April 28, 1986: At Triple-A exhibition, Indians’ win is the Maine event

On April 28, 1986, the Biddeford (Maine) Journal-Tribune declared that that night’s scheduled exhibition between the Cleveland Indians and their Triple-A farm team, the Maine Guides, would be “the first time ever that a major league team has played in the state.”1

It wasn’t, but the sportswriter might be excused for not knowing that. America’s most northeastern state hadn’t hosted an American or National League team for an in-season exhibition since September 24, 1942, when the Boston Red Sox visited Portland to play a team of locals called the Maine All-Stars.2 For perspective, the Pine Tree State went through 13 governors in the 43 years and seven months between Ted Williams’s arrival in Portland and Julio Franco’s arrival in the Guides’ home of Old Orchard Beach, a resort town about 20 miles south of Portland, Maine’s most populous city.3

The Indians drew just 2,544 fans, as compared to the 5,000 who turned out for the Red Sox in 1942, and fog forced the teams to shorten the game. But fans, players, and team officials all said they enjoyed the game, which ended in a 5-3 win for the parent club.

April 28 was too early in the 1986 season to know where either team was headed. Manager Jim Napier’s Maine team was tied for third in the eight-team International League with a 7-6 record, 3½ games behind the Atlanta Braves’ farm team in Richmond.4 From that promising start, the Guides toppled all the way to last place at season’s end, their 58-82 record placing them 22 games behind Richmond.

Pat Corrales’s Indians entered the day in a three-way tie for second in the American League East. Their 9-8 record placed them 2½ games behind the division-leading New York Yankees.5 They’d won their previous two games, starting what became a 10-game winning streak. Unlike the Guides, the Indians were headed for success—by their modest standards, anyway. Coming off a 60-102 disaster in 1985, Corrales’s team went 84-78 with one tie. It was their first winning record over a full 162-game season since 1979,6 and the first time they’d closed a season as many as six games over .500 since 1968.

April 28 was a big day for exhibition games throughout the majors. In other action, the Baltimore Orioles played their IL affiliate, the Rochester Red Wings, in Rochester, New York; the Kansas City Royals squared off against their Triple-A affiliate in Omaha, Nebraska; and the Texas Rangers played their Triple-A farm team in Oklahoma City. The Montreal Expos and Toronto Blue Jays met in their annual all-Canadian exhibition, the Pearson Cup. And the Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers played an AL-vs.-NL exhibition in Detroit in a benefit for amateur baseball programs.7

Big-league managers sometimes used exhibition games as a chance to test players who were coming back from injury. News stories reported that Corrales planned to start pitcher Tom Waddell, who was rehabbing from elbow surgery the previous fall. Waddell, assigned to Triple A, had made one successful start for the Guides. In a subsequent throwing session, however, his elbow pain flared up again, and he was scratched from the exhibition.8

It was also common for big-league teams to pad their rosters on exhibition day by informally “calling up” a few extra players from lower levels of the minors.9 Corrales gave the start to one of these one-day reinforcements. Bob Link, a 23-year-old righty, had been a 27th-round draft pick of the Indians in the June 1985 draft out of Saint Leo University in Florida. After working in short-season A and Class A in 1985, he spent 1986 with the Indians’ Waterbury (Connecticut) farm team in the Double-A Eastern League. In regular-season action, Link went 6-1 in 40 games, including six starts.10

Maine’s Napier started 22-year-old righty José Román, who had struggled in cups of coffee with the Indians in each of the two prior seasons, posting a combined 0-6 record in eight games. With the Guides in 1986, Román went 4-5 with a 4.23 ERA in 16 games, all starts. He also made his final six major-league appearances, collecting his only big-league win against two more losses. Román had been pitching well for Maine entering the exhibition, posting an 0.69 ERA in his first 13 innings.11

The Indians jumped ahead 2-0 off Román in the first. Second baseman Dan Rohn, a former Guide, drew a walk and shortstop Franco singled. Left fielder Mel Hall tagged a ball to center field, beyond the reach of Maine’s Dave Gallagher, for a triple that scored both runs.12 Rohn also contributed defensively in the bottom half, making a running catch of a pop by Maine second baseman Junior Noboa.13 Román was pulled after the first inning to make way for a succession of four relievers—Keith Creel, Tom Rowe, Curt Wardle, and Frank Wills.

The Guides pushed back in the second inning, claiming a lead against their big-league brethren. First baseman Jim Wilson led off with a walk. Designated hitter Jim Weaver doubled Wilson to third, and center fielder Randy Washington singled in both runners to tie the game. A few batters later, a sacrifice by shortstop Fran Mullins scored Washington to put Maine ahead, 3-2. Link was otherwise effective in a three-inning stint, yielding only one additional hit and no further walks or runs.14 Three relievers divided pitching duties for the Indians the rest of the way—big leaguers Jamie Easterly and Don Schulze and another minor-league fill-in from Waterbury, Steve Whitmyer.15

The Indians reclaimed the lead in the fifth inning with four singles and three runs off 28-year-old righty Rowe. A journeyman who put in 11 minor-league seasons, Rowe had been a member of the 1981 Rochester Red Wings team that played a record 33-inning game against the Pawtucket Red Sox, though he didn’t pitch in that legendary game.16 Rohn, Hall, and third baseman Eddie Williams17 drove in the runs as Cleveland took a 5-3 lead.18

In addition to Link and Whitmyer, Cleveland’s third informal “call-up” player from Waterbury deserves mention. Replacing Franco at shortstop was 20-year-old Jay Bell, whom the Indians had acquired in August 1985 as part of a trade that sent future Hall of Famer Bert Blyleven to the Minnesota Twins.19 Bell, Minnesota’s first-round pick in the June 1984 amateur draft, spent most of 1986 at Double A but broke into the majors with Cleveland late that season. He went on to an 18-season career that included two All-Star Games, a World Series title with the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks, a Gold Glove, and a Silver Slugger Award.20

In later innings, the teams turned in individual highlights—like Wills striking out the side for Maine in the eighth—while racing to beat an encroaching fog, a periodic problem at a ballpark built about a mile from the Atlantic Ocean. The fog forced a five-minute halt to the action in the seventh inning as Corrales briefly pulled his team off the field. During the break, Hall pantomimed losing a fly ball in the fog and being hit on the head.21

In the top of the ninth, with the Indians batting, the fog returned so thickly that the game had to be called. A sixth run scored by Cleveland in the top of the ninth was stricken from the record, and the game was summarized the next day as a 5-3 Indians win.22

Easterly, who allowed two hits in a shutout inning, got the win.23 Rowe took the loss.24 Maine fans got to see Cleveland’s starters for at least part of the game, also including Brett Butler, Joe Carter, and Brook Jacoby.25

Indians officials thanked the Guides for their hospitality, which included a luncheon of lobsters and steamed clams before the game.26 Despite the fog and the relatively small turnout, Guides founder and owner Jordan Kobritz took a positive view. He said that fans who attended “got their money’s worth,” while the Guides were able to host an event on what otherwise would have been an off-night.27

Unfortunately, 1986 was a trying season for the Guides. Attendance sagged to 105,000, compared with 183,000 two seasons earlier.28 By the end of the season, the team’s ownership was tied up in a legal dispute.29 The Guides changed their affiliation for 1987, becoming a Philadelphia Phillies farm team.

After a final season in Maine in 1988, the team moved to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. As of fall 2022, Maine has not had Triple-A baseball since. The state also had not hosted a major-league team for an in-season exhibition since the Indians’ visit in 1986, and the odds of it happening again seemed slim.30

As for the Indians, their resurgence in 1986 led Sports Illustrated to put Cleveland’s Carter and Cory Snyder on the cover of the magazine’s 1987 baseball preview issue, under the headline “Indian Uprising.”31 A subhead declared, “Believe It! Cleveland Is the Best Team in the American League.” But the team crashed back to earth with a 61-101 record, costing Corrales his job in mid-July. Cleveland fans had to wait until 1995 for the team’s next postseason appearance.

Author’s note and acknowledgments

The author thanks Vince Guerrieri for research assistance. This story was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for general player, team and season data. The author also used his SABR Biography Project article on The Ballpark, written in 2021, for general history on the Maine Guides and their ballpark.

Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet provides box scores of exhibition games, but the April 29, 1986, edition of the Biddeford (Maine) Journal-Tribune published a box score.

Notes

1 Nancy S. DeFrancesco, “Improving Relations,” Biddeford (Maine) Journal-Tribune, April 28, 1986: 13.

2 Based on a list of in-season exhibition games between 1921 and 2012, compiled by Walter LeConte and other researchers and posted in the Features area of retrosheet.org. Accessed September 26, 2022. Information on the Red Sox game, won by Boston 11-4, from Bud Cornish, “Boston Red Sox Hit Four Homers in Swamping Locals by 11-4 Count,” Portland (Maine) Press Herald, September 25, 1942: 22.

3 Burton Cross, who served two separate stints as governor during the period between exhibition games, is counted twice. The others were Sumner Sewall, Horace Hildreth, Frederick Payne, Nathaniel Haskell, Edmund Muskie, Robert Haskell, Clinton Clauson, John Reed, Kenneth Curtis, James Longley, and Joseph Brennan. The state had four governors in 1959.

4 International League standings as printed in the Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle, April 28, 1986: 2D.

5 The other teams tied with Cleveland were the Detroit Tigers and the eventual American League champion Boston Red Sox.

6 Cleveland, then managed by Dave Garcia, also posted a combined 52-51 record in the strike-disrupted season of 1981. The Indians were two games above .500 in the first half of the season and one game beneath .500 in the second half.

7 Information on the day’s exhibitions from LeConte’s list of in-season exhibitions, cited above. Information on Detroit-Cincinnati game from Joe LaPointe, “LaPoint Solid in Exhibition,” Detroit Free Press, April 29, 1986: 1D. Three regular-season major-league games also were played on April 28.

8 Jim Ingraham, “Waddell Hurting,” Mansfield (Ohio) News-Journal, April 29, 1986: 1B; Sheldon Ocker, “Waddell’s Arm Ready for Cleveland—Clinic,” Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, April 29, 1986: B1. Waddell appeared in only three games in 1986, all for the Maine Guides. He returned to the majors for six games in 1987 but pitched poorly and spent the remainder of his career in the minors.

9 For instance, in June 1961, the Indians “called up” 18-year-old rookie Tommy John from Dubuque of the Class D Midwest League to join their pitching staff for an exhibition against the International League All-Stars. John surrendered two runs in three innings of relief and took the loss. He did not make his major-league debut in a regular-season game until September 1963.

10 Link pitched six seasons in the minors but never reached the majors, peaking at the Triple-A level in 1989 and 1990. He led Eastern League pitchers with 56 appearances in 1987. News coverage of the exhibition made much of Link’s claim to be able to hold eight baseballs in one hand.

11 Ocker, “Waddell’s Arm Ready for Cleveland—Clinic.”

12 The box score that ran in the Biddeford Journal-Tribune does not credit Franco with a run scored, an apparent discrepancy. The box score credits only four runs scored for the Indians, so one is missing.

13 Nancy S. DeFrancesco, “Indians Put On a Show at Beach,” Biddeford Journal-Tribune, April 29, 1986: 13.

14 DeFrancesco, “Indians Put On a Show at Beach.” This article, the most complete play-by-play summary of the game, does not specify what the batters between Washington and Mullins did to advance Washington into position to score on Mullins’s sacrifice.

15 Whitmyer, a former University of Notre Dame athlete, was in his fourth and final professional season. He topped out with 12 games at Double-A Waterbury in 1986. The box score printed in the Biddeford Journal-Tribune credits Whitmyer with the only two strikeouts by an Indians pitcher in the game.

16 As a fresh arm, Rowe was called on to start the regularly scheduled Pawtucket-Rochester game of April 19, 1981, which began only about 10 hours after the previous night’s game was suspended at 4 A.M.

17 Williams had been a Rule 5 pick by the Indians from the Cincinnati Reds in December 1985. He began the 1986 season on the Indians’ major-league roster, but appeared in only five games before the Indians demoted him to Double-A Waterbury at the end of June. Cincinnati had the right to buy Williams back if the Indians sent him to the minors. The Reds waived their buyback option, instead accepting minor-league outfielder George Hinshaw from Cleveland. Jim Ingraham, “Recall of Tabler Gives Tribe Depth,” Mansfield News-Journal, June 30, 1986: 3B.

18 DeFrancesco, “Indians Put On a Show at Beach”; box score printed in the Biddeford Journal-Tribune.

19 The full breakdown of the trade: Minnesota received Blyleven; Cleveland received Bell, Curt Wardle, Jim Weaver, and a player to be named later who turned out to be Rich Yett. Bell hit a home run in his first major-league at-bat in September 1986. The pitcher? Bert Blyleven.

20 Ocker, “Waddell’s Arm Ready for Cleveland—Clinic,” mentions Link, Whitmyer, and Bell as the Indians’ three one-day reinforcements from Waterbury.

21 Ocker, “Waddell’s Arm Ready for Cleveland—Clinic”; Paul Hoynes, “Indians Fight Fog to Please Maine Fans,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 30, 1986: 103.

22 DeFrancesco, “Indians Put On a Show at Beach.” LeConte’s list of in-season exhibitions, cited above, lists the game as a 6-3 Indians win.

23 In 13 appearances with Cleveland in 1986, his only game action of the season, Easterly went 0-2. So the exhibition represented his only win of 1986, even if it didn’t count in formal records. Easterly went 1-1 with Cleveland in 1987, the final year of his career.

24 Game summaries by Paul Hoynes in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Sheldon Ocker in the Akron Beacon Journal reported that Maine pitchers combined for 16 strikeouts. The box score printed in the Biddeford Journal-Tribune lists only 11—two by Román and three apiece by Creel, Wardle, and Wills.

25 Cleveland reportedly brought its entire roster to Maine except for pitcher Ken Schrom, who was scheduled to start the next day against Minnesota. Ingraham, “Waddell Hurting.”

26 Cleveland pitcher Neal Heaton, who didn’t appear in the exhibition, polished off five lobsters and a plate of steamed clams at the luncheon. Ocker, “Waddell’s Arm Ready for Cleveland—Clinic” and others.

27 DeFrancesco, “Indians Put On a Show at Beach.”

28 1984 attendance figure from “The Maine Guides: A Success Story,” Bangor Daily News/SportsMonth (special section), September 26, 1984: 20. 1986 attendance from Mike Recht (Associated Press), “Northern NE Minor League Teams Battling Against Odds,” Bangor Daily News, May 16-17, 1987: 22.

29 John Gold, “Kobritz Shrugs Off Settlement,” Biddeford Journal Tribune, October 29, 1986: 1; Associated Press, “Guides to Stay in Maine,” Kennebec Journal (Augusta, Maine), December 19, 1987: 8; and others.

30 The idea of Maine hosting another big-league exhibition seemed unlikely for two reasons. First, in-season exhibitions between major-league teams and their minor-league affiliates disappeared around the start of the twenty-first century, a victim of fewer open dates on big-league schedules and increased concern about injury on the parts of both players and teams. The most recent such game on LeConte’s list, cited above, took place in 2002. Also, major-league teams most often played exhibitions against their Triple-A affiliates—and Maine lost Triple-A baseball after the 1988 season. (As of 2022, Portland hosted a Double-A team.)

31 The issue’s publishing date was April 6, 1987.