Oconomowoc Baseball Team Seeks 'Scandal' To Generate Media Interest

WAUKESHA — The Oconomowoc Orioles, an adult recreational baseball team that closed out the first half of its summer league season 11-3, announced Thursday that it has begun weighing whether to manufacture an on-field controversy after concluding that a winning record alone is not enough to interest anyone outside the families of the players themselves.

Team captain Brett Haugen, 47, said the idea surfaced during a postgame conversation in the parking lot of Roundy Hall Park, where the team plays its home games in front of what league organizers confirmed is an average crowd of 8 spectators, a figure that includes six spouses and one dedicated scorebook keeper who drives in from New Berlin.

"Nobody's covering us," Haugen said. "We're 11-3. If we were a Milwaukee Brewers bullpen arm with an 11-3 record, they'd be doing a whole segment. We are also 11-3. I don't see the difference, except we play on a field with a riding lawnmower parked past the fence in right."

The Plan, Such As It Is

Haugen said the team has floated several options at recent practices, including an umpire ejection staged to look spontaneous, a dugout argument between two teammates who are, by Haugen's own description, "not even mad at each other, we just think it would read well from the stands," and a bat flip performed with what Haugen called "more intent than the moment calls for."

Third baseman Doug Sabatke, 51, said he has been asked to be the one ejected, on the grounds that he already owns a pair of sunglasses that "look good getting thrown to the ground." Sabatke said he has not agreed to the assignment and is seeking assurances that any manufactured ejection will not affect his standing with the league's disciplinary committee, which he chairs.

"I'm not saying I'd throw my glove. I'm saying I have a glove that has never been thrown, and I think about that sometimes."

— Doug Sabatke, Orioles third baseman and league disciplinary committee chair

Coverage Math

League commissioner Pat Verhagen said the Waukesha and Oconomowoc summer adult league, now in its ninth season, has never had a team's record generate outside media interest, and said he doubts a fabricated scuffle would change that. "The Freeman covers the county fair, high school stuff, and whatever the Brewers are doing," Verhagen said. "I'd love for that to include us. I don't think it's going to include us because Brett threw his hat at somebody."

Haugen said the team has also discussed a lower-stakes option: leaking, anonymously, that the Orioles' 11-3 record includes a forfeit win the team does not actually want credit for, on the theory that a controversy over an unwanted victory might read as more newsworthy than a real one. Pitcher Ken Roskopf, 39, said he opposed this plan specifically, calling it "a real shame to manufacture outrage over the one part of our season that's already legitimate."

The Orioles' next home game is scheduled for Saturday at 1 p.m. at Roundy Hall Park. Haugen said the team has not finalized whether any controversy will occur, but confirmed that if one does, "it'll happen in the fourth inning, because that's when Sabatke's wife usually gets there, and we'd like her to see it."