The Loons Have Landed

MIDLAND, Mich. - The Great Lakes Loons have landed and so has baseball to the Great Lakes Bay Region.

Loons players, coaches and support staff arrived in town Monday to begin final preparations for the 2014 season, which starts Thursday in Fort Wayne. They got their first impressions of Dow Diamond on Tuesday, including a player workout on a field that was covered with snow not all that long ago.

"This is a phenomenal park," said first-year manager Bill Haselman, who spent 13 seasons in the major leagues as a player. "It's probably the best minor league park that I've seen - it's like a mini version of a big league ballpark. It's special for guys at this level."

Dow Diamond officially opens for baseball business on Tuesday, April 8, with the home opener against Cedar Rapids. Today, players and coaches were given uniforms, had their photos taken - including 'selfies' to be used on Social Media night - and were fed lunch.

In the player's lounge, where lunch was served, a handful of Loons players played 'Fifa Soccer' on the big screen TV. The atmosphere was relaxed and friendly, not surprising since these players had already spent several weeks together at the Los Angeles Dodgers' spring training facility in Arizona.

"It's a good group of guys," Haselman said. "I like who we have and we had a really good spring. There's good chemistry. They get along well."

Haselman said right-handed pitcher Jonathan Martinez will start the season opener in Fort Wayne. He'll be followed in the rotation by Zachary Bird, James Campbell, Luis Chirinos and Greg Harris. Barring rainouts, Harris is in line to be the starter for Opening Day at Dow Diamond.

Haselman wanted to especially work out his pitchers at Dow Diamond because none of them had thrown in a couple of days due to the travel schedule in Midland. With another workout planned for Wednesday afternoon, he'd be able to get them back on schedule.

The weather was certainly a topic of conversation for coaches and players who'd been training in the warm and dry Arizona climate. Moreover, the majority of the roster is made up of players from warm weather locales such as California, Arizona and Mexico.

Catcher Kyle Farmer is from Atlanta, Ga., but said Michigan's cold early spring won't be a problem for him.

"We play games in Georgia in February and March where temperatures are in the 30s and 40s sometimes," he said. "I don't mind this."

Meanwhile, returning first baseman/outfielder Paul Hoenecke, who lives in Wisconsin in the off-season, needed no briefing on recent weather conditions.
"We had some record cold days up where I live," he said. "This is the weather I know."

It was good to see Hoenecke - who missed a significant portion of last season because of a spleen injury - back in uniform. The former University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee star went through a lengthy recovery period before he could resume baseball activities.

"I basically couldn't do anything for three or four months," said Hoenecke. "That was tough. It turned out to be more serious than I ever thought it would be. But I feel great now. I had a good spring (at the Dodgers camp in Arizona).

When Hoenecke and the rest of this year's Loons set foot on Dow Diamond for the first time Tuesday, on a field free of snow, team Director of Grounds and Facilities Nick Wolcott looked on with a feeling of satisfaction and relief. At one point in late February, there was over a foot of snow on Dow Diamond's playing surface and Wolcott and his crew were plowing and blowing snow as if clearing it from a supermarket parking lot.

Surprisingly, however, Wolcott said the field is in better shape this spring than last.

"As much snow as we had, it acted as an insulator, so the frost level never got that deep," he said.

And all of sudden Tuesday - with the 2014 team in town for the first time - it felt like baseball season all over again.