Reborn at 111 Years Old: Wisconsin’s Glorious Neighborhood Park Plays with History

 

Wausau, Wisconsin’s Athletic Park opened just three weeks after Fenway Park. Thanks to an eight-foot-tall, New Deal-era granite wall studded with ruby-red boulders, the stadium still stood proudly in 2012. Inside, however, the nearly 100-year-old ballpark groaned with age. Its old-time charm and broad shoulders couldn’t withstand passing years and changing baseball economics. The grandstand was winter-beaten, with ragged benches for fans. The concession stand was tucked underneath with precious little space to serve as a main concourse. Even the costume of the team’s mascot was a patchwork.

The park had weathered storms before. In 1950, half of its grandstand was destroyed by fire. But the Wausau Timberjacks, a Detroit Tigers minor-league affiliate, played there the next day. All told, four low- level minor league teams under 11 different names were scattered throughout the park’s colorful past. Athletic Park was the longtime home to the Woodchucks, part of the relentless collegiate Northwoods League, which sandwiches 72 regular-season games in 21/₂ months.

Local ownership worked hard, but in 2012 the Woodchucks were up for sale, and Athletic Park seemed to have more quit than quaint remaining. Enter western Wisconsin native Mark Macdonald. Freshly retired at 52, Macdonald had risen to co-owner of Los Angeles- based American Funds after 30 years in finance. Two months after seeing Athletic Park for the first time, Macdonald bought the club in February 2012 for the relatively low price of $750,000. “It was historic. I knew that,” Macdonald said in the Woodchucks’ conference room just beyond center field. “Historic sometimes is code for old and run down and that’s what it was: old and run down.”

Macdonald’s pockets were overflowing, but his motivation meant as much as his money. Preserving Athletic Park’s history means working within the confines of the granite wall. The Woodchucks offices boast an original trowel used to build that granite wall in the 1930s.

Macdonald’s plan to revamp Athletic Park meant creating a new stadium inside an old one. He kept the ballpark’s most notable feature—the wall—and remodeled the interior and an area adjacent to the field. It would take 10 years of construction. “That wall is very important to the people around here,” Macdonald stated. “It’s history. We’ve accentuated the history.”

Two miles away, at the Marathon County Historical Society, archivist Ben Clark unveiled a three-foot wide and eight-inch tall picture from May 13, 1912. The panoramic photo was taken at the first game at what was then dubbed Yawkey Park, named after wealthy businessman and civic leader Cyrus Yawkey. On land deeded to the city by the Wisconsin Valley Electric Company, the Wausau Timberjacks beat the Aurora (Illinois) Blues, 4-0, in the Class C Wisconsin-Illinois League. The result is written on the photo. In left field, a 17-foot-tall bull advertises a tobacco company.

 

 

For its first 20 years, the park also served as a hockey rink in the winter. In the summer, the B.F. Schultz Brass Band led “baseball parades,” Clark said, “and in between innings they would perform to keep fans engaged.”

The ballfield’s westward orientation means the setting sun can be blinding in the batters’ box. Macdonald said, “I’ve had umps say to me, ‘I didn’t see a pitch in the sixth inning. I was guessing back there.’”

Clark said the wall arose from a precursor to the Works Progress Administration. It gave Wausau residents jobs off and on from 1933 to 1936. The project originated in part because the first parks director was a landscape architect, not a program director. “It’s not a coincidence that a granite company was beyond center field,” Clark said. “But, logistically, the wall was not something that could be built overnight.” By the time the wall was completed, fans had grown used to it. No team celebrated its completion, and the new name, Athletic Park, took a couple of years to gain traction.

Over decades, Wausau was home to an insurance giant that advertised heavily on 60 Minutes, but the city never had a four-year college. The Athletic Park grew in civic importance, and the wall gave Wausau a showcase. “It adds a very distinct quality,” Clark said, “to what otherwise would have been a very cookie cutter ballpark.”

Athletic Park’s minor league legacy is spotty. Seven years after his major league playing career ended, former Brooklyn Robins third baseman Wally Gilbert served as player-manager for the Wausau Lumberjacks, batting a team-leading .355 in 1939 and .360 in 1940. In 1956, the Lumberjacks featured Vada Pinson, who tallied 2,757 career hits in the major leagues, and in 1957 five-time All-Star Cookie Rojas.

For the next 18 years, Wausau had no minor league team, but Athletic Park remained busy. It was home to Wisconsin’s high school baseball tournament and the Wausau Barons of the Dairyland League. It also hosted the Wausau Muskies, a semi-pro team in the Central State Professional Football League. A 99-yard touchdown run by Walt Schoonover at Athletic Park in 1949 remains the oldest record still in semi-pro football history.

Wausau’s high school team supporters, the Lumberjack Dugout Club, booked a rising 21-year-old rock musician for a fundraising concert at Athletic Park on July 16, 1958. The act, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, was rained out, so they performed the scheduled second show that evening at an indoor facility. Less than seven months later, touring the Midwest during a brutal winter, Holly died in a plane crash.

Minor league baseball returned in 1975 in the form of the Wausau Mets of the Class A Midwest League. The team featured future big leaguers Ned Yost in 1975 and Mookie Wilson in 1977. The Seattle Mariners began a nine-year affiliation with Wausau in 1981. That next year, the Wausau Timbers featured eight future big leaguers, including Harold Reynolds, Ivan Calderon, Jim Presley, and Darnell Coles. In 1984, Hall of Famer Edgar Martinez spent his first full season of minor league baseball at Athletic Park.

Eventually, larger markets gobbled up Midwest League franchises. The Timbers were bought in 1990. They became the Kane County (Illinois) Cougars, and their crowds grew to over 500,000 fans per season, more than five times what Wausau drew. The Cougars took Athletic Park’s scoreboard with them when they left.

The Woodchucks brought baseball back to Wausau in 1994. Today they draw more than 1,200 per game in the Northwoods League, more than many of their predecessors.

Chicago Cubs’ 2016 World Series MVP, Ben Zobrist, is a Woodchucks alum. So is two-time All-Star pitcher Pat Neshek. And Milwaukee Brewers star Jim Gantner managed the 2007 squad, which included his son. Those who played in Wausau don’t forget Athletic Park. When 11-time Gold Glove winner Omar Vizquel, a Wausau Timber in 1986, was asked what he remembered about the stadium, he didn’t hesitate. “360 [feet] to center field,” Vizquel said. “I was a power hitter in that park.”

 

 

Due to renovations, the left field corner is only 304 feet away from home plate. To reduce the effects of the glaring sun, Macdonald and his architects reduced rows and angled seats along the first base line, dropping capacity to about 3,400. Most of it is covered behind home plate, or along the third base line and right field.

This season, Macdonald has a spiffy new video board in right field and new clubhouses planned. “It was very cramped. In order to create space, we had to go up and toward the field to have enough space to make it big enough for remodeling,” he said. “We took the grandstand off the granite wall. The grandstand now extends back over the wall, which gives opportunities for backlighting. It shows off the wall.” Location in a residential neighborhood provides both charm and harm from Athletic Park. Houses, some as close as 100 feet from home plate, have been pelted with foul balls for more than a century, and the closest parking spaces require faith that your car will escape a foul-ball dent.

Ann Chilles has lived across the street from Athletic Park for 40-plus years. “We have house windows broken and garage windows broken,” Chilles said. “And you’ve got to watch out when walking out your door or backing out your car.” That said, Chilles is a Woodchucks fan and loves the park’s renovations.

Macdonald worked with Wausau officials to create a playground outside the field along the first-base line. It required buying and demolishing two houses that had fallen into disrepair. It’s now part of a concrete playground that the Woodchucks use four hours before game time, and the city operates at all other times.

The renovations cost Macdonald and a foundation that he operates about $10 million, more than he ever realized he would spend. “I’ve made a lot of investments in my life,” Macdonald said. “This will not be the best one by far for [financial] gains.”

Tom Magnuson grew up in the neighborhood and managed an American Legion team there for more than 40 years. He recalled how the park’s sole caretaker let him and his childhood friends play on the field. He also remembered teams that paid a dime for returned foul balls. Cracked bats were given to kids, Magnuson said, and they pounded nails into the bats to reuse them. “I’m glad the granite wall remains,” Magnuson said. “It kindles in my mind the ballpark of my youth. It was a high point of our ‘Wonder Years.’”

At 64, lean and sandy-haired, Macdonald remains committed to Athletic Park, regularly putting in 14-hour work days. He anticipates installing artificial turf on the infield to help Wausau join a new summer women’s collegiate softball league in 2024. A southern Oregon resident with a wife and four adult children, he spends early May through August each year in Wausau.

Before buying the Woodchucks, Macdonald had gone to Chattanooga, where the Los Angeles Dodgers’ double-A team was for sale at $12 million. That team, he said, was losing $500,000 per year. He passed on it. A west coast broker knew Macdonald’s Wisconsin roots and sent him to Wausau. It was a perfect match.

Other teams contact him frequently about purchasing another baseball club. He politely declines. Athletic Park and the Woodchucks have become his passion. “When I bought the team, I didn’t realize the emotional investment I would be making. I’m the guardian and caretaker of a huge community asset.” He paused. “I’m proud of that.” 

TOM ALESIA spent his youth at pre-lights Wrigley Field. A longtime entertainment and features newspaper writer/editor, he is author of obscure HOFer Dave Bancroft’s popular 2022 biography Beauty at Short. He won the National Music Journalism Award and wrote the acclaimed book Then Garth Became Elvis in 2021. Find his work at TomWriteTurns.com. A 35-time marathon finisher and a cancer survivor since 1998, he lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife, Susan. They have a son, Mark.

 

Sources

“History,” Wausau Woodchucks, https://northwoodsleague.com/wausau-woodchucks/history-2. Accessed June 12, 2023.

Mark Macdonald, in-person interview, January 27, 2023.

Ben Clark, in-person interview, January 27, 2023.

Glen Moberg, “Historic Wausau Ballpark To Be Renovated,” Wisconsin Public Radio, April 16, 2013, https://www.wpr.org/historic-wausau-ballpark-be-renovated. Accessed June 12, 2023.

Tom Magnuson, online interview, February 6, 2023.