The Unlikely Story of Bringing Professional Baseball to South Bend

Stu and Swoop, home runs, and future baseball stars right in our own backyard – the South Bend Cubs have become such a staple in the city, it is hard to imagine a timeline where the family-friendly franchise never made it to town. That timeline came so very close to becoming a reality. In fact, if not for a determined mayor in his final term, a secret meeting with the governor of Indiana, and several other unbelievable factors, the South Bend Cubs would likely never have come to fruition. This is the story of how the South Bend Cubs of today came to be. 

The Year is 1985

Our story starts in February of 1985. South Bend’s mayor, Roger Parent, was preparing his comments for a morning news conference when his administrative assistant, Patricia DeClercq, notified him that Charlie Minkler, Director of the Michiana Area Planning Commission, wanted to speak to him. Minkler, it turned out, was leading the charge to bring professional baseball to the city of South Bend. Parent spoke of this meeting in his currently unpublished manuscript about his time as mayor. 

“Charlie told me he headed a group of baseball fans who were seeking professional baseball for South Bend,” Parent said. “He had talked with the owners of a new Class A franchise, Robert and Debby Staley, of A. E. Staley Company fame, and John Wendel, a Florida attorney. They wanted to talk with me about locating their franchise in South Bend. The hook? South Bend would have to build a stadium. Charlie wanted me to meet with them within the next few days for they were seeing other mayors, and he was afraid they would select another city.”

The possibility of baseball in South Bend was never something that had really crossed Parent’s mind prior to this interaction. Parent goes so far as to say himself that he was not much of a “baseball fan.” 

Meetings with the Staleys, Wendel, and Parent continued through much of February and March as the group tried to determine whether or not a deal for a baseball stadium could be reached. As the owners made it clear that they wanted an immediate decision allowing the team to begin play in 1986, Parent pondered the options. 

A New Stadium is Planned

Parent discusses the process of giving his answer to the owners in this passage from his manuscript. 

“On impulse, I walked Charlie and the owners from my office to the southwest corner of the 14th floor. Looking down, I said, ‘If you can fit a baseball stadium between the Union Railroad Station, public housing, and a few major streets, I’ll be for the project.’ The group was surprised. Maybe I surprised myself too. Somehow, I had concluded in my guts, maybe in my subconscious, that building a stadium as a downtown revitalization project would be worth the money and the work required. I understood the risk for the community. It could fail. But I knew that not deciding was also risky. On that very same day, Charlie and James Seitz, Director of Parks, measured the area, and came back excited. A baseball stadium would fit in the area I had depicted. As the city attorney, Richard Hill said, ‘I guess we’re building a baseball stadium.’ 

On March 6, 1985, with no time for prior public discussion, I announced my decision to build a stadium in downtown South Bend.”

Excitement for professional baseball in the city of South Bend was rampant immediately after the announcement. Several fans began to make donations to the construction efforts while several billboards were placed around the city in support of the project. However, a wrench was thrown into the fanfare as opposition quickly rose. 

Opposition to Baseball in South Bend Builds

Jack Colwell, a former journalist for the South Bend Tribune was kind enough to speak with me about the stadium announcement and the uproar surrounding it. 

“When it was first announced, I mean nobody, including Roger Parent, had been thinking about a baseball stadium for South Bend,” Colwell said. “It just wasn’t anything that was being discussed or on the horizon at all. Then when the idea came forth early in 1985, Roger finally thought, ‘Hey we can do it,’ and announced that he was for it. I think the first reaction was kind of positive. A lot of baseball fans kind of thought, ‘Well hey, that’d be kind of neat to have a baseball team in town.’ I think just in general it was probably favorable responses.”

“But then, opposition really grew. I think it was because of, well the cost. There were concerns of how on earth we were going to pay for it. Also, South Bend for a long time suffered in the doldrums from the Studebaker demise. It was just kind of a depressed attitude. Whenever anybody would bring up some idea it was, ‘Oh no we can’t do that,’ or, ‘It’ll cost too much,’ or ‘It won’t work’. It was just a kind of negative attitude. It was a kind of a, ‘No we can’t’ rather than a, ‘Yes we can.’ It was just kind of natural that opposition would develop.” 

Fair Tax, Inc.

The strongest opposition to the new stadium in South Bend came from a partnership of local republicans and a small citizens group known as Fair Tax, Inc. According to Parent, many of the group’s members had actively campaigned against him during his bids for both city council and mayor. Colwell backed up the politicized nature of the opposition. 

“It was kind of a, I guess you would call it a citizen group, but it was an anti-tax group and basically they worked with the Republican party,” Colwell said. “Republicans saw it as something they could use against a democratic mayor. Roger Parent was a democrat and was in his second term and they wanted an issue to use. They and Fair Tax Inc. kind of merged efforts to try to spread negative stories about [the stadium.] They did so pretty successfully and a lot of opposition was built.”

The Fight Gets Personal

As the dogfight between Parent and the naysayers drug on, Fair Tax, Inc. began to spread rumors about both the mayor’s family and the quality of Class A baseball. 

“It got to be very nasty,” Parent said. “Fair Tax spread rumors about my family owning land where the stadium was going to be located, all untrue. Still, all I could do was tell the truth, and seek funds for the stadium.” 

“I don’t remember that specifically,” Colwell said when asked about the family rumors. “I know all kinds of rumors about conflicts of interest [were spread.]” Colwell continued, “I suppose it was about his family. I remember they kept issuing some sort of a statement about some conflict of interest. They tried everything. They really tried to denounce the caliber of Class A baseball.” According to Colwell, Notre Dame was presented as an already available option for baseball. “They were contending that it was inferior to college baseball. They said if people wanted to see an actual baseball game they could see it at Notre Dame and that this was just terrible caliber baseball. Of course, that wasn’t true but they sold that argument to a lot of people. Of course, unless someone was a really avid baseball fan, they probably weren’t that conversed with what Class A was.”

A Pilgrimage to Peoria

In an effort to provide residents with a clear picture of the quality of Class A baseball and what it could bring to the city, the South Bend Tribune sent Colwell to Peoria, Illinois to cover a Peoria Chiefs game. It just happened to be Opening Day for the club and a talented young pitcher was prepared to take the mound. 

“This was Opening Day for the Peoria Chiefs and this was where Greg Maddux made his first start back in Class A baseball,” Colwell said. “I remember I was there talking to some people and I didn’t know anything really about the Peoria Chiefs. I said now you got anybody that has a chance to make it to the Cubs and a guy named Pete Vonachen who was the owner of the team, a real character, said, ‘yep and you’re going to see him pitch tonight, Greg Maddux.’ The name didn’t mean a thing to me but he pitched well and went on from there.” 

New Hall of Famer Greg Maddux with the 1985 Single-A Peoria Chiefs pic.twitter.com/5TbGktrGbd

— Minor League Stories (@MinorsTeamNames) July 27, 2014

Maddux would go on to be a four-time National League Cy Young winner and a Hall of Famer. Not too shabby for “lowly Class A.”

Time to Raise Money

While all of this was happening, Parent and his staff were struggling to find a way to finance the construction of the new stadium. First, Parent attempted to raise money for construction by proposing a one percent county-wide tax on food and beverage sold in restaurants and similar facilities. The only problem  – the change had to be approved by both the state legislature and the governor. The proposal became known as the “Parent Bar Tax” and was even opposed by some prominent local democrats, though the reason for their opposition is questioned in Parent’s manuscript. 

Next, Parent tried to raise the funds by selling a park bond for the stadium. This was again met with stout opposition. In fact, Parent never actually filed the petitions for the bond in fear that he would suffer a second public defeat. 

The Bond is in Trouble

“By late August, 1985, I knew our bond was in trouble,” Parent said. “It would be a huge gamble to file the petition, lose and have to deal with the resulting negative publicity. Yet, it would be equally negative to not file the petitions, and look for an as-yet-unknown way to fund the stadium. What to do? I felt we were coming to the end of our funding rope. I had to make a decision. It came down to my not wanting a second defeat. I had lost my ‘bar tax’ due to negative legislators, and I didn’t want to lose the bond due to local naysayers. I decided to not file our petitions.”

When all seemed lost, Parent’s staff presented him with one final option. The city could fund the stadium through a process known as a lease-purchase agreement. Under this process, a bank would fund the construction and own the stadium upon completion. Then the bank would lease the stadium to the city for ten years until the purchase was complete and the stadium was deeded to the city. This route only needed the approval of the Board of Tax Commissioners. The big hold-up here was that the group was appointed by a Republican governor and would be under pressure to vote against the proposal. 

The Room Where it Happened

The mayor and his staff hired an Indianapolis law firm that had political connections with Indiana Governor Robert Orr to set up a meeting between the two parties. 

“Governor Orr, a down-to-earth informal person, made us feel very welcomed,” writes Parent. “I was surprised to see the three Tax Commissioners present, indeed a good omen. We outlined the potential benefits of the stadium for our downtown, the business community, and the quality of life. The Governor and his staff asked a few questions. So did the Tax Commissioners. At the end of our short meeting, the Governor said, ‘This appears to be a good project.’ That’s all.”

In January of 1986, the Local Property Tax Control Board recommended that the Tax Commissioners deny the lease. While the recommendation was not great news, the Tax Commissioners did not have to necessarily follow it. After a few weeks, the Tax Commissioners approved the proposal by a 2-1 vote. 

“There’s absolutely no doubt that Governor Bob Orr saved the baseball stadium,” says Colwell. 

After several more court hearings and legal battles, the funds for the stadium were finally released on September 19, 1986. All was finally going according to plan. Then, the owners of the team threw a potentially devastating curveball at the city. In the middle of the stadium being constructed, the owners had decided to sell the team. With no operating agreement in place, the new owners could easily pull out of South Bend in favor of another city, leaving South Bend with an expensive facility and no team to fill it.

A Close Call for South Bend

Jay Acton and Eric Margenau of New York City were the new owners, purchasing the team for $455,000. Parent was so upset that he refused to speak with Acton and Margenau for quite some time, leaving city attorney Rich Hill to keep the ball rolling. While some, including Acton, questioned whether or not the mayor was crazy because of his reluctance to speak with the new owners, Parent would eventually be proven right. 

In his book “Green Diamonds,” Acton actually speaks about his early interactions with Parent. 

“You have to understand that Roger Parent was acting without much in the way of public support for his point of view, but, according to Rich Hill, he felt that it was his job to lead in this instance and not to follow,” Acton wrote. “It also has to be said that Parent was in a position to act decisively and on his own instincts: he had already decided not to run for a third term as mayor.”

Parent Saves the Plan

Indeed, Parent did ultimately secure an agreement that was beneficial to the city and helped realize the vision of professional baseball in South Bend. I asked Colwell about his thoughts on the brashness of Parent during his push for the stadium. 

“There would have been so many times where he could have just pulled away and said ‘Hey you know the opposition is that strong and we can’t do it. Let’s move on to something else.’ He never was kind of your traditional politician regarding everything in terms of political ways,” Colwell said. “He was a very determined sort of guy. When he decided to do something he went ahead and did it. He kind of did away with some of the traditional patronage of things that a mayor had. He kind of had the theory that if you go ahead and get something done and it works out and it’s good then that’s good politics. It doesn’t always work out that way but that was his theory I think.”

Baseball Finally Arrives

On April 10, 1988, the South Bend White Sox played their first game in South Bend. The team was renamed as the South Bend Silver Hawks in 1994 and remained as an affiliate of the Chicago White Sox until 1998 when Arizona took over as the new parent club. Things remained relatively unchanged until 2011 when Andrew Berlin purchased the franchise.

Berlin came to town with big plans for the franchise and wanted to see the development of the area continue further. In 2015, the Chicago Cubs would take over as the new parent club, further increasing the brand of baseball in South Bend. As of this writing, Berlin’s website states that he has invested $7 million of his own money into renovating the stadium and surrounding area. In addition, the team recently agreed to a deal that ensures the South Bend Cubs remain in South Bend through at least 2041. 

What Could Have Been

“It would have really stalled some development in South Bend with all that development around the stadium,” said Colwell when asked about what the outcome of Parent failing would have been. “That was just kind of an eyesore on the area. I don’t know what else might have come in there but possibly nothing. Once it got going, especially with Andrew Berlin coming in and the Chicago Cubs taking [the team] as an affiliate, then it really, really boomed.”

Honoring former Mayor Roger Parent for building Coveleski Stadium 30 yrs ago. Controversial then, but now can't picture SB without it! pic.twitter.com/yoLYC2UsSL

— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) April 8, 2017

“Obviously, with no stadium, none of that would have happened,” said Colwell. “I think there has been a change in attitude finally after all these decades after Studebaker. Andrew Berlin played a part in it. Pete Buttigieg played a part in it with some of the projects that he developed in his efforts to change the attitude of South Bend. That all combined to do away with this, ‘Woe is us, we can’t do a thing,’ attitude. Know I think when somebody proposes something I think the thought is ‘Well let’s see. Can we do this?’ It was kind of a catalyst for development and the change of attitude in South Bend.”

Next time you head out to the beautiful Four Winds Field at Coveleski Stadium, take a moment to remember all of the hard work that went into making our local team a possibility. 

A special thank you to both Roger Parent and Jack Colwell for taking the time to speak with me and provide me with incredible resources for this article.