm sticking to it.

So when Bosse Field opened, it had a white stucco facade.

And obviously when people look at those early pictures of Bosse Field, they don't recognize the Bosse Field that we have today.

The first major renovation.

The ball field happened in 1930 and they came in and they redid the locker rooms and the stuff underneath.

But the most noticeable change that was made was they added the brick facade that we know today.

There would be other improvements and updates to the facilities that year.

But play didn't stop.

Bosse Field remained open for business until the late fifties.

As early as 1951.

There were people saying, you know, the place is really getting more rundown.

We need to do have the engineers look at it.

And in 1957, it was it was decided that Bosse Field was on the verge of collapse.

The the concrete was was not holding up and they literally closed they actually closed sections of the seats down the right and left field lines.

They reinforced the seats behind home plate by propping them up with railroad ties underneath so the Braves could finish out the season.

And to see the extent of the renovation.

I mean, it wasn't just, you know, they painted I mean, they tore the the seats out, tore the concrete out and rebuilt the thing using that original the outside shell.

But really the inside, they had to rebuild the whole thing.

The school corporation back when they did the biggest renovation here back in the 1950s, 1957 and 58, they were able to fund a major renovation of the place.

I mean, at that time, some of the stands had actually been condemned and they needed a major influx of capital to do it.

The school corporation couldn’t afford to do it now.

And this, you know, a different financial climate now.

They don't have the money to fund needed improvements.

And you're going to have to find somewhere going forward a new foundation or a new benefactor to come out and, you know, with a willingness to put the money in a baseball stadium, needs a baseball team when when when you're not playing baseball or football in Bosse Field and it's just sitting there, it gets run down and then people don't don't care about it as much.

A baseball field needs to be used.

From 1966 to 1968, the Evansville White Sox called Bosse Field home.

They were a Double-A team out of Chicago.

Singing Ed Nottle was a player on the E-Sox and remembers what it was like to travel with the Southern League team.

Back then.

You didn't you didn't have travel days and you know, you might get to a place hour and a half before the game and boom, you're on the field and you're playing.

And later in life at Pawtucket, for instance, I found out I was no different in triple-A.

We'd finish a game and at 10:30 at night have to leave at four in the morning to beat the traffic, to Boston Airport.

And we wouldn't leave 7:30 to go play Denver that night.

And it was a milk run.

It wasn't any commercial line.

It's another reason I hate 83.

They don't hear us in the big leagues.

They had charter flight and it ruined me for anything else the rest of my life.

I never realized how bad we had it, but there used to be a little place over here called Bud Miller's.

We had a manager here named George.

Norgood.

God bless him.

He's passed away since then.

But no beer on the bus for me and a couple of the older guys you go or Bud Miller, you get a couple of cases back through the back window.

And it was funny.

He couldn't have been deaf because all night long you hear pchew, pchew.

But it was harmless.

It was wonderful.

Other than releasing a ballplayer, there is nothing I didn't love about pro ball, long distance road games and declining attendance were both reasons that the Evansville White Sox left on deck... the Triplets.

One of the first things I remember about Bosse Field would have been when the Triplets, when the Minnesota Twins put their farm team here in Evansville and they had a contest for naming the team.

And that's why the Triplets were called the Triplets, because they were the farm team of the Twins.

I think they were only affiliated with the Twins for a couple of years, though, because then they became affiliated with the Tigers.

And when I was a kid, I never really understood why they were called the Triplets when they were the Tigers triple-A team.

Baseball with the Triplets was awesome.

You know, it's triple AA one level and Detroit was really good.

Most of the guys when I was here came through and and then went on to Detroit to win a World Series.

And Mark Fidrych came out of rehab here.

And, you know, Jim Leyland was the manager.

And little did you know how great he was going to be as he moved on.

And the great thing about Leyland was he was a player's manager.

He was fairly young.

Was he in 79, he'd have probably been maybe 34, 35.

And so he wasn’t much older than some of the players, but he was like a big brother, too, to a lot of them.

And he he knew how tough it was to get to the big leagues and that when you know what a stress that could be on you and your family.

And he was very understanding.

And I think the players realized, you know, how lucky they were to play for a manager like him.

Jimmy Leyland, He's been congratulated by everybody.

Right now.

The crowd is still standing here and they're just jumping around.

Jimmy, can you calm down just for me?

Talk to me one heck of a ballgame, not only tonight, but the last three games.

Great game, great season, a lot to prove, a lot of people canceled maybe midway through.

We lost a lot of guys.

But I think we showed the character, the class and the poise that this club had all year.

They played Oklahoma City in the which was the Phillies Farm Club and in the playoffs, and that was Leyland's Leyland had been in class AA.

He was moving up just like the players were, and I think that was a big deal to him, too, to win a triple-A championship.

And he did it with with guys that were older and guys that were younger.

There was a guy by name of Joe Louis who wound up living in Evansville.

He was he was a first baseman on that team.

He was the oldest player on the team.

He'd been in the big leagues, you know, several seasons.

How's everything going for you right now, buddy?

I feel great.

Gary, this is a great I waited16 years for a championship, and I'll tell you, I don't care if Christmas don't come around.

It's only for kids.

This is for men.

I'm telling you.

Congratulations, big man.

With the best of luck to the town of Evansville.

Congratulations.

It's their flag.

It's going to hang up down that post next year.

Joe Louis, who's passed away, was our first baseman that year, played with Marty Castillo, Tommy Brookins, who's still a coach in the big leagues for the Tigers.

Kirk Gibson, who was on our team a couple of years later, he wasn't on the championship team but played with them here.

Yeah, When I was in Omaha, Lance Parrish was the catcher here in Evansville, so I was the backup catcher until they traded Bruce Kim with one week to go in the season.

And when they traded him, I was the only catcher left, so I had to catch the last week of the season and all of the playoff games because of triple double number.

Mark Bird Beveridge, drew manual Steve Patchin, Charles Boots Day was the first base coach for the Otters.

He played for the Triplets.

He's also the first manager.

When we started with the Otters, I was there with Fidrych and Lance Parrish and Jack Morris, Dan Petry, and we had a heck of a team.

Matter of fact, 75 the year I got here, we won the whole thing.

I can remember I used to play a home run derby with Bruce Kimm, our catcher.

We put the machine up early in the afternoon and then we try to hit a home run.

It was a home run or nothing.

And I had my I had a friend here in town who was a carpenter, and he loaded my bat.

He corked my bat.

And Bruce Kimm didn't know anything about it.

And I was hitting balls out of the stadium.

He couldn't figure out how this little skinny manager was hitting home runs.

Vince Coleman came through.

He he was trying to set the stolen base record.

Tim Raines came through and he did set the association stolen base record.

He did that at Bosse Field.

The biggest story from the time I was here was Mark Fidrych.

He'd come down here, he'd won the American League Rookie of the Year award, started the All-Star Game in 76, had shoulder problems, came back, had to fight through it.

He actually had a torn rotator cuff.

He was on his way down.

He had hurt his arm.

But one thing I can say about Mark, he was true to himself and he was absolutely the hardest worker I ever saw trying to get back to the big leagues.

Bird was a bird.

I mean, everybody thought he's putting on a show.

But no, that was him.

I mean, he did you get down on his knees and, you know, wiped off the rubber and get patted the dirt that that was him.

He did that When he's in the big leagues, he did the same thing.

You know, that was just him.

Bird would get down on the mound and he'd he'd smooth the mound out just right.

And then he'd he'd be talking the bird.

He was actually talking to himself, but it looked like he was talking to ball.

He'd say, Keep it down, Keep it down.

Which meant keep the pitches down.

You got to keep it down.

Very much a team player.

And I think the the day he got called up, he was going to go up the next day to be called to Detroit.

He was helping a guy change his oil.

We were sending him up to the big leagues and they were sent to the big leagues that day.

He tuned up Larry Doby Johnson's car, and Mark was a mechanic.

And he came in the ballpark, he looked like and he looked like a mechanic.

I said, What are you doing?

You're going to big leagues.

He said, Well, he needed his car tuned up, needed an oil change.

And I never forgot that He finally got back to the big leagues.

He was called back to Detroit at the end of August in 1980, and the Tigers made it so he could start one more game for the Triplets before he got called up.

And that night, I think they had 5800 people.

It was it was capacity.

People that hadn't seen the Triplets play all year came out just to say goodbye to Fidrych, and he threw seven shutout innings against Indianapolis, which was the Reds Farm Club.

Jim Leyland was the manager.

He sent Bird back to start the eighth inning, let him throw one pitch, which was a called strike, went to the mound to get him so he could get a standing ovation.

And before Bird left, he went around to each player on each of his teammates and hugged him and said, I love you guys.

I mean that still, you know, I mean, that's that was a helluva hell of a thing to cover.

Bird’s dead now, but that's one of the things I'll always remember about Evansville.

In 1984, the Triplets left Bosse Field.

The team moved to Tennessee and became the Nashville Sound.

To think back to those days when we had triple-A baseball in Evansville, a small city like Evansville.

It's almost hard to believe, and even worse, that we lost it.

I was at the last game in 1984.

I remember going my dad took me to that one, but I wanted to go see the last Triplets game and it was a packed house.

And I remember I think I even told him I was 12 and I said, Well, I had crowds like this every every game.

They wouldn't be leaving.

Now, I'm sure there were some management issues that were involved, and I'm sure there were some issues involved with just keeping affiliations with a major league team.

But attendance wasn't that great.

This has happened twice.

Evansville has lost professional baseball on more than one occasion.

The Braves left here in 1957 when the stadium literally was crumbling and parts of it was condemned.

And at that time we tried to find another team to come in and didn't for three years in the sixties, 66, 67 and 68, we had a franchise affiliated with the White Sox.

They left here because of poor attendance.

The Triplets came 1970, stayed through 1984, and I know there was a concerted effort to replace them not with a triple-A team, but at least with another affiliated team, and that never materialized.

So there was no professional baseball here from the 1985 season through the 1994 season.

So the only teams that used it were the high schools and the University of Evansville for that period.

Within a year of the triplets leaving town, the University of Evansville baseball team took over the field.

UE baseball was another springboard into the majors for a lot of talented players, and the organization put a lot of work into the field.

I went to Aces games.

I loved doing that.

Oh yeah.

Even before the Otters, I would go to Aces games.

I was a big fan of Coach Brownlee and I went to Coach Brownlee's camp and you would get to go to Bosse Field for those things too.

But for the Aces to call Bosse Field Home was great.

Well, I basically lived here 365 days out of the year.

The locker room when we got that locker room fixed up, that was a signature moment for me because that was a depressing place.

We carpeted it, redid the walls, put new lockers in there and, you know, when you basically when you're in baseball, it's your life and you're at the field 25 hours a day.

But it was fun here.

And the amount of games that we had, you into.

And I did it for selfish reasons because I had great players coming out of Evansville that played for me out of the city.

Andy Benes is a local guy and go on and on.

Ryan Miller, Ryan Connors.

Janie Carroll played for me and he's a Castle kid and played 14 years in the big leagues.

Sal Fasano, who's the soon to be a manager in the big leagues, played at U of E. Andy Benes was one of my proteges at Central, and you pretty well knew that he was going to do something, whatever he did, because he was the three sport guy at Central and every sport that he played, he was tremendous at.

Well Coach Brownlee, I think, initially decided he wanted me to play for me when for him, when when he was watching me play football at Central.

And I was just getting the snot beat out of me and I just kept getting up and, you know, grabbing the facemask of my linemen.

I was a quarterback at the time, and he's the one that said, okay, you're just going to pitch.

I think when he came to Evansville and he played three sports the first year because the basketball program was just rebuilding and they were short players.

So Coach Crews asked him if he could play, but he played football and baseball and really he never had time to concentrate on baseball in high school because he was going from one sport to the next.

And finally he decided, going into his junior year that he had a chance to make it in baseball.

Little did we know how that was going to that whole year was going to progress, and Coach Gainey did a great job with him in his junior year, but he threw the baseball year round that year and that made the difference for him to be the number one pick in the 88 draft.

But he had a phenomenal year and obviously kept it by beating Arizona State one to nothing in the regional.

And that was a really cool thing because not too many people nationwide knew where Evansville was, but it was just situation where, you know, we made it to the tournament, We got to go to Arizona State and our big first baseman, Rob Maurer, got hit a home run and we threw a shutout.

And after that game, people were like, okay, maybe they're okay.

And so was Andy Benes and Rob Maurer.

You know, that put Evansville on the map the day before or that morning when they played and they played Arizona State.

The Arizona paper had headlines, Evansville, where?

Evansville who?

After that victory over Arizona State, they kind of changed their tune.

So playing college and major league ball is an all Benes achieved in his career.

He was also selected to play baseball for Team USA in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

I was playing in the summer league in 1987 and some guys were talking about it.

They played four different Big Ten schools, maybe some Big 12 schools, and they said, Hey, we're looking at maybe playing on the Olympic team.

I'm like, Wow, that is awesome.

Well, between that time and the time that the spring came, I was throwing 12 miles an hour harder.

So I went from not even thinking about that to being on the team and playing with some great guys from some phenomenal baseball schools and great coaches.

And to be able to represent your represent your country, to be there with other great Olympians, with Carl Lewis and Jackie.

And, you know, David Robinson was on the basketball team and and to win a gold medal.

It was just an amazing it was an amazing dream that I never thought would be possible.

But it really started it started here.

And to be able to go and do those things, I think it prepared me for what was to come.

And so I'm thankful for that.

Even with help from the University of Evansville baseball team, Bosse Field once again fell into disrepair by the mid 1980s after the Triplets left in the mid eighties, the place literally started to rot and there was talk of just tearing it down.

And so I was on the first Friends of Bosse Field Committee.

And that work continues today.

It's it's now done by the hot stove league.

But initially it was called the Friends of Bosse Field.

I was driving by here.

In all honesty, I was driving right by where we're standing right here.

And I noticed the outsides of Bosse Field were kind of falling apart and some of the bricks were being ever gone and whatever rust.

And I thought, Jeez, that's a great ballpark.

I would hate to see that happen.

So I met with Pauley and with Jim Brownlee, who was then the baseball coach of the University of Georgia, and we met with Steve Fritz, who is the athletic director for all the public schools.

And we sat down and we made a night and Don Mattingly, Andy Benes and Bob Griese, all of them volunteered to come and help us kick off this night to try to raise the money.

And at that time it was called Friends of Bosse Field.

And our intentions was not only to raise money for our programs, the baseball programs here in town, but also for Bosse Field When Bosse Field, they were talking about tearing it down and deteriorating, what are they going to do with it?

These guys were a big part of of the friends of Bosse field and and taking care of that place.

I help where I can I come back and I bring some superbowl tickets to be raffled off or something or other but those guys do the heavy lifting and Paul Greece doesn't get enough credit.

Paul Greece was a great athlete growing up here in in Evansville and he now is the guy that does all the work in this organization that that that gathers the funds to spread around the city, to the youth leagues, to the kids.

And we put a roof on here.

We redid the locker rooms, We did the playing surface.

We put outdoor batting cages beyond the fence out there, put new outfield fence in, had the brick brick cutting.

And then once we got it where we thought it was where it needed to be, we started giving money to the high schools and created scholarships for high school baseball players.

And now the friends have disbanded and it's the hot stove league.

I think that people forget how important that group is.

If you love Bosse Field, you owe those guys a huge thank you.

And it took a group of dedicated coaches and supporters like that to bring bring people back to Bosse Field and bring Bosse Field back.

And then through their efforts.

And I think getting it kind of stabilized and then landing A League of Their Own, those two things really kind of put Bosse Field back on its feet.

And I think the League of Their Own is really what started to draw attention to Bosse Field, Just the fact that they came here and a lot of the movie was filmed at Bosse Field and they left some of the signs up around the ballpark.

This was before Hanks had won his two Oscars.

And Madonna was she was upset that she couldn't get MTV, Evansville Cable, but they were all part of the the dynamic.

And, of course, people who were extras in that movie, I'm sure they have fond memories as well.

Looking back now, when I see the pictures and things like that, it's kind of crazy, you know, Like I played catch with Tom Hanks, you know what I mean?

That's just, you know, insane to think about now.

But back then, you know, again, I had no clue that they were just nice people that, you know, and they tried to they knew that we are new to this, you know, So they tried to make it as easy as possible on us.

You know, I was still, you know, in school getting tutored here, actually, right on the parking lot in our dressing room, I got tutored.

So it definitely seemed large.

You know what I mean?

As a little kid, being on a baseball field in a stadium like this, you know, I remember, you know, just looking around thinking this is, you know, a huge place.

And we actually got to go up to Wrigley Field also, because the first part of the movie was filmed up there, the tryouts.

And I got to be down on Wrigley Field, too.

So, you know, being on these, you know, extremely old and extremely historic ballparks at such a young age, I really couldn't take it in.

But again, looking back now, I talk to people and tell them, you know, about Bosse Field and Wrigley Field and being on you know, being at those areas.

And, you know, it's a pretty neat memory.

We've showed the movie A League of Our Own out here at Bosse Field twice in the last four years.

And the first time we had 1100 people.

The second time we had about 500 people.

And they loved being able to watch it here and have a 25 foot screen right up there on the field and sit in the seats and watch them.

And to hear 1100 people laugh at one time.

It's a lot different than when you're in a movie theater or something.

So it's pretty neat.

I don't know if I ever saw ball hit over centerfield Now, when I played here, we had the brick wall.

We didn't have this portable fence.

Kind of a legend that anybody can hit that I know it to be pretty pretty far.

And home Plate was up a little further.

It's not where it is now, either.

Hank Greenberg supposedly hit one over the fence in the corner.

Mike Lago was said to have done so, but there's no proof that they actually did.

When I was a kid, they said it was Babe Ruth.

It hit a home run.

It went through the window at Hoosier Cardinal.

Well, since then, I've found out Babe Ruth didn't play baseball here.

I never saw it I don't know that it ever happened.

It may have, but if it did, I have no idea who may have done it.

And I suspect it's probably a myth.

If anybody hits the target.

On the temp, they'll get a free gallon of ice cream.

I've been here for 21 years...

I haven't seen it done yet for us was the right fielder and I saw him one time hit the ball over that brick wall.

Steve Ford actually said that he was here the night Cotton Nash hit a home run over the centerfield wall.

So I take him at his word and it bounced in Heidelbach in the middle of Heidelbach and it hit that building.

And it's the longest home run I've ever seen in my life.

Not, not one.

I don't care who it is, but welcome to the storied classroom.

Mike Koramski and Bill McKewin with me from Evansville, Indiana, for the series opener between the Evansville Otters, Jim and Pam Miller were general managers of of the original Otters.

And it was kind of a I think they were looking for something a higher brand of baseball than, say, Legion or college baseball to to fill Bosse field.

And maybe I never talked to Jim about it, but maybe it had something to do with the popularity of the movie.

But they said, Well, we've got this place sitting here, we should be doing something.

So they talked to Bill Lee, who was president of the Frontier League, and Bill was looking to expand.

The Otters have been here since 1995.

And so 20 years and actually the 21st season now for Otters, baseball, all of a sudden, baseball took off again and the crowds got to be big and of course, the big thing was Bill Bussing and his family taken over.

I've always said if they hadn't come in and taken over, then Bosse Field might have been torn down like, you know, Evansville has has this knack for tearing things down.

Going in We knew it would be a challenge to survive, actually knowing that triple-A baseball had failed here and that Frontier League baseball, is it nearly the quality that triple-A baseball is and triple-A baseball is one step from the big leagues.

In 2005, the Otters were the first team in the Frontier League to reach the 1 million mark in attendance.

The following season, they hosted the Frontier League All-Star Game.

I think the high point was winning the 2006 Frontier League championship we won it on the road.

It didn't happen here, but to be able to bring that trophy back to Evansville was one of the fondest memories I have of our tenure here.

They hosted the Frontier League All-Star Game, which is our our feature deal.

And so but that was a really good year for them that year.

And when they got in, they got in with an under 500 record.

They got in the playoffs and wound up, going on on a streak and and won it all.

I remember that year is sometimes the attendance goes up and then it goes down and then if they're good, I'll go back up again.

But that year, for whatever reason, it stayed up all the time.

Sam Hartsfield, once a player for the Kansas City Monarchs and Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro Leagues, takes care of the players and their uniforms.

He's the Otters Clubby and has a unique connection with the players in the 14 years of him.

Not a problem at all.

Mack and these guys, I mean, they weren't really good fellows.

And but the sad part is when the worst part of the job is when somebody gets cut.

It’s sad to see them go and a lot of the guys have their heads down and it's only for a few minutes.

But because they are pros now, you know, it's not like in college.

Tha’s the difference between here and college.

today, minor league baseball is is less about the athletic part and more about the entertainment.

I mean, clearly, if you ask how many people in the stands every night are diehard baseball fans, you get a portion.

It's a fun environment because there's something going on between innings is also going on and the fans are all intertwined in the game.

But the game and the kids get on the field and and after the game they run the bases.

You sign autographs for everyone, all the kids, most of the people, I think, who come here come for the entertainment.

Their family is a family friendly atmosphere.

They bring their kids all the time.

Grandparents come.

They don't really care what's going on on the field.

A lot of them don't know the score.

Many of them don't stay for the end of the game.

They come because it's a terrific setting.

We're nestled in a park, I mean, on a on a summer evening with the breeze blowing through the field in the stands.

And where else would you want to be?

100 years after the opening day, ABC field players and fans come together for the Centennial celebration.

Everything and NFL Hall of Famer Bob Grissom was honored with special recognition for his contributions to Bosse Field.

Every time I come to Evansville, when the stewardess says Welcome to Evansville, I feel like I'm home.

The lineup of officials and professional athletes who join fans for the 100 year celebration may be a good indication of the amount of respect and admiration felt for this historic ballpark.

We've officially declared this Bosse Field 100th anniversary day in the city of Evansville, and it's my pleasure to present the special proclamation to the owner of the Evansville Otters, Bill Bussing.

I'm pleased to accept this for the first 100 years.

And we hope that 100 years from now, somebody will be standing in this very place saying the same thing.

That's what's really amazing with the city and the fans and the people of Evansville, how they support this place.

I mean, just look around tonight.

This place is probably going to be filled.

And it's just that that's a testament to the city of Evansville.

If they support this place and want to see this place succeed and continue to grow, I think people care about Bosse Field.

I think people realize that it is a it is a landmark.

Evansville treasure.

This place still stands 100 years later.

And you can see its age.

I mean, you can really see its age and it has its limitations.

But the history, I mean, and just the beauty of just standing here and looking at it right here, it's just really special.

And again, it's just Evansville.

The simplest way that I can describe Bosse Field is me being from here and loving the city is when I have friends that come in from out of town, that's where I take them.

You have to to simply say there's been ups and downs with Bosse Field.

When I have, they have 100 year stadium field.

You're going to have that.

But no matter what it is, and when the time came, when things weren't looking good, the citizens of Evansville did something to rally around to keep it here.

It's certainly an iconic place that it just it's a it started, of course, in the era when baseball was truly our national pastime.

And ironically today, thanks to the Bussing family, it is still for the for your dollar value.

It's a great night of entertainment.

It's just it's Americana.

But what a privilege to play in the third oldest stadium in the country.

And that was your home field.

And, you know, great players have been there, great high school players, college players, great major league players and managers.

You cannot build history and now they're getting there.

This place has just oozes history out of every every crevice in the building, the bricks, you know, I mean, it's just amazing.

And you think of all the people that have sat under this roof and and the way it's all been, the people that have walked this, the players that have graced this field, it's just amazing.

Of all the things that have gone on here, I think it's the heart and soul of the community.

I mean, where else in Evansville do people congregate and where else do people have such strong memories?

And people have been coming here for a hundred years.

I have folks who's still come who say, you know, I play football here, or these were the seats I used to sit in every Sunday afternoon with my grandparents.

I mean, they could show me the exact same location.

I hope that, you know, in years to come that people will still be going out to the in the main street to sit in those same seats and and enjoy a baseball game and a stadium that is feels the way a baseball stadium should feel.

I'm optimistic about the future.

I think I think it's going to be here a long time.

I think it has such a great tradition that we're not going to lose it very easily, that's for sure.

I don't know how you can tear this thing down.

There's no way no.

Production funding for the field that Bosse built.

Evansville is historic.

Ballpark turns 100 is provided by the Cecil A and Mabel Lene Hamman Foundation, Inc. and by Wilfred C Bussing the third.