#008 John Husman - Toledo Mud Hens

Toledo Mud Hens Historian John Husman shares his passion for baseball, history of the team, and impact on the team has had on the Glass City throughout the years. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Thank you for joining Holy Toledo Sports Edition. Another great guest today, John Hustman, a resident historian for Toledo Professional Baseball, and the Toledo Mudheads is here to share his deep knowledge and insights about a game that he loves. Well, John, it's great to be here with you and thank you for carving some time out to sit down and share some of your deep knowledge and insights and perspectives about all things Toledo Professional Baseball and the Mudheads. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

It's a pleasure to be here. I'm happy to talk about baseball.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

John, your uh life and career path is fascinating. You were uh the human resources manager uh at the Tule of Blade for a long time. I was. For 30 years, you were the eighth volunteer on the Slovania Civil Service Commission. Um you obviously are a historian for Toledo Professional Baseball and the Mud Hens. You're an accomplished author, three books, over 200 articles. You've been a guest on at least two PBS uh documentaries, you're a researcher, archivist, a storyteller, and let's throw family man in there. So all those roles, John, what's what's the common thread?

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Well, that's hard to say. I think uh I think it's commitment, and you have to have to learn that somehow. I grew up in a uh working class neighborhood that uh uh every house had a man in it, all my friends had a dad, and we didn't get uh formal lessons on how to plan our futures or move ahead, but we saw people work, and I think that was just what we thought was the way of life, and we needed to do that, and anyway, that and I've I've had a lot of interest, uh and I don't mind working to pursue those, and I've got a lot of curiosity, and I'd like to find out why, uh which would love me into research, uh, especially in baseball.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Yeah, your curio curiosity is very evident. When did that love of baseball? When did that start for you?

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Uh really, yeah. I come from a baseball family. Uh my dad was a minor league player, a short-term minor league player. Uh I had a grandfather, my dad's dad, who loved baseball. And I spent a couple of summers with him when I was very young. Uh, he lived about three blocks from Swainfield, and we walked a countless ball game together. He taught me how to watch the game that appreciated. People talk about their first game and who played and who pitched. I have no idea. I mean, they just all ran together. I saw countless games. I also had a great-grandfather on my mother's side, who was a National League pitcher for seven years of some note, pitched the first perfect game in Major League Baseball. Uh so that that's kind of in my genes, too. That what really set me off on looking at baseball history was the centennial anniversary of that first perfect game that my great-grandfather Lee Richman pitched, which would have been in uh the June of 1980. That was family lore. Lee Richmond pitched a perfect game, that's all you heard from the whole family. Uh and I just wanted to check that out. Um in fact, he did. And uh uh I got into baseball research then and I found out that he did, in fact, this is a first perfect game. Uh, grandmother never told me that he also gave up the first Grand Slam and some other things. But uh that led me to the Society for American Baseball Research, so that initial research. I've been a member of that organization ever since, been a contributing writer there. So it was in my in my genes, I think. Did you play baseball? I played some. I played some in high school. Uh and what high school did you go to? I went to Woodward High School. Okay. Turned out a lot of good baseball players. I was not one of those. I was never I never excelled as a player, but I played one form of the game or another for about 50 years. I played Sonos Ball and I played vintage baseball, the throwback game by uh 1860 year olds for about 15 years. So I've been involved as a player for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Wow. What positions did you play?

SPEAKER_01 5:02

I uh I played some midfield in high school. Later in high school, I learned catching and wish I'd have found it earlier. Uh the old man softball or the vintage game, I was a pitcher.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Got it. Okay. See if this statement resonates with you, John. It seems like baseball stories are more enduring than anecdotes from other sports. Does that ring true to you?

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Well, I I think it is. Uh uh people today know, have an idea at least who Babe Ruth was. Uh, you can't name a professional football player from his era. There weren't many except for Jim Thorpe. Uh baseball has a much longer history. Right. Um 100 years ago, baseball was the game. Uh there were a couple of other sports. Uh the common tie they have was betting, I think. The horse racing and boxing and baseball. Baseball was far the biggest. Uh, so they have the biggest base coming forward was fandom, I think. So the stories were great and they have endured.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Right. So, John, you're an uh an expert historian in uh all things Toledo professional baseball. Obviously, the Mudhens is a huge part of that. So, can you walk us through or highlight some of the um milestones and maybe some of the iconic figures that are associated with the Mud Hens history?

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Well, uh Toledo baseball history goes back further even than the Mud Hens name. Baseball at Toledo was first played in 1883. Uh the had a pretty tough time during the uh uh 19th century. Uh it was a tough financial proposition. Owners and parks came and went. Teams didn't last long. We actually had two Major League teams uh in the uh in the 19th century, uh one of which uh featured one of our most famous players, Moses Fleetwood Walker, who was the first uh black man to play Major League Baseball. Uh most people, if you would ask them today, would say that's Jackie Robinson, even in Toledo, where we have the word out a bit. Uh most people don't realize the second one was not Jackie Robinson, it was Moses Leewood's brother Waldy, who played a few games for Toledo also. But uh 19th century was pretty tough for baseball here as a as a lasting proposition. In 1896, Charlie Strobel came to Toledo. Uh and he brought a ball team with him from the West Coast. He was resolution from Sandusky, but he was into baseball. He bought the franchise, uh, and he really legitimized baseball as a business in Toledo. He had the franchise for eight years. He built uh our first permanent ballpark in downtown Toledo. I got Toledo and the American Association the top uh minor league at the time, and Toledo had a team in that for nearly 50 years. So his uh his presence uh had a lot to do with really setting baseball on the right track. Uh there have been other people, non-players, uh that have really contributed to the game uh making it happen here. Noah Swain was one who had a hand in starting the first team, was a board member for countless teams, all those, virtually all those, the 19th century wrote of the 1920s, uh a supporter and promoter of baseball. Uh and the namesake for our Myanmar Park, Swain Fields, which was in the been near West Leo for many years. Uh but uh those two men really got it on the right track. Uh later we had more financial difficulty with some out-of-town ownership, especially. Uh, the depression came. We very nearly lost a team. But a local car dealer with the name Waldo Shanks, bought the club and financed it for six or eight years, did that on his own. He saved baseball per Toledo. And that was what, in the 40s? That was in the 40s. Yeah. Uh well, yes. Uh uh the late 30s of the 40s. Uh he sold out to uh the St. Louis Browns, sold the franchise to them, and the Tigers followed. We had some a couple of Rocky years, and uh we got an independent owner. We were on baseball again, and we got a team called the Toledo Socks for a few years. Another out-of-town operation. Uh, 1965. Uh what a lot of people refer to as modern baseball in Soledo or the current era. Uh, we got a team back, not in Toledo, but in Northwest Ohio in Long Eve, but they were still at Soledo Mudhounds. Uh, Ned Skelton led that effort and uh has been under local management ever since. And we've had two general managers that have really, really pushed the organization out front of the community and had Gene Cook and presently Joe Naport. So non-baseball people, but executive types, have really had kind of done the heavy lifting of bringing baseball tool and keeping it going.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

And obviously, the uh the Ned Skeldon Stadium, named after Ned Skeldon, um, compare and contrast a little bit, the experience of watching a game at Ned Skeldon, and then obviously a milestone was the opening of fifth, third field in 2002 here.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

Well, Ned Skeldon was originally a racetrack and adapted to baseball. Uh, it was a horrible facility for the players. Uh they had no facilities in the dugout, uh, had no access to them other than walking under the grandstand. So they they had no privacy at all. Uh coming and going, they were always available to the fans.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Some interesting fan interactions.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Well, it was, and it happened, and for the most part, it was a pretty good thing, but it was players needed a little time to go to the bathroom by their own, you know. Right. But they didn't get that. Uh, and uh the the uh concessions were sparse, it was a pretty lean operation. Watching the game, however, it was uh you're very close to the action at uh at Skelet Stadium and had a very intimate relationship with the game. You could almost hear those guys talk. And uh Fisther Field, uh the other hand, is the final ballpark as there is in terms of facilities for the fans, their amenities, and for the players as well. Uh and since the Major League Tape or minor league baseball, uh standards have been raised for all minor league parks. Uh Cleva had to do very few of those, but they had to do some. So that's really top of the line uh what we have in Fitzhurst Field now.

unknown 12:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Uh right over here we have uh bobblehead of Corporal Klinger. So uh what impact did uh the show MASH hit series from the I don't know, early 70s into the early like 10 years? What impact did that show and uh Corporal Klinger character have on the Mutthead's organization?

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Well, you should ask that uh question of Craig Katz, our marketing manager. Uh Gene Cook was really responsible for that shortly after he became general manager. He reached out to Jamie Farr and formed a relationship with him. And as you know, uh Farr made that, was able to make that part of a number of those mass shows. Consequently, the Muttheads would know it all over the world. Yeah, many countries. Uh so the name got out there, and a big part of the minor league or the sales from our store, the swatch shop, are on the internet. Another part of that, I think, is our Mudhead's name is Pikotic. There was uh there are many names in that that kind of uh what's the word, playful or current currently names like that, that the Mudheads were among the first to to do that.

unknown 13:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

If you uh um if you think about stories, uh maybe an untold story or lesser-known stories about the mud hen, what what would what think what type of story would that be?

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Well, the one I think of is uh is about a player uh from Toledo to play for the Mud Hens on a couple of occasion occasions again in the end of his career. Uh actually he won the franchise for eight years. He did everything there is to do with baseball in Toledo. He's the only Toledo in the Baseball Hall of Fame. His name's Roger Bresna, and he's virtually unknown. Uh most people don't know who he is, and even if they know his name, he doesn't realize uh the impact that he had on not only on Toledo baseball, but on Major League Baseball.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

And you wrote a book on him. That was one of your books.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

I did, yes. Hesley did.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

What about his life? His baseball life, I think that's part of the title, right? Uh what about his life um impacted you as a historian to go, wow, he's worthy. Because there's a lot of interesting players and coaches.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Well, he's he's worthy of being recognized simply because he's the best ball player that the city ever produced, and arguably the best athlete. He was at the top of his sport for years and made a great impact on it. Uh and he did virtually everything there is in a game at minor league and major league levels, except be an umpire. He was a player and a manager, and when he did it, it was a time when you were a player manager at the same time. Uh he made a lot of money. He made a couple of fortunes, and lost a couple right here in Toledo. So he did all there was to do, and it became a baseball, and he lived his whole life. And he lived his whole life in Toledo. He never lost Toledo. Always at home here.

unknown 16:00

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Uh John, recently you were on a panel um highlighting the Negro leagues. And um what impact did Negro player, the Negro leagues, have on the city of Toledo, baseball, and the bigger question of society in general?

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Well, a huge impact on on baseball in general across the country. Uh Toledo was never really able to support a team of its own. It just didn't have the people here to do it. Uh I I will say that Toledo was home uh from the early 1920s into the 1950s for countless exhibition games, championship Negro League games, and exhibition games. Uh many, many of them. They came here, and people went to those games. Uh they were well supported. We had one team, the the uh 1939 Cleveland Crossberts, that uh played a whole season here, but they too did not play many home games. They played most of theirs on the road. We had two other teams. We had a team in 1923, in 1945, that didn't make it the whole season. But uh Eagle League Baseball was big in Toledo, but not with our own team. But it was huge across the Trump studies.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Uh John, you also were, I believe, the founder, you meant to vintage baseball. You were the founder of the Great Black Swamp Frogs Ball Club, baseball club?

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Baseball club.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Baseball was two words. Baseball of two words. Correct. And it was based in Sylvania. Can you talk about what was the catalyst for that? How did it evolve and where is it at now?

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Well, that's a that's a that's a story in itself. Uh in 1991, the uh Ohio Historical Society, now the uh History Connection, uh another village team, and they were trying to promote the game uh played by 1860 rules. And they were at an event in Toledo and they wanted to do a game here. They contacted the Ohio Baseball Hall of Fame, which was at the Riskella Stadium, it was, and I was associated with them, and they wanted to know if we could find a game. So that kind of fell to me to look around. And I had a group that I belonged to that played volleyball. It was a co-ed group. We played regularly. So we got a few of those guys and a couple more, and we played a game in 1991 against the Ohio Village Muffins. And they brought us uniforms, brought all the gear, Ebb the umpire, gave us a little primer on the rules, and we played that first game. By golly, we liked it. So the next year we uh went down to Columbus and played them again uh with a different group of people, and we decided right after that that uh had a meeting in my backyard. We decided we were gonna form a team and do this. And we did. And uh I was with the team for about 15 years, and during that time uh the sport grew tremendously. Uh there were probably there were two cents, there were two centers of Fenny's baseball in the country. One was Cuambus, Ohio, and the other one was on Long Island, and there were probably not more than a dozen teams in the country when we started. Um so we jumped into that. Uh supported the the Muffids, and they supported us. We got other teams in Ohio. Four or five years into that, uh the Frogs uh and myself were instrumental in starting the Vintage Baseball Association, uh which I was the first president. Uh that is national in scope and has over 200 teams now. There are teams all over the country. So it's really taken off. Uh people love to watch it. Uh I had a dream uh combining the research of the group like the Society for American Baseball Research that I mentioned earlier, with a presentation that uh a live presentation of that research a vintage team can do. We've never uh really melded those two organizations, but they are friends and it had a great effect on increasing the accuracy at which the vintage teams now portray how the game was actually played. And the game, the rules are different. The rules are different. Fundamentally, the game's the same. If you're gonna come across a vintage game, you know what it is. But there are differences in rules. Uh the club, the clubs we emulated were gentlemen's social clubs. And they just have baseball teams for exercise and and just a sport to play the gentleman with among other clubs. Uh so they uh they played gentlemanly, they were kind to one another. They didn't uh cuss and chew and that sort of thing, to a great extent anyway. Right. We can't read about it in the newspapers. Uh, but they played to win, that's why they kept scored. Uh no gloves. Uh the initial was a ball caught caught on a first bound was an out. Uh balls and strikes were not called. Uh the pitchers' function was to really put the ball in play. There was a defensive game. But it was they were 90 foot bases, nine in the game. Uh fundamentally, The same. The way the Frogs played it was I mentioned we formed that initial team from a volleyball group we had that was Goed. And we were there with our group is rather unique and it was a family of that for us. Families were involved, kids were involved, kids and ladies dressed in period attire. As was the custom of those early clubs, we had a meal uh after the afternoon match. So we did it as as well as we could from what we know. And as I said, as time has progressed, we've learned more and more about how the game was actually right.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Let's go from vintage baseball to modern day baseball. What's your impression of modern day baseball?

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Well, I love watching it. It's a great game between the lines, and I'm disappointed sometimes in the business of the game.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Yeah. When you're at a game, whether it be here at 5th theater field or anywhere else, what do you pay attention to? What are you watching?

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Well, uh if I had to, I gu I guess I like to watch some things that maybe other people don't. You know, the the game now is being steered towards the home run and the big inning and that kind of thing. I like to watch the pitcher. Uh I like to watch pitcher-catcher interaction. I take great joy in watching a great relay thrill. Uh good, good. There's some things about the business of the game I don't like. But when you're looking at it between the lines, there's very little I don't like. There's some things, the rule of changes have been introduced that initially I was weary of and didn't like. Uh like the the piss clock and uh had the ABS system calling balls and strikes. I didn't like that when I first heard about it. But after seeing it, we've seen it here for several years, where I like it. Uh, it works. The fans like it, they love the challenge system. Uh there are changes that were made, like the designated hitter. I still avoid that. I think there's nothing better having a pitcher that has to play his position, be able to bot, and a manager has to make decisions about whether a pinch is for him or leave them in. I think that's a big part of the game we have lost.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

We cut down on some of the chin music too, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Certainly have. Certainly have, except for recently with one case with the Tigers.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Yes. All right, last question, John. Uh, what's the best game, most memorable game that you've taken in?

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Well, maybe the most the best in the memorable memorable would be Game Five of the 1968 World Series. Uh, that was the Tigers in St. Louis. And I was handed two tickets that morning to the game. And it was uh Mickey Lowitch and uh Mel Gibson pitching.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Bob Gibson? Bob Gibson pitching, yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Bob Gibson pitching. And the Tigers were behind in the series. It's pretty much a much win long. We were sitting in left field. I remember one particular play. Willie Horton was a left fielder. Uh little big bad Willie, but he played left field for a weird reason. He was an outstanding dude. He didn't have a good arc. But uh Lou Brock was on second base. Somebody got a base hit to left. Super fast, Lou Brock. Super fast. Got a base hit to left field. And I'm in a perfect line between Bill Freehan, the catch here, Willie Horton. Horton let go of a frozen rope. Freehand was standing there with the ball with Brock. Didn't even bother to fly because he knew he was going to be there, and he was out of the play. Let's turn the game. So that's the most memorable delay that I've had of a base court.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Willie Horton found it in him to get it, get it to home plate in a frozen room. He did it. Well, John, this has been wonderful. Uh, thank you for sharing your perspectives and insight, just your deep knowledge, and thank you for preserving and keeping the flame going uh for Toledo Professional Baseball.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

You're quite welcome. I'm happy to be here and talk about it. Come back and see us. We'll do.