Southwest Michigan Devil Rays

Midwest League (2005-2006)

Background

The Southwest Michigan Devil Rays of 2005-2006 were the last of three relatively short-lived Minor League Baseball teams to make their home at Battle Creek’s C.O. Brown Stadium between 1995 and 2006. The Devil Rays followed on the heels of the Michigan Battle Cats (1995-2002) and the Battle Creek Yankees (2003-2004). Each club was an iteration of the same Class A Midwest League franchise, which cycled through four different ownership groups and four different Major League parent clubs across a dozen seasons.

The Devil Rays formed in late 2004 in what was effectively an exchange of Class A farm clubs between the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Earlier that summer, New York finished its second and final season as parent club of the Battle Creek Yankees. In September, the Yankees announced they would move their Class A operation to Charleston, South Carolina of the South Atlantic League. Tampa Bay, the outgoing Major League parent of the Charleston RiverDogs after eight seasons, then picked up Battle Creek as their replacement Class A affiliate.

Speculation

The franchise’s ownership also changed hands in late 2004, with baseball newcomer Bill Shea and his Fun For Michigan group taking over from Michael Gartner’s Riverside Baseball. Speculation about the team’s future in Battle Creek was immediate … and also nothing new. Gartner had sought a move to Dubuque, the prior year only to watch the citizens of that Iowa city vote down a taxpayer-financed stadium proposal.¹Magner, Howie. “Yanks’ fate decided today”. The Enquirer (Battle Creek, MI). December 16, 2003

In a prescient post, industry blog Ballpark Digest pointed out the obscure Minor League Baseball rule that may have influenced Shea’s seemingly uninspired choice of “Southwest Michigan Devils Rays” as his club’s new name for the 2005 season.

In MiLB, you cannot change team names every two years unless you’re dumping an affiliate and shedding their name. Now, let’s be realistic: there are no devil rays and no group of Tampa Bay fans in Battle Creek — this is not the most marketable of names. But by adopting the D-Rays moniker and then changing affiliates after 2006, Fun Entertainment could legitimately adopt a new team name and make a big splash when a new ballpark opens.

This prediction, posted in February 2005, proved to be spot on. In October 2005, SWM Devil Rays ownership pledged to build a new ballpark along interstate I-94 conditional upon a season ticket drive that would secure 1,800 pledges. The pledge drive stalled out at barely 300 tickets. In January 2006, Bill Shea’s group sold the team to new owners who were at work on a new $34 million ballpark in Midland, Michigan.

The Devil Rays would play a final lame duck season in Battle Creek in 2006 and then become the Midland-based Great Lake Loons in 2007.  Professional baseball has never returned to Battle Creek since the Devil Rays departure in 2006.

On The Field

The Devil Rays made the Midwest League playoffs during their first season in the Tampa Bay system in 2005. After posting a 72-67 record and 3rd place divisional finish, the Rays lost to the South Bend Silver Hawks in a 2-game sweep in the opening round of the playoffs.

In their second and final season in 2006, the Rays finished last in the Midwest League’s East Division with a 62-77 record.

Nine Southwest Michigan Devil Rays eventually made it to the Major Leagues.  The most successful of the group was relief pitcher Wade Davis, who threw a complete game no-hitter (7 innings as the front end of a doubleheader) in the Devil Rays final home game at C.O. Brown Stadium on August 31st, 2006. Weirdly, Davis took a 1-0 loss in the game despite his brilliant performance. Davis went on to become a 3-time Major League All-Star. He won a World Series championship with the Kansas City Royals in 2015, recording the series clinching strikeout in Game 5.

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