Travis R. Martin, CPA

Beloit Snappers - Class A Affiliate of the Twins

In professional sports you have big market teams and small market teams. And then you have the Beloit Snappers, a Class A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins, who play in a market so small, it almost warrants classification as a micro-market.

Indeed, if there were a baseball franchise version of life-support, the Snappers would be on it.

What exactly has the Snappers gasping for air?

For starters, the Snappers play in a stadium that was built in 1982, long before owners and stadium architects realized they could print money by constructing luxury boxes and club seating.  Aside from the addition of patio areas down the left and right field lines, Pohlman Field is largely the same as it was when it was constructed nearly thirty years ago.

And while many baseball fans find Pohlman Field to be a charming throwback to a less-commercialized era of Minor League Baseball, the stadium’s lack of modern amenities was largely responsible for ending Beloit’s twenty-three year affiliation with the nearby Milwaukee Brewers, who dropped the city and moved to a newer ballpark in Charleston, West Virginia following the 2004 season.

Beloit's Pohlman Field Remains Largely Unchanged Since Constructed in 1982

Then there’s the city itself.  Beloit, a town of 37,000 just beyond the Illinois border in South Central Wisconsin, has no radio or television outlets. With no local media available, coverage of Snapper baseball must come from the neighboring cities of Rockford and Madison, which each have their own teams – the Madison Mallards participate in the Northwoods League, a summer collegiate baseball league, while the Rockford RiverHawks play in the independent Frontier League.

No media coverage. An outdated stadium. A small fan base. To say that Beloit is a challenging market would be putting it lightly.

Good thing Beloit General Manager Jeff Vohs enjoys challenges.

Vohs began his baseball career in 1999 when he served as a Scouting and Baseball Operations Intern for the Milwaukee Brewers. His hopes for a career with the Brewers were dashed after a front office shuffle saw many of his bosses leave the organization after the 99’ season. Undeterred, Vohs found his way to Beloit, where he worked his way from up from intern to General Manager over the course of five seasons.

Like many Minor League GM’s, Vohs wears a number of different hats. When I caught up with him at his ballpark office on a sunny Friday afternoon in late June, he was wearing his groundskeeper’s hat, watching the weather radar on his computer for rainstorms that might threaten that evening’s game against the Quad Cities River Bandits.

Rain is a familiar enemy in the Midwest League, where teams schedule 140 games a season, but usually only end up playing around 135 due to inclement weather. “In an environment like this, where a lot of fans are local, rain definitely hurts,” Vohs said, “if people think the weather is going to be bad, they’ll just stay at home.”

On this day, rain not only threatened the game, but also the cancellation of one of the team’s most popular promotions – a postgame fireworks show.

“We try to stick with what works,” Vohs said, explaining his back-to-basics promotional philosophy, “in this market, fireworks and beer promotions work. We could do like Kane County and schedule Myron Noodleman or Zooperstars, and those things might do well after two or three years, but as a non-profit team, I can’t justify spending $3,000 to $4,000 a night on those performers and not have it make an immediate impact at the gate.”

In addition to overseeing the club’s marketing efforts, Vohs is also heavily involved in baseball operations, communicating with the Twins front office regarding baseball matters on a regular basis.

His acumen as a baseball guy has not gone unnoticed. In 2006, the Twins arranged for Vohs to attend Major League Baseball’s Scout School, an intensive ten day camp designed to teach the intricacies of scouting major league talent.

Someday Vohs may trade in his job behind the desk for a job behind the radar gun, but for now, he is content with the Snappers. “It’s never dull,” Vohs said, “you’re always working on something different. Everyone here has a title, but everyone also helps take care of whatever needs to be done, whether it’s selling tickets, serving food, or cleaning the stadium.”

Despite the best efforts of Vohs and his grounds crew, baseball and fireworks were not meant to be on the day I visited, as a rain storm drenched the area about an hour before game time.

It’s not all dark clouds for Beloit, though. According to Vohs, the team is “in the process of finishing up a site plan and engineering study on some land in the Gateway area at the intersection of I-43 and I-90.”

Not only would a new stadium be a boon for the Snappers, it would also ensure the future of baseball in Beloit for decades to come.

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