Wildwood Park receives a facelift

With new dugouts that don’t flood and have enough room for an entire baseball team, a backstop that actually catches foul balls, and some up close and personal seating right behind home plate, Wildwood Baseball Park is looking a whole lot better these days.

“They’ve put a lot of effort into making this a top-notch facility,” said Craig Kloes, baseball coach at Sheboygan South High School. “It was great before, and now it’s only better.”

The Sheboygan Athletic Club, the people in charge of running the city-owned baseball park at the corner of New Jersey and Wildwood avenues, wants to show the place off to the public.

On Saturday, the club plans to hold a benefit brat fry, a concert and then a ribbon-cutting to celebrate the $175,000 in renovations to Wildwood Baseball Park, followed by a game between the hometown Sheboygan A’s and the Chicago Clout.

The festivities start at noon with the brat fry, the concert with Buffalo Joe Band at 1:30 p.m., and the ribbon-cutting at 3:45, with the first pitch after that.

“We want to encourage everybody to come out here and check it out,” said Scott Stangel, 56, the president of the Sheboygan Athletic Club, which for years has been raising money to upgrade the 30-year-old facility.

“It’s important to the community,” said Denny Moyer, 68, the longtime general manager of the A’s, the chief tenant at Wildwood Baseball Park. “Our kids are growing up here and they’re building memories here that they’ll take with them forever. It’s a great little ballpark.”

The new amenities are a big step toward making Wildwood a better ballpark, and Moyer said the first reaction from fans and players at the games played so far this season was positive.

“Everybody thought it was just a tremendous improvement,” Moyer said.

The new dugouts, which are about 60 feet long, are large enough to provide space for teams and their equipment. They have lights inside and the drains go directly to the city sewer, which eliminate the flooding problems that plagued the previous dugouts.

“Now we’ve got as close to major league dugouts as you’re going to get,” Moyer said.

Players like the dugouts too, as they’re about twice as large as the previous ones.

“The other one was small and the water didn’t drain out,” said Justin Fluegge-Elmer, 18, a senior outfielder on the South team, before a game played at Wildwood on Tuesday.

New also are 56 seats in a prime seating area called the Bud Back Stop, sponsored by Budweiser, where fans can see baseball at field level, just a few feet behind the catcher. The seats, which can be removed, bring the capacity of Wildwood to 1,056.

The new backstop, which soars 60 feet above the field, is made of see-through netting that allows fans to get a good look at the game, without the risk of getting struck by foul balls that glance off a bat and into the net.

“Now I can charge admission and they can actually see the game,” Moyer said.

The Sheboygan Athletic Club raised about $35,000 toward the cost of the $175,000 in renovations and is financing the rest at about $1,000 a month. But they have plans to put in new energy-efficient lighting and a new scoreboard with a message board and advertising space, to replace equipment that dates to when the park opened in 1981. The cost for the lights and scoreboard, Moyer estimates, will be about $325,000, and they would like to get started with the scoreboard this fall.

So the hat is still out for more donations. They can be sent to the Sheboygan Athletic Club, at P.O. Box 32, Sheboygan, WI, 53082.

“We will take $10, we will take $25,000,” Moyer said. “Whatever they can feel they can help us out with, we’re happy to take.”

The A’s play 32 home games at Wildwood, and the field is also used for South and North high school games and by local American Legion baseball teams. Stangel said the new dugouts and seating area will make the park more attractive for American Legion tournaments and other uses that can help bring more revenue to the club.

“It makes a much better facility to draw the fans out … it can create more of an entertainment venue for other things than just baseball,” Stangel said. “We’ve got this new (seating) area where we can have parties.”

For Moyer, who first joined the semipro A’s as a player in 1963 and has been the team’s general manager ever since, beating the bushes for funds to keep Wildwood Baseball Park viable has been a constant job. In 1998, the park received about $500,000 in upgrades, including a new grandstand, restrooms and expanded concessions and press box, and the Sheboygan Athletic Club was able to retire that debt in 2009.

But there’s always something new to replace, repair or remodel at Wildwood, to make it a better place for baseball, hence the renewed push for donations.

“It’s always been a work in progress,” Moyer said.

Story by Bob Petrie/The Sheboygan Press
Photo by Gary C. Klein/The Sheboygan Press