“You know, it’s hard for kids to ask for help sometimes, even when they need it. But there’s a lot of people in a town like ours that are willing to give it.” – Minster baseball coach Mike Wiss
The annual Minster amateur baseball/softball fest is held this weekend with 90 teams eager to play and show off the benefits of kids playing together, and doing it at home.
Minster, OH – Long-time Minster baseball coach Mike Wiss is a busy man during the summer, but come July he makes sure that his schedule is clear, and for this week in particular.
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It’s the annual Minster youth baseball/softball weekend, not unlike what Craig Stammen and the people of Versailles have over the Father’s Day weekend, and in Minster Wiss has the advantage of both years and outcome of teaching kids to play baseball together and seeing what it leads to. He’s done it for 32 years and has four OHSAA state baseball titles to show for it – back to back in 2011-’12, in 2007, and 2025.
Stammen, by contrast, is trying to bring some of the same virtues to the San Diego Padres as a rookie manager in the major leagues.
And, it takes hot dogs, too…Minster’s annual community baseball/soft fest is held this weekend at the community park.
“It’s not a coincidence,” says Wiss this week, preparing for his 32nd time to host area kids and families to the beautiful facilities in Minster at the community park west of downtown.
“And especially in small-town northwest Ohio. It’s a community thing and it has been for a long time. This is 32 years of me lining the fields. And I’ve always maintained publicly the important of that community support.
“When you come here this weekend there’s going to be 90 teams, and it’s the moms, the dads, the grandparents, brothers and sisters who’ve played here before…it’s a family thing. It’s a Minster thing, and you can’t do it without everybody being involved.”
How important is community baseball, and community support from the top down?
Well, it’s where stories like yesterday’s column on Ohio State’s Henry Kaczmar come from, the undrafted shortstop from northeast Ohio who learned baseball with friends in his community of Bath, Ohio, played with those same friends at Walsh Jesuit High School, and shared in the values of the supporters in his community.
Ohio State’s Henry Kaczmar came out of the same community support setting for baesball, only in a bigger community…Bath, Ohio.
His coach at Ohio State, Justin Haire, adds this to his signing yesterday with the Seattle Mariners: “We’re excited for Henry. He’s earned this opportunity with the Mariners. He was an exceptional addition to the Buckeyes this past year…and I personally believe he’ll do those same great things in the Seattle organization, as well.”
And if you’ve ever met Kaczmar, talked with him, and observed his character from having grown up in suburban Cleveland, he could have well have grown up and learned in Minster just the same.
It’s always been easier for the younger kids to observe and learn from the older kids in a small, or close-knit community setting. The kids are familiar with each other, trusting, and willing to ask about what they don’t know, then practice and mastering it on their own.
“And that’s something you see less and less,” adds Wiss. “I don’t want to say too much about travel ball, because there’s pros and cons to everything. But you don’t see it in travel ball like you see it in the home community setting. But you watch kids who play with their friends, and the amount of support they have for each other when someone makes a mistake…and you don’t see that so much on the outside. Pat ’em on the back. We’ll get it right the next time. You tend to lose that as kids get older, but that’s what’s so important about community baseball.”
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About being together all those years.
Farther up the road this weekend they’ll play the championship rounds of the state ACME tournament in Kalida. Actually, the same concept as what they’re doing in Minster, only older and with bigger things at stake, short and long-term. St. Henry won the ACME tournament a year ago and coach Mike Gast insists that the ACME experience helped bond his team into the unit that made it to this spring OHSAA Final Four in Akron.
“It takes boys and girls, brothers and sisters, moms and dads, and grandparents. It’s a Minster thing, and you can’t do it without everyone being involved.” – Mike Wiss
“That experience of winning in ACME made a big difference in the kind of team we were this spring,” says Gast. “You see teams that have good streaks and bad streaks, but playing together all of last summer helped us to become a more consistent team throughout the entire high school season.”
And he didn’t have to convince Mike Wiss, who’s rarely had a Division I college player come out of Minster…just sound community-grounded people who grow up sharing what they’ve learned with the succeeding generations.
“You know,” says Wiss. “It’s hard for kids to ask for help sometimes, even when they need it. But there’s a lot of people in a town like ours that are willing to give it.”
You’ll see it in Kalida, and places unthinkable who share those same common community values. And in San Diego…..?
Oh, you know Craig Stammen would love to come back for a little home cooking…not what the Royals are dishing out in Kansas City.
And, it takes hot dogs, too…Minster’s annual community baseball/soft fest is held this weekend at the community park.
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