Veeck, Joliet, and First Pitches
Veeck, Joliet, and First Pitches
By Joseph Ferris
Aim high and no funny business.
There’s a lovely irony in receiving this advice from a baseball Veeck, which I did when I spoke with Nite Train Veeck this summer.
After all, a Veeck put all three-foot-eight-inches of Eddie Gaeddel in a major league lineup. Three generations of the family are responsible for almost any fun fans experience at the ballpark.
The family was part of the game before Wrigley Field had ivy-adorned outfield walls. That’s because Bill Veeck, Jr. (second generation) came up with the idea in 1937. Ivy installation took place in one night.
A baseball staple they didn’t invent is the first pitch. There’s no definitive answer to who threw the first first pitch, but one of the earliest on record was in 1892. Then Ohio governor and future president William McKinley “threw the ball into the diamond” before a Toledo Black Pirates-Columbus Reds game.
On a summer evening made for minor league baseball, my college roommate Robb and I found ourselves in Joliet, Illinois this July. We were standing behind home plate at Duly Health and Care Field, the home of the Joliet Slammers. The Slammers are owned by Mike Veeck (third generation), Night Train (fourth generation), and Bill Murray. Yes, that Bill Murray.
Joliet was the last stop on a five-day, four-game baseball road trip that had taken us from Chicago to Milwaukee with this final stop in the “City of Champions”.
We were in Joliet for more than the Slammers game. We were there to throw out first pitches before the team played the Schaumburg Boomers.
A few weeks earlier, wondering about game-day logistics and thinking about writing about this experience, I emailed the Slammers general info email address. It was Nite Train who replied, and after a brief back-and-forth, he agreed to talk over Zoom. It was during a conversation that covered the Veeck’s century-plus in baseball, the family’s first season with the Slammers, and his belief in Joliet’s renaissance that he gave me some first pitch advice.
Aim high and no funny business.
***
Robb and I arrived in Joliet that day on the METRA out of Chicago’s LaSalle Street Station. As we got off the train, two structures dominated our view. Duly’s light stanchions and the Collegiate Gothic-styled Joliet Central High School, which opened its doors in 1901.
Major League Baseball visited Joliet on September 28, 1875, when the Chicago White Stockings played the amateur Joliet Stone Citys. The White Stockings won 29-1.
By 1892, Joliet was home to the Illinois/Iowa League’s Convicts. With manager Billy Murray at the helm, they won the league championship that year. The league went out of business that winter.
Murray’s managerial career had begun three years earlier at the age of 25 with the Quincy Ravens. Like many young minor league managers of his day, Murray was also on the active roster, playing the outfield and first base. Before arriving in Joliet, he had already plied his trade in Buffalo, Lynn, Atlanta, and Portsmouth.
In the decade-and-a-half after his stint in Joliet, Murray worked his way up the managerial rungs, running the Providence Grays and the Jersey City Skeeters. After managing the Philadelphia Phillies from 1907 to 1909, Murray was let go. It was his last job in professional baseball.
Both Joliet’s Murray—manager Billy and part-owner Bill—have Baseball Reference pages.
Bill’s consist of one season—1978 where he played two games with the Northwest League’s unaffiliated Grays Harbor Loggers. In two plate appearances, he picked up a single on a pinch-hit at-bat.
Over the next two decades, a handful of minor league teams came and went in Joliet. The Standards. The Jolly-ites, who started play in the spring of 1910. Their league folded in July.
Baseball returned to Joliet in 2002 when the Jackhammers joined the Northern League. They changed their name to the Slammers in 2011 and are now in the Frontier League.
Names carry meaning and power. These are particularly communal in sports. Splashed across the front of a jersey. Embroidered on a hat’s logo. Plastered on scoreboards, box scores, and newspaper articles about big wins, heartbreaking losses, and daily grind of the season.
Team names can also tell a story. The Stone Citys speak to what is below Joliet and the jail-themed teams speak to the thousands who have been incarcerated in Joliet’s infamous prison since the 1800s.
A kind of dolomite referred to as “Athens marble” or Joliet Limestone was quarried in the area during the middle of the 1800s. The industry tapered off in the 1890s when limestone discovered in Indiana demonstrated greater durability. Joliet Limestone was used in building the front gate to Chicago’s Rosehill Cemetery, downtown Chicago’s Water Tower, and the Illinois State Penitentiary.
The Illinois State Penitentiary opened its doors in Joliet in 1858. Before closing in 2002, it was name-checked by the likes of Jack Kerouac, Memphis Minnie, and Bob Dylan. It was in 1980 that the prison was featured in the opening scene of Blues Brothers. John Belushi insisted that prisoners who filled the background as he was released from “The Joliet” were actual prisoners serving time at Illinois State Penitentiary.
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When the team that beat the Convicts hired William Veeck Sr. (first generation) in 1917, they were no longer the White Stockings. They were the Chicago Cubs.
Veeck was a sportswriter at the Chicago America who sometimes wrote under the pen name Bill Bailey. He wrote a series of articles under the pseudonym in 1917 on how Cubs ownership could improve the team. The stories caught the attention of team owner William Wrigley Jr. and he brought Veeck on as vice-president that year. After the team made it to the World Series in 1918, Wrigley promoted him to president in July 1919.
His son, Bill Jr., worked a hodgepodge of jobs at Wrigley, including time as a popcorn vendor. When his father passed away in 1933, the younger Veeck, age 29, became the Cubs treasurer. He would later own the then-minor league Milwaukee Brewers, the Cleveland Indians, the St. Louis Browns, and the Chicago White Sox.
Baseball’s color barrier was almost broken five years before Jackie Robinson donned a Dodgers jersey. It was 1942 and with the financial backing of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, Bill Jr. was going to buy the Philadelphia Phillies and stock the team with all-stars from the Negro Leagues. The plan was stymied when he told baseball Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis about his plan. One of Landis’ boosters for the new position of commissioner in the wake of the 1919 Black Sox scandal had been Bill Veeck Sr.
As owner of the Indians, he integrated the American League with the 1947 signing of Larry Doby. Veeck then signed Satchel Paige to his first major league contract. He sold the franchise after the 1949 season.
Veeck returned to the MLB when he bought the White Sox in 1975 and this time, his 20-something-year-old son, Mike, joined him as Chicago’s promotions director. His tenure was marred by the Disco Demolition Night promotion on July 12, 1979. The night ended with an on-field riot, a dumpster filled with burning disco vinyl records that left smoke hovering over the field, and a White Sox’s forfeit to the Detroit Tigers.
Following a decade of baseball purgatory that included a stint with the now long-defunct Miami Miracles, Mike became part of the ownership group for the Northern League’s St. Paul Saints.
The team became national news when they signed Darryl Strawberry in 1996. Strawberry had gone unsigned in the off-season after having served a cocaine-related 60-day suspension the previous season. The Saints took a flier on “The Straw Man” and in less than 30 games, he batted .435 and hit 18 home runs. The Yankees signed him on July 4th and he helped lead New York to their first World Series championship since 1978.
Veeck and his ownership group sold the Saints in spring 2023. In January 2024, Mike, Night Train, and Bill Murray were announced as the new owners of the Joliet Slammers.
***
Robb is one of those people who you meet the first week of college and you stay friends with. Our friendship is old enough to be a college freshman. It was junior year when we were roommates. Yuengling-fueled EA Sports MVP baseball marathons. Dominos-powered playoff viewings as his Astros Chris Burke’d their way to the World Series.
Robb now lives in Southern California with his wife and daughter, is a high school history teacher, and has somehow become a Dodgers fan. I live in the Hudson Valley and work in government relations.
The last time we had seen each other was in September 2019 when Robb spent a few days in New York. We went to a Mets game, he headed home to California, and six months later, everything shut down.
It was a few weeks after my dad died of COVID in June 2020 that I found a package on my stoop in Brooklyn. It was from Robb and inside were three books. Three baseball books. One about the Cubs 2016 championship won. Another about the 2019 Nationals championship run. The last about the Cleveland Indians and Larry Doby.
Grief is unpredictable. Mourning is exhausting. But this quiet act of friendship, kindness, and love buoyed my spirits. I think of it anytime I see the books on my shelf at home.
Amidst texts about politics, college basketball, and baseball we have spent years batting around the idea of a summer road trip. A time when our availability synced up and the baseball scheduling gods smiled upon us.
Sunday afternoon Wrigley as the Cubs face the Angels. Guaranteed Rate, Monday night for the Twins-White Sox. Tuesday evening in Milwaukee with the Pirates playing the Brewers at American Family Field. With a rest day on Wednesday, Thursday was the last day of our trip, and there was a stadium-sized hole in the schedule.
We saw the Cubs. We had experienced the performance art installation on futility that was the 2024 White Sox. The O’Hare-adjacent Chicago Dogs were out of town. That is how I found the Joliet Slammers.
Thursday, July 11th. 6:35 PM between the visiting Schaumburg Boomers and the Slammers. After selecting two seats behind home plate, I clicked “Select” and found myself on a pre-payment page that offered ticket add-ons. Only one caught my eye. The chance to throw out the first pitch before the game. I ordered two.
Twenty years after McKinley threw out that pitch, William Howard Taft became the first sitting president to accomplish the feat at any level of baseball before a Washington Nationals game in 1912.
Gerald Ford took his commander-in-chief responsibility so seriously he demanded a second go before a Rangers-Twins game when he was disappointed by his first pitch. Everyone from Simone Biles and Supreme Court justices to 50 Cent and Carly Rae Jepsen have stepped to the mound and tried their best to throw a strike.
***
The pitcher stands 60 feet 6 inches from the plate. And as Belle & Sebastian once pointed out, he knows the drink affects his speed.
When the batter stands in against a 90-mph fastball, reaction time is less than a half-second. The average fastball in 2024 is 93.7 mph. I’ve tried my best at those ballpark “How Fast Can You Throw” games and I’ve come in at 50 MPH. That was on two good ankles.
It was just a week or two after flights, baseball tickets, and lodging were booked that I broke my left ankle. And tore the deltoid ligament in my left foot. Early May started with surgery and couch rest. June was splint and crutches.
When Robb and I hopped on the Red Line to Wrigleyville on Sunday morning, my right foot was in a shoe. My left foot was in a boot. And everyone in front of me was walking too slowly.
Joliet’s Duly Stadium is like many sports facilities built after Baltimore’s Camden Yards opened. Situated on the outer edge of downtown, we were able to walk from our Harrah’s Casino hotel rooms to the ballpark.
We left the hotel more than an hour before the official 6:35 PM start time. We walked alongside the third base side of Duly. Heading south on Art Schultz Drive, we heard the PA announcer calling out batters with a cadence that left us sure this wasn’t pre-game warm-ups. This was a game.
Had I mixed up the start time because of the time zones? Had the PA announcer called our names for the first pitch and we were no-shows?
When we picked up our tickets at will call, we found out we weren’t late. We were early. The Wednesday night game had been rained out. It was going to be a doubleheader. We were told to head to the customer service booth on the concourse for more information about the first pitch. That is where we met Scottie, who told us to return to the booth at the end of game one.
As the Slammers closed in on a 5-1 victory, Robb and I found Scottie at the info booth and met the other first pitch pitcher. A four-year-old kid, with an assist from his dad.
If pitching accolades were based on adorableness, this kid would be a perennial Cy Young candidate. Led by his dad, he made it as far as home plate before turning around to drop the ball in the catcher’s glove.
It was a tough act for Robb to follow. His pitch spiked just before the plate. It would have been the perfect in-game set-up pitch. The hitter would have been off-balance for the rest of the at-bat.
That was when I heard my name announced over the PA. With a walk a friend described as reminiscent of a manager heading from the dugout to pull an embattled pitcher, I stepped over the foul line.
Atop the mound in a Tim Raines Expos jersey and Slammers hat, I realized this wasn’t just a first pitch before Game Two. It was my first first pitch. The distance between the mound and home looks so small on TV. It feels so achievable from the seats. On the mound, every foot and inch of those 60 feet and six inches is a yawning chasm.
Finally on a mound in a professional ballpark, looking out at the Slammers player set up to catch the pitch, memories skipped through my mind. Sitting down with a library book about pitching in third grade to try and master a split-finger fastball. Lazy July weekend games during college at Newark’s Riverfront Stadium. A Newark Bears pitcher with a knee bender of a knuckleball and a fastball too slow for the highway keeping hitters off-balance and getting me to wonder if I could teach myself the knuckleball.
For all the talk of mechanics and advanced pitching metrics, at its core, pitching is about feel. Cleats on rubber. Fingers on the seam. A ball of cork covered in hide in the palm.
Maybe it is that “feel” that lets a pitcher, a pitcher of any skill level, have a sense of where the ball is headed. Out of my hand, it was an unintended slider that kept on sliding. The ball didn’t cross the plate. The ball crossed over the first-base-side batter’s box but hit the catcher’s mitt on the fly.
Walking off the mound, I pointed toward the catcher and the Slammers mascot, Spikes the Bloodhound, behind him, standing in for the umpire. It was a gesture I’d seen pitchers do all my life Celebrating my throw like the elite closer I dreamt of becoming as a child. The ace reliever paints the corner for strike three to close out the playoff clincher. When we lined up for a photo, the player turned to me and said, “Not bad for a guy with one leg.”
***
I was returning east by train. Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited doesn’t leave Chicago until nearly 10 PM. It gave me time to wander around Joliet before catching an early afternoon METRA out of town.
I stopped by the Joliet Area Historical Museum. The lobby features suits worn by Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi in Blues Brothers. Kurt staffed the information desk that morning, and before retiring, he had been a sportswriter. When he found out why I was in Joliet, he told me a baseball story.
St. Louis Cardinals great Bob Gibson notched his 3,000-career strikeout in the summer of 1974 against the Cincinnati Reds. Kurt was there. César Gerónimo struck out swinging in the second inning. It was July 17th.
That same day, thousands of miles away in Reno, the last great Cardinals ace before Gibson passed away. Dizzy Dean was dead at the age of 64. After retiring, Dean served as a broadcaster for the St. Louis Browns when they were owned by Bill Jr.
In many ways, the Veeck family’s greatest impact on baseball lay outside the foul lines. For every innovation like adding player names to the back of jerseys, there’s Bill Veeck as the only baseball owner to testify on Curt Flood’s behalf in what led to the creation of free agency. Before leaving the Cubs for Milwaukee, he and team vice-president Harry Grabiner “organized the vendors’ union in Chicago, so that the vendors would be guaranteed a living wage and the clubs would be guaranteed a professional working force.”
He broke the American League color barrier with the signings of Larry Doby and Satchel Paige. He marched in Martin Luther King’s funeral procession. He also came up with the idea for a “Martian Invasion” at Comiskey Park in 1959.
For every goofy in-game bit or promotion that came from the minds of the Veecks, there’s the 1997 signing of Ila Borders. When she joined the Saints’ starting rotation that season, she was the first woman to play organized baseball since Toni Stone pitched for the Negro League’s Indianapolis Clowns (1953) and Kansas City Monarchs (1954).
Earlier this summer, I picked up Veeck as in Wreck, Bill Jr.’s autobiography. I’ve read it on trains, at bars, and even at the ballpark. It is where I found the quote about the Chicago vendors union.
There’s a sentence in the book that has stuck with me:
We have never operated on the theory that a city owes anything to the owner of a baseball franchise, out of civic pride, patriotic fervor or compelling national interest.
At the end of a week of baseball that included White Sox and Brewers home games, that sentiment felt alien. As White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf flirts with moving the team to Nashville if he doesn’t get hundreds of millions in public assistance for a new stadium in the South Loop, his team broke the Major League record for the most losses in one season.
Less than two hours north, the Brewers will receive half a billion dollars in taxpayer funds over the next three decades to repair and upgrade a stadium that opened in 2001.
From the METRA platform in Joliet, I caught one last look at Duly before my train arrived. There was no Slammers game that day but the main entrance was open. Teenagers in cleats and jerseys lugging athletic bags teeming with gear entered the ballpark followed by parents with coolers and younger siblings in tow.
Some sort of little league or summer league tournament was taking place. A few more pitching dreams achieved.
Joseph Ferris was born in Brooklyn and now lives in Hudson, New York. He works in government affairs and still hasn’t caught a foul ball. He regrets not having cashed out his Sammy Sosa Upper Deck rookie cards when he had a chance. While Carly Rae Jepsen may arguably have thrown the worst ceremonial first pitch in baseball history, Ferris believes Emotions is one of the best pop albums of this century.
Mark Mosley is a public school 7th grade math teacher. He draws baseball cards when he is not driving his son to baseball or his daughter to gymnastics. His cards can be seen on Twitter @mosley_mark, on Instagram @idrawbaseballcards, and can be purchased at https://idrawbaseballcards.bigcartel.com/
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