Something’s fishy Superfans hooked on Goldeyes memorabilia By: David Sanderson Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Wednesday, Jun. 27, 2018

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/06/2018 (2630 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Bruce Ward has been a diehard baseball fan since the days of the Winnipeg Whips, the Montreal Expos Triple A farm club that plied its trade in the southwest corner of the former Winnipeg Stadium, in 1970 and 1971.

On days he didn’t have a ticket to the game, the then 14-year-old would walk across the street and plunk himself down on the steps of the Winnipeg Arena, glove in hand, and patiently wait for foul balls to come careening over the right-field bleachers.

While Ward’s days of chasing baseballs down Maroons Road are a distant memory, the retired Canada Post employee remains a devotee of the game, which explains why a section of his and his wife Linda’s rec room is teeming with trappings related to the Winnipeg Goldeyes, the American Association’s two-time defending champs.

“It started slowly, bringing home giveaways from a (Goldeyes) game and tossing them in a drawer or whatever, until it got to a point when we thought maybe we should give them their own space,” Ward says, standing next to a cabinet bursting at the seams with balls, bobbleheads, miniature bats and books. (Of course, no true Goldeyes fan would be without a copy of Dancing Gabe: One Step at a Time, Daniel Perron’s 2015 biography of Gabe Langlois, Winnipeg’s No. 1, light-on-his-feet sports fanatic.)

“Last summer, we invited Steven Schuster, the Goldeyes’ play-by-play announcer, over for dinner,” pipes in Linda, admittedly as big a baseball nut as her husband. “He seemed thrilled to see our display and said it was nice we’d hung on to everything we’d picked up, through the years.”

Because the Wards are members of the Goldeyes host family program — ever since their son moved out, the couple has welcomed a Goldeyes player into their home, free of charge, during the summer months — they also have a number of keepsakes the average fan wouldn’t have been privy to, such as plaques and paintings the club annually presents to its volunteer hosts as a token of gratitude. That’s not all, Linda says. As thanks for allowing her son to live with them for three seasons, pitcher Kyle Anderson’s mother put together a framed memento of the years Anderson called the Wards’ Southland Park abode home, which the southpaw gave to Bruce and Linda along with a baseball autographed by each of his teammates.

This season marks the Goldeyes’ 25th season in Winnipeg, a milestone that will be observed on July 12 when the team hands out commemorative, 25th anniversary coins during its annual luncheon at the Fairmont Hotel. To toast the club’s silver anniversary ourselves, we visited two other a-Fish-ionados; folks who, like the Wards, have set aside room in their home for pret’ near anything — from metal lunch boxes to wood skateboard decks to Max Poulin nesting dolls — associated with their favourite boys of summer.

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The first thing Craig Kuhlman does when the Goldeyes release their schedule for the upcoming campaign is circle which of the 50 home dates are going to feature promotional giveaways. The second thing he does is book those days off from work, as vacation.

“Usually, there’s a limited number of whatever it is the team hands out prior to games, so it’s important — well to me, at least — to get to the park early enough to make sure I get whatever it is they’re giving away,” Kuhlman says. On a recent Friday night when the club doled out 1,000 replica championship rings in honour of the Goldeyes’ 2017 title, he, his wife Jill and their two children were in line at Shaw Park 30 minutes before the gates opened at 6 p.m., “just to be on the safe side.”

Referring to himself as a “late bloomer,” Kuhlman, a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, didn’t start collecting Goldeyes merchandise until 2008, the year he and his son first began attending games together. Talk about making up for lost time: among the items he’s amassed in the last decade are complete sets of playing cards dating back to the team’s inaugural season, an assortment of game-used bats and batting helmets as well as a trio of three-metre-tall canvas banners bearing life-size images of former pitcher Andrew “Ace” Walker, ex-third baseman Amos Ramon and long-time manager Rick Forney, which were originally affixed to downtown lampposts following the Goldeyes 2012 championship win.

“I emailed the Downtown BIZ, asking how much they wanted for them, figuring they were probably just going to chuck them out at some point, anyway,” Kulhman says, pointing out he would have gleefully bought “a bunch more,” if wall-space hadn’t been an issue.

“I have one of every Goldeyes souvenir baseball that’s ever been on sale in the gift store, one full can of every Angry Fish beer that’s ever been produced…” he goes on, touring a visitor through more of his cache. “And because I don’t have room for it down here, there’s a fridge in the garage completely plastered with magnet schedules, one from every year the team’s been in the league.”

“That’s easy,” he says with a grin, when asked how he decides which of his 30 or so Goldeyes jerseys to sport to a particular tilt. Because he and Jill are also a host family, on the afternoon of a game he texts “their” player as soon he arrives at Shaw Park to ask what jersey the team will be wearing that night. Then he fetches the matching one from his closet to comply with what the players on the field are donning.

One more thing: remember we mentioned Bruce Ward used to hunt for errantly-hit baseballs when he was a kid? Well, on days or nights when a Goldeyes game is dragging a bit, Kuhlman casts his son a look as if to say, “Shall we?” whenever a ball departs Shaw Park. The pair then race to the nearest exit trying to guess their target’s precise trajectory.

“You feel a little silly getting up in the middle of a game but when you actually find the ball, it’s a pretty big thrill,” he says with a grin.

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Precisely 30 minutes before the home plate umpire bellows “Play ball,” Brenda Arnott is in her first-row seat at Shaw Park, directly adjacent to the Goldeyes dugout. That’s when “the ritual begins,” the long-time season ticket holder says with a chuckle.

“The first thing I do is bump knuckles with (third baseman) Josh Mazzola, then I get a hug from (team mascot) Goldie, (outfielder) Reggie Abercrombie and (bullpen catcher) Danny Perron,” says Arnott, who guesses she has only missed three Goldeyes home games since 1999: one the day her granddaughter was born, another the day her granddaughter turned one and a third the day her brother died.

“When Luis Alen played here, after warming up the starting pitcher, he made a point of stopping in front of my seat, getting down on one knee and kissing my hand,” she adds. “Even if we were in a different park, following the team on the road, whenever he spotted me in the crowd he called me down so he could go through his pre-game routine.”

Prior to our arrival, Arnott played down her collection stating “I don’t know if it will be worth your time to drive across town. I really hope I’m not wasting your morning.”

Uh, little chance of that; to say Arnott has a fair number of Goldeyes paraphernalia is a bit like saying a Goldie Dog Combo has a fair number of calories.

Let’s start with her “ball wall,” an impressive horde of horsehides that immediately catches the attention of anybody venturing into her lair. Then there’s her assortment of binders sorted by year, each of which contains completed score sheets and summaries for every game she has attended. (Yes, she charts every ball and strike thrown; yes, she’s so adept at it, Goldeyes players often turn her way following a close play to see whether she’s going to mark it as a hit or an error.)

“Over here is my hall of fame wall, dedicated to Goldeyes who’ve been signed by major league organizations,” she says, mentioning fireballer Bobby Madritsch (Seattle Mariners) and Pat Scalabrini (Baltimore Orioles) as two of her faves, in that regard.

“And these are my jerseys,” she continues, pointing to a metal clothing rack upon which hang almost every conceivable Goldeyes jersey, including gimmicky ones such as a bacon jersey, an all-black, heavy metal jersey, a tie-dye jersey and a hockey-style jersey. (Arnott, who started amassing Goldeyes memorabilia in 1998, the year her son Jeffrey caught bullpen for the team, even has an actual, game-used base affixed to her wall, which — yuk, yuk — she swears she didn’t steal.)

Oh, and get this: because the Goldeyes are the only local sports team Arnott follows — she’s never watched a Jets game live or on TV her entire life — the off-season would be a lot longer if it wasn’t for her shelf of recorded Goldeyes games.

“I have VHS tapes and DVDs like crazy, from way back, so if I’m really desperate for some baseball I’ll throw something in my player, sit back and enjoy myself.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca