By JOHN BOHNENKAMP
I had a college baseball coach tell me that he always recommended to his best players that they play a season in a summer league.
The chance to play, he said, was invaluable, even in leagues where the competition wasn’t so good. More at-bats and more innings makes for a better player.
But there was a bigger reason to play, he told me. It’s a chance to get a simulation of what it will be like if a player becomes a professional.
It’s long bus rides, it’s building a bond in a clubhouse with a team of players you’ve never met before. It’s playing in quirky ballparks, being embraced by a community, learning to manage your time in a schedule that’s all about baseball.
It’s about memories.
I thought about that this year in watching the Burlington Bees in the Prospect League.
The Bees played 57 games this season, each one having its own story. And so many of the games had stories inside the story.
The Bees endured rain, heat, nights in the smoky haze that covered the Midwest. They pulled tarp, their bus broke down somewhere on an Ohio highway during a seven-games-in-six-days-in-four-states odyssey.
What was fascinating was the clubhouse dynamic never changed throughout the season even when the roster did. The common theme of the newcomers was, “There’s a great group of guys here.”
It was something pitching coach Jack Gray predicted at the Bees’ winter banquet in February.
A good chunk of the roster had already been signed, the last couple of months before the season would be about filling the final spots.
Gray, though, said the signed players already had a group text message going. “I don’t know how good we’re going to be, but these guys really like each other,” Gray said.
It showed during the season.
Go back to the loud cheer from the dugout on Connor Laeng’s single in the second inning of the June 25 game against O’Fallon. It was Laeng’s first hit of the season, on his 36th at-bat.
There was the behind-the-scenes recruitment of outfielder Corey Boyette by pitchers Drew Martin and Jake Jakubowski when the Bees had some roster holes because of injuries. Boyette, Martin and Jakubowski were teammates at Heartland Community College, and the two pitchers convinced Boyette to come to Burlington.
All Boyette did was hit .286 and post a .950 OPS.
It was that kind of chemistry that kept the Bees in the playoff chase until the final week, and kept them in most games.
There were plenty of standout performances. Mason Schwalbach hit .335 and had a league-high 21 doubles. Keanu Spenser hit .304 with 14 doubles and 10 home runs. Caleb Wulf hit .367 in 36 games. Kooper Schulte was batting .373 before a broken hand ended his season.
It was a season in which the Bees had their first player in their three seasons in the Prospect League selected in the Major League Baseball draft, when Spencer Nivens, who played with the team last season, was selected by the Kansas City Royals in the fifth round.
Three Bees — Schwalbach (Kansas State), Lincoln Riley (Arkansas) and Coy Sarsfield (Iowa) — will be on the rosters of Power-5 conference teams in the upcoming college baseball season.
The game of the year was the 10-9 win over Alton, when the Bees rallied from an 8-0 deficit to win in 10 innings on July 28.
It was the hottest night of the season — a heat index of 108 degrees at game-time — and in the moments after the win the smothering humidity of the night was mixed with the fog of the comeback, a feeling of that-was-cool-but-what-the-hell-just-happened.
Outside the Bees’ clubhouse, relief pitcher Preston Kaufman was on the phone with his mom, telling her about the game, when a man walked by and said to Kaufman, “Hell of a game.”
Kaufman stopped his conversation, and shook the man’s hand.
“Thanks for coming,” he said.
Kaufman was one of those stories-within-the-story. He had allowed just one run in four innings of relief in the game, keeping the River Dragons in check to help set up the rally.
I interviewed Kaufman when he got off the phone, and when we were done talking I said, “Hell of a game.”
Kaufman just smiled.
“I won’t forget it,” he said. “Ever.”
Photo: Caleb Wulf (middle) is mobbed by teammates after his game-winning hit against Quincy on July 17. (Steve Cirinna/Burlington Bees)
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