Behind The Scenes of South Bend's Offseason, Opening Night

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - Months of planning and countless hours of preparation and labor spiraled forward throughout the offseason and reached an endpoint for the South Bend Cubs on Opening Night.

For an organization that undertook so many major changes in a few short months, there was no offseason. The turf playing surface was ripped out and replaced with a pristine grass lawn. A state-of-the-art performance center, complete with weights and batting cages, cropped up in right field. And, of course, South Bend rebranded to the Cubs in conjunction with its new four-year player development contract with Chicago.

Red, white and blue are splattered around Four Winds Field, which welcomed an Opening Day franchise record 7,086 fans for the April 9 season opener against the Bowling Green Hot Rods.

"I've been doing this 20-plus years now, and it was an offseason like no other," Team President Joe Hart said. "Literally when we started with the [affiliation] announcement on September 18th, it was full speed ahead. We tried to catch up and get as much stuff done ahead of time before the bad winter hit. We were smart about it.

"So when it really came down to the last week, two weeks, we were still scrambling and it was pretty busy. But a lot of it had already been done and in place. And a lot of that credit goes to the staff here that is very proactive."

Fans witnessed a smooth Opening Day. Threatening rain showers held off. Chicago President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein threw out the ceremonial first pitch and buzzed back Clark the Cub with a tailing two-seamer. South Bend's new mascot, Stu, was introduced. Top pitching prospect Jake Stinnett earned the start and threw five innings of one-run ball, leaving with a 1-1 tie that held until the bottom of the ninth inning, when Cael Brockmeyer clobbered a walk-off home run to left field on the first pitch of the frame.

"Sometimes you sit back and try to reflect. And it almost feels like it was a dream because it went so well," Hart said.

What fans didn't witness, though, was the behind-the-scenes work ongoing along W. South Street throughout a brutal winter. Asked how hectic the few weeks leading up to Opening Night were, merchandise manager Brandy Beehler chuckled.

"I'd put that as what it's been like since December 4th with merchandise," Beehler said. "It's been crazy busy, super exciting. Merchandise has just been flying off the shelves are we're trying to keep up."

As of the week before the regular season, Beehler said South Bend's merchandise sales were 850 percent above where they were at the same time in 2014. On a day-to-day basis, Beehler kept pace with online orders and maintained the sales floor in the Cubs Den beyond the left-field wall. Beehler now has a full-time crew to manage the store, a team that was working seven days a week in preparation for the season opener.

The last few batches of logo balls and mini-bats trickled in from overseas just days before the opener.

"With the logo unveiling in December, we weren't really able to start placing orders until then, which actually put us behind about four months," Beehler said.

The new affiliation and rebranding, however, certainly hasn't hurt sales. With both designs and displays, red, white, blue and gray are much easier to work with, Beehler noted. South Bend just shipped merchandise to Sweden, the sixth different country from which it has received orders.

"That's when you know the power of the Cubs brand," Beehler said.

While the merchandise department was working from behind for four months, the rebranding wasn't even the most challenging aspect of the offseason on the operations side.

"The hardest part for us has been the weather," Vice President Nick Brown said. "In Michiana we all know that the weather can be unpredictable and not always accommodating. That's been our biggest hurdle."

Brown said the final six weeks before Opening Day were spent preparing from a facilities standpoint. While Brown admitted the homestretch was a "mad scramble," he said everything fell into place with ballpark cleaning and customer-service training, for example.

In the final days, the South Bend staff broke out the paint brushes and brooms, putting the finishing touches on the stadium.

"It's just the small details that make it a special place to be," Brown said.