Well, hello, everybody.
Welcome to an extra innings edition of Playmakers,
probably brought to you by Quality Plus Printing
and Family Natural Foods.
Got your host, James here.
And I am joined today by some amazing people.
And I can, does anybody feel that?
That's baseball.
It's right around the corner, everybody.
We are so darn close to it.
And we're going to really be setting it off today
with Meet Your Rafters, a special edition of the program
where we've got in with us today.
Coach Ziggy, because I'm not going to attempt that name
without talking to you about it first, sir.
I actually wanted to do this with you live on the air.
So we'll do that in a second.
Thanks for being here.
Coach, how are you doing?
Good.
I'm good.
Thanks for having me to honor to be here, sir.
And I also want to introduce, in turn,
with the rafters, Ryan Williams is with us as well.
Ryan, thanks for being here, man.
Pleasure to be here.
Thank you so much for having me.
Appreciate the time, you guys.
Let's go ahead and maybe the most important question
I'm going to ask today, Coach.
How do I say your last day?
Zyglowski.
Zyglowski.
Yeah, he's so bad.
That's so bad.
My name's Mayloff.
It falls under checklist of walking, because it's the water.
OK, all right.
OK, I would be Polish, so.
I am a history nerd.
I love that stuff.
That's awesome.
That's interesting.
Thank you for cheering them.
I am going to stick with Ziggy quite a bit.
But you prefer that.
I'm good with Ziggy.
Yeah, yeah.
I imagine you probably had to get used to that at the young age.
Zyglowski, on the back of the jersey,
was a little heavy at the young age.
They use up a lot of letters.
I'm not what they imagine.
You know, we'll talk with Ryan in a moment here.
But Coach, I'm going to put you on the spot.
I mean, talk to you first.
We're going to get to know you here a little bit today.
And one of my favorite questions
asked somebody when they first joined us,
a little bit of your origin story.
Tell us a little bit about you, where you're from,
and how you fell in love with baseball.
So I'm from California, Orange County, Garden Grove.
Born and raised been there 43 years.
Dad raised us as a single kid, or as a single family,
since I was in kindergarten, grew up on the baseball field.
That's all I remember is day in, day out,
dad doing the fields, dad waking up,
and taking us to tournaments.
And so that's my background growing up
was just a ball rat, you know, playing pickles
and butts up against the wall, stuff like that.
And so that's where I got my love for baseball.
I have a bit of a similar one.
My father was a minorly cocky player.
He was a boxer.
And I don't remember falling in love with hockey
or being introduced to me.
It just was a part of my life from such a young age.
So it wasn't so much that you fell in love with baseball.
You were born with baseball.
That's what we did.
And then you didn't realize why he was doing what he did.
It's, you know, it's raising a family's tough.
Yeah.
To know the grind that he put in just so we can play me
and my brother, it was as you get older,
you see and respect it.
Yeah, yeah.
And I imagine it only strengthens your love for the game.
And the connection with the game.
And that's the give back.
You know, I think that's where my coach and style
kind of takes over.
It's giving back all the time, you know,
be a player's coach first, you know, over my self-worth.
You know, we've, you know,
one of my next questions was going to be why baseball.
But we've kind of answered that.
We've kind of got ahead of that.
But so when it comes to that, why coaching?
What made you want to decide to keep pursuing this
and keep going and with following through and coaching?
Just opportunities, you know, giving opportunities
to people, you know, having a knack being, you know,
I was always a team captain.
So it was easy for me to teach.
You know, I felt like I teached why I played the game,
you know, so the transition was easy for me.
And you know, for me, I love recruiting.
I love the aspect of offering something, you know,
building something and building from ground zero, you know,
me taking over this job is ground zero.
You know, they've had a great program here,
but it's my year one.
You know, my year one starts my style
and my style's family and my style's community.
My style is, you know, opportunity, you know,
so that's, I'm blessed to be in a situation I'm in.
Every sport has, it's, you know,
it's advantages when it comes to these things and stuff,
but for me as somebody, I've joked with my dad my whole life.
I've always cheated with sports.
I love, you know, wins and losses and victories
like anybody else, my home team.
I'm a homer, you know, my team's winning.
I'm losing my mind and all that, but it's the people.
It's the stories.
Like I can't just look at a box score.
I've got to, I got to know the players.
I got to know a little bits and pieces about them
and everything and it only brings me more and more
into the game if it was just scores and wins and losses.
I don't know how much I'd care about sports.
It's, it's that heart, that fellowship
that you're touching on there that really brings you
to the game and I don't think there's a sport
that does that like baseball.
I think the stats, you know, got a lot of people away
from the game, you know, chasing stats.
They don't go back to old school, which is eyeball.
Does he pass the eyeball test?
What do I see out of it?
And you know, what fits in somebody else's storyline
may not be my storybook, you know?
So what fits in my pictures that I want to put in there?
And you know, that's how coaches should go about things
because opportunities will be offered to different people.
When you were touching on a little bit already,
your style of coaching, you're talking about family
fellowship, a lot of passion, you know,
fired up, be a team guy first, you know,
your rhythm will come, you know,
if you're in a struggle, find little small things,
get to the yard early, you know, pick up a bucket,
you know, let somebody who is hot,
give them a pat on the bat, you know,
then yours just start coming.
Right on.
When it comes to the ball play and all that,
do you consider yourself a bit of an aggressive manager,
somebody that wants the guys running those bases?
Go ahead.
We got to go.
Like, especially the way the Northwoods
was played last year in front of me,
it's chasing the portal, the transfer portal for kids,
trying to make a team sending them back with 17 stolen bases
that are up 16 to one.
Baseball got lost in my eyes, but if you don't keep up,
you're gonna get left behind.
So we have to be aggressive this year.
If guys are sitting on base more than three, four pitches,
we gotta go.
That's gotta be a style out here.
It's not maybe my style, but you have to adapt.
Getting to know these players and some of the,
you know, seeing some of the signings
throughout the offseason and some of that,
I can't help myself and I'm looking at their stats
and looking into them a little bit.
And I feel like I noticed the theme
and maybe it's just with the modern player,
but I feel like I've seen a lot of speed.
A lot of speed on this team, a lot of speed.
So my focus this year wasn't to bring in
the huge Virginia Kansas, huge, huge schools
that have the state of our programs
and they're coming into our one tunnel
and stuff like that to where I wanna build my style.
I don't wanna be judged.
And I think building lower bulldogs that are hungry,
looking for a home, I think it's easier
to build something from the beginning
because you build within.
And that's the style of people I brought in here.
Tonya, man, you guys keep this in mind.
You gotta back up left field or anytime you need it.
I will play any amount of innings for this man right now.
I just met you and you already got me ready
to run laps or anything bad, you're good, you're good.
When it comes to the type of team you've been building,
touching again on that a little bit,
is there anything that we can expect from this team
this year as far as that style of play
or what you're expecting from this team this year?
Every bit of being part of an organization
that's grabbing the nor, that's signing autographs,
that's being part of the, in the,
between the inning little skits that we do,
that's what you guys can expect out of this team
is somebody's, all these guys to be involved with you.
I know that we wanted to touch on a couple of more things
and just a couple of questions for you
and then we'll let you guys get back to the,
over at Winterfield and all the things got going on,
I'm sure.
I know that one of the things,
just talking to a pregame a little bit.
You mentioned early on that the camps and bringing those back
and how much that means to you and your coaching staff.
Can you touch on that a little bit?
Yeah, that's huge, you know.
We've been grinding all year at schools that we're at,
you know, been learning from some of these coaches
that have been around the game with 800 wins under their belt.
And these players are educated from that.
You know, being able to teach the youth
and touch, you know, get the community involved,
you know, coming out to these camps,
these guys can teach, but they get to learn as they teach as well.
You know, so it's a little bit of coaching style
that you want to bring, you know, to allow these players
to touch bases of what they learned all year
and then have these kids enjoy their time.
Baseball and hockey in the last 15 years
have done a really good job of trying to build their sports.
Going to areas that don't have ball parks
or ice rinks and building them,
truly, you know, trying to build the game,
literally build the game.
I talk with a coach Paul all the time
about this about the River Kings.
With the rafters and with baseball
and it's such an established thing,
I think that there is almost a tendency
and this is just human nature to be like, well, that's good.
You know, we, well, everybody knows baseball.
It's loved and everything,
but it's, it's such a different thing
from every different perspective, from every different player
and bringing in different minds, different players
like your, our different coaches like yourself.
You just don't know what these kids can learn,
what spark they could have.
And we all know the percentages of, of, of, you know,
people from high school to college
to get, make it to the pros.
It gets smaller and smaller.
But one thing we can guarantee no matter what is,
whatever they're going to do,
they could use some confidence in it.
They could use some people's skills
or, or just what it's like to work with others.
And, and so many of the things
that sports give us at a young age.
They, that's the thing coming in here.
Understand where your feet are.
Like, enjoy it.
Enjoy the process.
Sit next to somebody that you don't know yet.
Like, meet somebody that could be your best friend.
You know, I have five friends
that I can name off right now
and they're all baseball friends.
Right.
And they're 20 plus year friends.
So, enjoy the process.
Yeah, yeah, appreciate that coach.
Thank you so much.
I'll, I'll, I got one more for you
before we wrap up and everything.
But right, I wanted, I wanted to put you
on the spot for a minute and talk to you a little bit
because I, I'm always curious about, for interns
and when it's like, how, how are you enjoying
so far your time with Raptors?
I absolutely love it.
This is my first week here.
I've never been to Wisconsin before.
But this is my second stint in the Northwoods.
We're for the team in Bismarck last year.
I had a great experience out there.
I'll kind of piggyback off what Ziggy said.
Their culture and their style was a lot of the guys
bringing in those Kansas guys, those Virginia guys.
And I can definitely understand
where there's things that can go wrong,
especially in today's age with the portal,
trying to get kids signed.
And I love everything he's saying.
We're bringing in some flashy guys here.
I'm excited for the team.
And also, I'd want to shout out Austin Thomas,
great radio broadcaster for the Raptors.
I'm his right-hand guy.
We got a great crew, a lot of experience there.
Overall, and joined the experience that we got.
Excited for Monday.
Right on, man.
And yeah, Austin's great.
He came in the other day.
We were talking with him and everything.
He's got a golden voice.
It's not fair that I got to talk with that kid
talking at the same time.
It's not right.
He's great.
He's going to be fun this season.
We're looking forward to having you guys back
and talking more about this.
And the next time we do get together, Coach,
I would like to talk a little more about scouting,
the portal, those things.
I'm fascinated by that stuff.
It's changed the game completely.
It's high schoolers are out of the question anymore.
Juco kids, why would you get one
when you wait for a portal the next year
and grab a D1 kid?
It's changed the game, not so much going forward,
but I think maybe a step back, just from how the style's always
been, but that's to...
Yeah, we'll get to more into that sometime, though.
I appreciate that.
Thank you so much.
And so one thing I wanted to wrap up with both of you guys
about, and before we do that, Ryan,
let's go ahead and remind everybody about opening day
what time to get down to Winterfield and all that.
Yes, sir, we've got a packed house.
Tickets are selling off.
We have very few quantity left.
First pitch 635 against the Green Bay Rockers,
kicking off on Monday with 1,000 fans.
We're doing a special giveaway.
The mantra for this year is grab and or.
We're all in this together.
We're giving away oars to 1,000 fans and to Winterfield.
And then to wrap things up, we got a Firework Show Monday.
And for those that can't make it,
we got a Firework Show on this Friday.
Fantastic, nicely done, nicely done, man.
I wanted to ask both of you where the grab the oars,
if you know where that came from and how you feel about that one,
because I saw that early on with the press release of Coach here
and got really excited.
Like, that's good.
Man, I wish I would have come up with that.
That's a good one, right there.
Right in that raft, you know, it's through rough waters
or smooth selling.
Yeah, we're all rafters together in rafters country.
Yeah, fantastic.
All in this together.
Fantastic.
Before I let you go, I have to ask something
that we usually ask every baseball fan.
Do you have a favorite player, favorite team, anything?
You know, we can also root for with you guys, anything like that.
I'm a fan.
I'm a baseball fan.
He's such a good coach.
It's not a team thing.
It's not a person.
I'm a fan of baseball.
It's a great answer, man.
And I believe I hear you.
That's awesome.
I appreciate that.
Ryan, you got anybody anything like that?
See, I grew up in Newark, California,
and I'm sad about what's happening with my A's out there.
I'm a dire Yankees fan, but I'm a big fan of baseball in general.
That community is such a massive baseball town.
But like he said, like, we went to the high A game
for the Wisconsin Timberrallers, such a great environment there.
So I'm just a huge, big baseball fan in general.
I got one of my oldest friends is from the Oakland area.
And he's just devastated by that.
So what's happening with the A's and all that and everything.
That's another great conversation we could have sometimes.
I am a south side or I'm a white socks fan,
but so that doesn't really matter.
I mean, it really does it.
It doesn't do anything anymore.
But it is exciting that we got this team together.
That everybody's down there, Winterfield.
These last couple of days before the first pitch,
before the beginning of a new season,
what are you trying to put together for your team
in these last couple of days, coach?
Is there anything, any last second things you're doing
or just kind of just faster?
I know.
I got so many guys right now in playoff runs,
which is a great thing.
It's an opportunity that there are some don't get.
So I just got to wait till guys start showing in
to really kind of start locking in the system.
I admire coaching so much.
And it comes from being really little
and being around really good coaches
and really good leaders and everything.
But at this level, I don't know if I admired it anymore
and then at this level with the amount of just spinning plates
and different things that you have to do.
I'm looking so forward to not only this year,
but going forward, working with you,
and building not only our relationship
between our businesses and our station
and you guys and all of that,
but certainly making sure that the audience
and the community gets to know you
and every one of these players.
We're looking forward to a really fun, long summer.
It's gonna be great.
And remember everybody, every hit, every pitch,
every winner, after baseball,
right where it belongs here at WFHR
where it's been for 16 plus years.
But we encourage you to get to the ballpark.
We love you, talk, listen to us and everything.
But the real action, the real fun is at Witterfield.
Make sure to make plans.
Stop by the studios here, pick up one of these pocket schedules
and make your plans and we'll meet you
at Witterfield, be sure to grab your ore.
Thank you guys, appreciate the time.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, sir.
We'll be back with more playmakers for you on 105-5-WRI.
