The Cyclones are the hottest minor league baseball team in the country. Located on Coney Island, the Cyclones provide the very best in fun, affordable, family entertainment. The Brooklyn Baseball Blog documents the experiences of the staff members, players, coaches, and fans...giving you a unique behind-the scenes look at your favorite team!
The Cyclones recently received a "Veekie Award" from ESPN The Magazine, in recognition of one of the best promotions of the year -- our Baracklyn Cyclones night!
The Veekies are highlighted on page 30 of the Sept. 21 edition of The Magazine (on stands now...Tim Tebow is on the cover). The award is named after the late Bill Veeck, who is hailed as baseball's ultimate showman (after Steve Cohen, of course).
As you probably remember, the Baracklyn Cyclones night was great fun, a huge success, and drew rave reviews around the world (except from McCain supporters, who didn't get the joke).
Earning the Veekie is a very cool nod to our hard work, and a great honor for us. (Perhaps more importantly, it gave me a legitimate excuse to email Amber/Obama Girl girl again!)
The '09 season has only been over for a few days, but we're already brainstorming about some big ideas for next season, too.Hopefully, this is only our first Veekie, and not our last!
With the conclusion of the season, and the mixed emotions it brings, some of us "veterans" in the office have been talking about the thoughts and feelings that ebb and flow throughout the calendar year -- the Cyclones Cycle, if you will. We may not hoist baby Alexa in the air like Mufasa each season, but there is a certain Circle of Life among members of the front office that repeats itself year in and year out. Birth. Life. Death. Repeat. OK, maybe it's not quite as dramatic as that Circle, but it's our Circle, so it's important to us. Aaaaand, if it's important to us, it must be important to you (at least, that's the self-absorbed philosophy that keeps the Blog alive).
So, without further ado, I give you (a condensed version of) the front office Circle of Life -- the Cyclone Cycle! (And I'll start with the birth of the new season, in the hopes of beating this analogy as far into the ground as humanly possible.)
There are, of course, unique blips that occur on the radar of each season, but the following are things that you can set your watch to, without fail. The real Groundhog Day elements of the job. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and the Cyclones have this:
Mid-June Everything's (hopefully) in place. The players have been drafted, the promotional nights have been finalized, ads have been running, tickets have been sold and shipped, Ponte's been mowing the grass for the last 273 consecutive days, and anyone who hasn't quit Vlad's crew has been painting, scrubbing, and generally fixing up the ballpark to get it looking in tip-top shape. Opening Day is upon us. All the time and energy we've spent preparing for the last several months has all been for this. The gates open, the fans file in, the players line the steps to meet them, and a new season is underway.
The staff feels a thrilling sense of anxious excitement, anticipating the craziness to come in the next three months...coupled with a crippling sense of intense dread, fearing the craziness to come in the next three months.
We say goodbye to our friends and family for the summer and say hello to our Cyclones friends and family for the summer. Like many of the emotions involved with the job, it's a mixed bag. That's just the way it is.
Get yourself ready for 15-hour days, tarp pulls, unloading boxes of last-minute promo items, and all the other fun stuff in store. Here we go!
July With a few games now under our belt, the newbies have been broken in, and everyone's starting to get into their own routines, and into the full swing of the season. Steve has learned at least three players' names (two of whom were on the team last year), and will now spend the next month trying to match up their faces, and complain that it's impossible, because they all look the same -- 6'2" blond kids from Idaho, or wherever.
July brings the Kids Camp (which means Liz will be super-stressed, and Gary will finally get to talk to the players he drafted...and the two of them will come very close to killing each other).
The midway point of the season also means the pennant race is on, between the Cyclones and the Yankees. No offense to the IronBirds and Renegades (or the Crosscutters and Cardinals before them), but this is basically a foregone conclusion. Since the Cyclones entered the league in 2001, no other team besides Brooklyn and Staten Island has worn the McNamara Division crown.
Mid-July is also when we as a staff start to hit that imaginary wall. So much effort and energy goes into kicking off the season, that once that initial high wears off, you look at the remaining games on the schedule and can't believe you're only halfway through it. Halfway? That means that everything you've just done? You have to do it all over again. Your friends are all going on vacations, going to weddings, going to the beach, and like, having lives and stuff. And you hate them for it. That light at the end of the tunnel? It looks like this. At this point you can't wait for the season to be over (but be careful what you wish for...more on this later).
August August brings the NYPL All-Star game, which serves two purposes for the staff:
Provide a break in the action and an opportunity to recharge.
ROAD TRIP!
Now, I realize that those two things don't really go hand in hand. You finally get a few days off to get away from baseball and catch up with friends and family, so you...leave your friends and family to travel with colleagues to go watch baseball?
Part of the reasoning behind this is that you have to be a little "touched" to work in baseball. You just have to be. So things that make sense to normal humans don't really apply. Another part of it is that although you spend most of your day with co-workers, players, and coaches, you don't actually get to unwind or really hang out with them in a relaxed setting all that often, so the ASG is a good opportunity to do so. Another part is that the host team usually sets up some cool events -- go-cart racing, pub crawls, brunches with Hall of Famers, freak shows at the aquarium -- and you feel like you deserve to enjoy the fruits of someone else's labor after months of your own hard work. And last, but certainly not least, you know that if you don't go, you'll be ripped mercilessly by everyone that did, both to your face and behind your back.
Anyway, the ASG comes and goes, and there are now about three weeks left to the season. That's it? Man, it went by so quickly! I wish we had more time.
Whaaaaaaaaat? Do you hear yourself? Just a couple of weeks ago, you were comparing the season to Moses' journey through the desert.
I don't know...I told you, there are mixed emotions all over the place, and we're all a little off, anyway. And we're never happy with whatever situation we're in. Don't try to figure it out. It is what it is.
Early September We're in the home stretch now. The division race is coming down to the wire, the interns are all going back to school, and the video guy has put in his two weeks' notice. (We should, like, download some video clips or something.)
Unfortunately, it's also Labor Day weekend, and school is starting, so our usually vivacious and electric crowds thin out a bit. The beginning of the end.
We make the playoffs (or we don't), travel to one or two more upstate/western NY destinations, and then -- win or lose -- it's over. The team is gone the next day, the circus tent is gone the next day, Coney's neon lights are gone the next day, and it is officially the offseason.
Ugh. And whew! Oh no. And thank goodness. (There are those mixed emotions again.)
Mid-September The first couple of days & weeks immediately following the season are filled with housekeeping stuff. Writing season recaps (and seemingly endless blog postings about the Cyclones Cycle), running attendance numbers, creating proof-of-performance packets for sponsors, cleaning the stadium, etc.
It's also time to re-introduce ourselves to society, and to the people we love -- Ms. Pac Man, Pac Man, and Junior our families.
Plus, we'll throw in some outdoor activities like softball games against other front offices, baseball games against over-60 leagues, or football in the outfield to make up for lost time in the summer.
Many of us (but probably not enough) will also get back into the gym and try to lose the extra pounds we packed on by eating ballpark food twice a day for 120 days.
October
November - December Gearing up. That's the catch-all phrase when people ask you what you're up to at work. It can mean anything, and it's used so frequently throughout baseball that no one really makes you go into any more detail.
A typical winter conversation will go something like this:
"Good season for you guys?" "Yeah, it was. Lots of good stuff to build on." "New Year just around the corner." "Yup. Another season." "You guys getting ready?" "Gearing up." "I hear ya."
No further explanation is necessary.
So these are the months for gearing up. Well, that and scouring HotJobs.
December is also the month for the Winter Meetings, baseball's annual trade show/league meeting/job fair/networking extravaganza. For those of us that go, it's the time of year to refocus on new ideas, new giveaway items, new entertainment options, and generally get revitalized about the upcoming season. For those that don't go, it's a nice few days with Steve and Kevin out of the office.
January Winter break is over, and the calendar has turned to a new year. This is the month that we traditionally announce our new schedule and coaching staff, start selling sponsorship packages & ticket plans, and start brainstorming for the season ahead. After all, it's "right around the corner."
Only. Six. Months. Away.
Now it's like we're coming through that endless tunnel in reverse!
February - March Spring Training! Baseball is finally in the air again. And although the players who will make up the coming year's roster are mostly still in college at this point, we can watch former Cyclones play with the big boys in the major leagues. Even if it's split-squad games.
April The MLB season starts, and we can see which of our alumni have made the cut. This is also the start of the really busy couple of months just before our season. The sales teams are beating the pavement. Print and ad deadlines are hurtling towards us, classes are touring the ballpark, high schools and colleges are playing on the field, and the weather is starting -- just starting -- to hint at Spring.
May Now, the season really is just around the corner. Most of our promotional dates are locked in, we've designed and ordered the giveaway items, and no one can actually believe we're going to do this all over again. Now, if only we knew who was going to be on the team...
Early June The draft takes place in the second week of the month, and we start playing in the third week, so you can imagine what that last-minute rush is like.
We're also putting the finishing touches on several other last-minute ideas, updates, and adjustments. At this point, we're hip-deep in it, and we're rolling with what we've got.
What comes next? Scroll back to the top and start all over again!
23-year old Wes Wrenn was selected by the Mets in the 35th round of the 2009 draft, out of The Citadel, in South Carolina. He makes his home in Greensboro, NC. Wes took his his first professional steps towards his big-league dreams in a professional debut season with the Cyclones. Each week, Wes checked in on the Blog to get readers behind the scenes. The following is his final entry of the summer:
After three months of playing here in Brooklyn, I would have to say that my first year of professional baseball has been all that I expected and then some. The Brooklyn fan support, the Cyclones staff, the golf tournament, the kids camp, the ladies camp, the craziness of Coney Island, the pricey tours of Manhattan, the extensive road trips to places I never thought existed, and being on the number one team in the organization this year! It all has all provided me with more than enough memories and stories to tell. So while we may have fallen a little short in the playoffs, we still had an amazing year, one of the best in franchise history, and I'm proud to have been a part of it.
I would like to say “thank you” to all the fans that supported us through all the ups and downs of this year’s roller-coaster season. We started out unbeatable with a 16-2 record at one point, and then we lost a few players and a few more games to go along with them. But overall, this year was definitely a great success. We made friends that will last a lifetime, we learned some valuable life lessons and baseball knowledge from our experienced coaching staff, and we’ll have stories to talk about for years to come.
I can only hope that next year, wherever I end up, is as exciting as this year.
The 2009 Cyclones season has come to its end, unfortunately, but it was another fun-filled chapter in the story of Brooklyn baseball.
We led the league in attendance again (nine years in a row), and qualified for the playoffs again (six times out of nine). Think about that for a second. Think about how impressive either of those feats are on their own...and then think about the fact that we do both almost every year. It's become kind of commonplace, and somewhat expected (some might say to take the "somewhat" out), but every once in a while when I actually stop to think about all the work that goes into both those things, and the support from the fans that makes it all possible, it's pretty unbelievable.
We had some amazing moments both on and off the field this year -- no-hitters, Hall of Famers, Commanders-In-Chief (sort of), All-Stars (of the minor and major league variety), and much, much more. Several of those highlights are recapped here.
And for a give-you-goosebumps end-of-year video that captures even more on camera, check this out:
The summer goes by too fast. It's a pretty intense three months, during which you spend lots of time with people who are all working together (sort of) towards a couple of common goals. And then, like that (a la Keyser Soze), it's gone. Even after nine years of it, that sudden end still takes some getting used to.
This season, though, was an unforgettable one, and we'd like to sincerely thank the fans, coaches, players, staff members, and everyone else (especially the Blog readers) that were a part of it.
Don't worry, you don't have to go 100% cold turkey. We've got some more good stuff in store for you in the coming weeks to ease you out of Cyclones baseball slowly. And we've already got a few tricks up our sleeve for next year, too.
After 75 regular-season games, the Cyclones went 45-30, won the NYPL Wild Card, and tonight begin the "second season," needing four more wins to become champions of the New York-Penn League.
As any blogger worth their salt knows, when talking about the playoffs, you are contractually obligated to link to this. Done and done. (If there's one thing everyone says about me, it's that I'm worth my salt.) However, you simply can't get to the playoffs without practice...which is why I think this is even funnier.
Anyway, back to the playoffs ("playoffs?" Sorry. Once you get started it's hard to stop). We'll take on the Mahoning Valley Scrappers at home tonight in the first game of a best-of-three series. Games Two and Three (if necessary) will be played at Mahoning Valley on Wednesday and Thursday. (We'll be trying to make Game Three unnecessary by winning the first two. I wasn't in the team meeting, but I'm pretty sure that's the game plan.)
Over in the other Semifinal match-up, Staten Island and Lowell will be slugging it out for the right to face us in the Championship Series. (Or, hypothetically, the Scrappers...but we don't allow negativity to permeate the positive zen of the Blog.)
We're sending our two-headed Ace Monster to the mound in the first two games, with Mark Cohoon (9-2, 2.15) toeing the rubber tonight, and Brandon Moore (he of the no-hitter, and the team-best 2.09 ERA) getting the start tomorrow. So, on paper, our rotation couldn't have lined up any better for us. Now we just have to get it done on the field. And as our 10th man (technically 11th, thanks to the DH, but that doesn't sound as good), you can help out from the stands!
Come on down to Coney Island tonight to cheer on the Cyclones and help us bring another championship to Brooklyn!
The Brooklyn Cyclones are a Class-A affiliate of the New York Mets. The team plays a 76-game schedule from June through September, with home games played at Coney Island's MCU Park. Tickets are available at brooklyncyclones.com or by phone at 718-507-TIXX. For Ticket Plans or group outings, fans can call 718-37-BKLYN
The Cyclones recently received a "Veekie Award" from ESPN The Magazine, in recognition of one of the best promotions of the year -- our Baracklyn Cyclones night!
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