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:
“I dont think there is anything on earth more wonderful than those wistful incomplete friendships one makes now and then in an hour’s talk. You never see the people again, but the lingering sense of their presence in the world is like the glow of an unseen city at night—makes you feel the teemingness of it all.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall....”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)