The Mason City Bats was a baseball team in Mason City, Iowa, that played in the Great Central League in 1994. Other teams in the league were from Lafayette, Indiana; Champaign, Illinois; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. They were all independent teams in a league created by Minnesota businessman Dick Jacobson. His idea was to form the league, recruit the players and eventually sell each team to investors in each of the towns. But the league ran into financial problems and folded after one year.
Tom Waelchli, a former pitcher in the Milwaukee Brewers system was the manager of the Bats. General manager was John Skipper, a Mason City, Iowa, journalist.
The Bats won 19 games and lost 26 in their abbreviated season. Home games were played at Roosevelt Field, home of the Mason City Mohawks high school baseball team. Leading hitter was Greg Rudolph, a shortstop from Gadsden, Alabama, who hit 12 home runs in the team's 45 games. A trademark of the Bats is that every time a Bats player hit a home run on the home field, the theme from "Batman" would play on the public address system as the player rounded the bases.
Famous quotes containing the words city and/or bats:
“The city is recruited from the country. In the year 1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town day before yesterday, that is city and court today.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.”
—Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)