Holyoke Millers

Eastern League (1977-1982)

Background

The Holyoke Millers played six summers of minor league baseball in the double-A Eastern League between 1977 and 1982.  The Millers’ name derived from Holyoke’s industrial heritage.  At one time, the small Western Massachusetts city on the banks of the Connecticut River was a center of both textile and paper manufacturing.  A grid of man-made canals powered the city’s booming mills. In the early decades of the 20th century Holyoke was known as “The Paper City”.

The Milwaukee Brewers relocated their Berkshire Brewers farm club fifty miles east to Holyoke in February 1977. By then both the city’s manufacturing base and its population were in steady decline.

“In the 1970’s Holyoke was the fire capital of the world; all kinds of fires, arson, spontaneous combustion,” local historian Craig Della Penna told Commonwealth Magazine (11/3/2011), “Holyoke looked like Dresden in 1945.”

Holyoke itself had virtually no history with minor league baseball.  The last professional club to make a home in the city was the Holyoke Papermakers of the Eastern Association way back in 1913. But for much of the postwar era, local baseball fans could enjoy games in the larger city of Springfield, Massachusetts, just eight miles away.  The Golden Era of minor league ball in the Pioneer Valley came from 1957 to 1965 . The New York/San Francisco Giants of the National League had a terrific farm club in Springfield.  The Springfield Giants won consecutive Eastern League titles from 1959 to 1961 and developed future Major League stars such as Juan Marichal, Frank Linzy, Manny Mota and the Alou Brothers, Felipe and Matty.  But the Giants left Springfield in 1965. The city’s Pynchon Park burned to the ground a year later.

Brewers & Angels Farm Club

From 1977 to 1980, the Millers were the double-A farm club of the Brewers.  The Brewers’ era produced a few feature Major League journeymen such as Frank DiPino, Marshall Edwards and Ed Romero.  The most enduring Major Leaguer to come out of Holyoke was outfielder Kevin Bass, who played the entirety of the 1979 and 1980 seasons with the Millers.  Bass would spend the best seasons of his 14-year Major League career with the Houston Astros and made the National League All-Star team in 1986.  During the Millers’ final season as a Brewers farm club in 1980, Holyoke won the Eastern League crown under manager Lee Sigman.

Prior to the 1981 season, the Brewers pulled out of their affiliation deal with Holyoke and moved their double-A farm club to El Paso of the Texas League.  The California Angels moved in and would stock the Millers with prospects for their final two seasons in Holyoke in 1981 and 1982.

Ownership changed hands several times.  Original Millers owner Lynn “Spike” Herzig, a New Yorker, arrived with the club from Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1977.  Herzig owned the club during its previous incarnations as the Pittsfield Rangers and later the Berkshire Brewers.  A young baseball executive named Tom Kayser owned the team by 1980.   In 1981 Kayser sold the Millers to a group led by Jerome Mileur, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, for a reported $85,000.

During the Angels era, the Millers developed a handful of ballplayers that went on to significant Major League careers. Center fielder Gary Pettis (Millers ’81) won 5 Gold Gloves during an 11-year Major League career. Pitcher Dennis Rasmussen (Millers ’81) won 91 games in the Majors over twelve seasons between 1983 and 1995.

The End

In the early 1980’s, the Millers faced scheduling problems at city-owned Mackenzie Field. The facility was also used for baseball and track by the local public and parochial high schools.

Attendance was soft, as it was across much of the Eastern League in this era, just prior to the minor league boom of the late 1980’s. During the Millers’ final season in the summer of 1982, the club attracted  total attendance of 53,555 fans, well under 1,000 spectators per game. In December 1982 Mileur moved his ballclub to Nashua, New Hampshire’s Holman Stadium.  The ballclub became the Nashua Angels for the 1983 season.

Professional baseball never returned to Holyoke after the Millers left in December 1982.  One big reason was the condition of Mackenzie Field.  The ballpark, built in 1933, still stands today on Beech Street.  A modern day baseball fan driving past would be shocked to learn that Major League teams sent their prospects to play in such a modest, ramshackle facility as recently as the 1980’s.  Eric and Wendy Pastore, curators of the great Digital Ballparks website, have a great modern-day photo gallery of Mackenzie Field here.  Mackenzie has hosted amateur teams in the New England Collegiate Baseball League since 2004.

The Eastern League franchise that once was the Holyoke Millers still exists today. Now known as the Harrisburg Senators, the club has played in that Pennsylvania city since 1987.

Voices

“I very much enjoyed my time in Holyoke. Our biggest income was from beer sales and that helped us break even each summer. I am very proud to have hired Tom [Kayser] as my GM in Pittsfield before we moved to Holyoke. He did an excellent job and his smile and laugh got him several fence signs and scorebook ads.” – Spike Herzig, Owner 1977-1979. (Site Comment 2013)

“The only other good owner [in the Eastern League] was Tom Kayser of the Holyoke Millers, who later worked in the minor league departments of the Pirates and Reds before becoming the Texas League president, a position he has held for several years.”- Lloyd Kern, West Haven Yankees Co-Owner. (2011 FWiL Interview)

“I mean, God bless Tom but … he was a baseball guy and that’s where his focus was. We were making it up as we went. He didn’t vend concessions. One night I said ‘How about I sell beer in the stands tonight and see if it works?’ and he said ‘Go ahead’. That’s where we were at. I was 23 years old. I’d do anything. I had the best time … but in terms of selling tickets, no, I didn’t learn much there. It was just before the day of real aggressive, progressive sales techniques in the minor leagues. They just weren’t around then. And we didn’t do well. At all.” – Jeff Eisenberg, Assistant GM 1980 (2012 FWiL Interview)

“My most vivid memory is the cinder track that ran through the outfield. The ballpark doubled as Holyoke’s high school track stadium.  So this cinder track ran right through the outfield from halfway down the left field line straight across to the right field wall.  It was the weirdest thing.” – Jeff Eisenberg

“My most pleasant memory is sitting with the Mayor after we had signed the agreement to move the team and he said to me, ‘I hate baseball! But if it will bring new money to our city I’ll be your biggest fan.’ And he was. It was his idea to get me to shave my mustache if the team won ten games in a row. You should know that those teams were lucky to win two in a row on a good week but somehow they did and he was there to watch the night they shaved me at home plate.”- Spike Herzig

“That was a great summer. We actually won the Eastern League championship that year. Kevin Bass played for that [1980] Millers team. He was probably the biggest name. Great guy. We had David Green who later played for the St. Louis Cardinals. He was wildly talented but we thought he might have lied about his age. He claimed to be only 19 or something and we didn’t believe it.” – Jeff Eisenberg

In Memoriam

Shortstop Gus Polidor, (Millers ’81-’82) who went on to play parts of seven seasons in the Majors between 1985 and 1993, was murdered during an attempted carjacking in his native Venezuela on April 28th, 1995. He was 33 years old. Chicago Tribune coverage.

Downloads

2012 FWiL interview with 1980 Millers Assistant GM Jeff Eisenberg

Links

Eastern League Media Guides

Eastern League Programs

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