Welcome, everybody, to Midday magazine for this March 31st, 2025.
Have your host, James Jamail, off here, welcoming in the studio.
Our good friend, assistant GM of your Wisconsin rapids,
raptors, Jake Adams is with us right now.
Jake, good to see you, man.
Good to see you too, James.
Always fun being on here.
Got the raptor shirt on.
Uh, I was excited to put this on this morning, because not only does it mean
that warmer weather is around the corner, uh, but we're going to be talking
raptor baseball more and more as we go forward here.
Uh, I like to take this moment to remind our audience,
not only as WFHR, but in the home of the Wisconsin rapids raptors since they
got to town, uh, but, uh, we're proud of that and we enjoy doing that.
And something we're really looking forward to getting back into the swing
of things with is working with you guys more and having more of the players
and more of you on the air with us.
And some of this, uh, last year we weren't able to do it as much as we would
have liked to you guys and us.
Uh, so we're going to get back into the swing of things with that and looking
forward to it.
Um, one of the things we're looking forward to is being able to have show
uh, moments like this and remind people, hey, today's go day, like those
tickets are on sale today.
Those single game tickets, man, those are we love.
They're on sale today.
Yes, sir.
We just dropped them today, uh, exciting season right around the corner,
but make sure to head on over to raftersbaseball.com or shoot us an email at
PR at raftersbaseball.com, give us a call, stop in just anything.
Get your tickets today.
We want you guys to be involved with all the fun.
We're going to be having for the 2025 season, but we just want to get you out
to Witterfield this summer.
I don't mean to brag or anything, but I knew about this right away this morning
because I signed up, uh, from the text chain, uh, which you can do.
Just go to northwoodsleague.com.
A little thing pops up right away and I, uh, Roscoe hit me up.
So I am texting with Roscoe now, uh, that just feels really good.
It feels awesome, but it's a really cool service that you guys are offering.
Now I don't, I don't know how long you've been doing this, um, but it seems like
the first time I've really noticed this, uh, it's a great way to keep up the
date on rafter baseball information like this, knowing about single game
tickets and stuff.
And, uh, it's very easy to sign up for it, encourage you to go to northwoodsleague.com.
Not only to get those tickets, but to sign up and get those updates from Roscoe,
weather updates, um, exclusive deals, things like that.
Um, you're, you're information for your rafters coming to you, you know,
uh, you don't even have to hunt it down.
That's kind of cool.
Exactly.
We're really excited about the tech service because it gives us the most
one to one to our fans that we can get.
And if there's weather updates to the minute to the second, even if we can, uh,
fun upgrades, fun deals that will be happening, just keep an eye on your phone
during the summer because you could get moved up from bleach your seats to
homeplay club.
You could get a discount on a jersey, discount on hot dogs, anything in the ballpark,
just we're going to have a lot of fun with our tech service.
So keep an eye on that.
It'll be fun to use this summer.
Encourage you to sign up for it.
Everybody northwoodsleague.com, uh, in those single game tickets again or on sale
right now, you can go ahead and get those, make plans for that, you know,
one game that you're looking forward to are multiple games.
Um, it's the greatest entertainment you can have.
There are no reruns with baseball.
There are no reruns with rafter baseball.
It's a lot of fun.
The promotions, everything else will be talking about coming up.
Um, all of that they're waiting for you.
Get up, be sure to sign up and get those tickets.
Speaking of promos, uh, another thing that follow it, we encourage people to
follow you guys online on social media.
Uh, if you are, you know already that you got something really cool, uh,
lined up coming back to town here.
Um, one that, uh, a very, very popular event from previous years.
And, and that is wrestling and baseball combining worlds.
Oh, yeah.
I, I grew up a big professional wrestling fan.
My uncle used to show me old 80s and 90s wrestling.
First thing I remember of it, Hulk Hogan slamming Andre the giant,
but this was such a fun promotion to put together, talking with, uh,
Hornswaggle to bring ACW back out to Witterfield.
They enjoyed it last year.
We're looking forward to it.
Just a fun night, a wrestling baseball.
And what more could you ask for a fun summer night?
It's a, I love when the, the world's combined you, uh, you and I very similar.
I grew up on 80s wrestling in so much of that and watched much of the current
artists and all and everything.
Um, it's a fun combination of these.
The sports fan, uh, it's not surprising to find a similar sports fan that,
like wrestling as well as that.
Uh, and, uh, not for nothing in this area, wrestling is huge.
Like whether we're talking about the, you know, WWE type wrestling or just,
you know, high school wrestling and some of that.
So again, and I really like knowing your audience, which is something the
rafters have done from the very beginning, uh, I've always admired and,
and really listening to your community.
It's so much of what, um, you might not think, uh, you would, Jake,
because you're good at this.
But I think people like myself might not think going into the job right away,
but how vital that is to really be in tune with your community.
Yeah, I mean, starting the job in September, I heard a lot of things from fans.
And I wanted to hear everything because first summer in Wisconsin rap,
it's kind of getting to know the audience, what you want to see,
what you don't want to see.
And I'll tell you one thing, ACW was a very popular.
We need to see this again.
But, uh, coming down to all of our decisions with our promotion schedule,
with prices on food, food options, everything in general.
We wanted to hear from our fans because they're the ones that are here every year,
trying to be loud and trying to support the rafters every year.
And I loved being able to sit in the office, have people stop by and say,
Hey, we really enjoyed ACW last year.
Are we bringing it back?
We really enjoyed the car show last year.
Are we bringing it back just overall asking a lot of questions where we heard you guys.
We didn't just throw away those comments, throw away all the email blasts or everything.
We listened to you and we want to make sure we can listen to you in the future too.
When it comes to that, you know, there's, there's two layers to this for me.
One, um, and we, we talked about this on playmakers last week too.
The, the history of baseball in this area and how much they love it.
And also have a different appreciation than some areas do where for a long time,
they had a minor league baseball team here in rapids that they were able to check out and everything.
And then that gets taken away.
And so you have that along with the coinciding along with the braves leaving and being a Milwaukee and then that leaving.
So you've got generations of baseball fans in this area or in this state that know what it's like
to lose, love a team and lose them.
So when a team comes back to the area, you know that that's going to do well.
You know that that's going to be a positive for that area.
And sure enough, here we are, you know, decades into this run with the rafters.
And we're seeing like the attendance staying the same.
We're seeing so much of the quality of the game being the same and what the product on the field being the,
you know, so many of these things.
It's not a coincidence.
This is working as well as it is.
I think that's really interesting and unique when you look at it.
And then there's the idea of something that we don't see that often around here.
So we've had such good consistency from the rafters organization, regardless of who the ownership is,
that's been a consistent ship year in and year out.
And so we got some new blood in the front office this year.
Got some new people in there.
And with that becomes new like hunger as hungry as these players are to get out there and get to the next level,
give you everything they got and leave it all on the diamond.
I believe that our front office is very similar to that.
You guys are hungry.
You guys will wait for an opportunity like this.
I'm sure you've had ideas for years that you've wanted to do that.
Now you and your team are going to be able to really see, hey, can we do this?
Can we pull this off?
It's exciting for us as a community.
That's exciting for us as fans of this game.
They've had nothing but consistency and great ideas and great promotions over there.
It's just kind of fun to bring some new blood in and see where this goes and see the fun we can have with it.
Absolutely.
Our front office in general is excited for 2025 this summer because we all came together and we have the same mindset where we can go out there and pray for a Northwoods league championship.
We're going to be hunting for that.
But more than anything, we want our fans to have a great time this summer at Witterfield.
Go back to those feelings of the 2016 Northwoods league championship.
The post COVID year 2021 where everyone's out celebrating being able to go do something we want to bring back the excitement of rafters baseball where in the past, we've seen the consistency.
We've seen kind of this community rally around us and we want to give back to that community as much as possible.
We're trying our best to be out there talking to as many people as possible about rafters baseball.
And I can say on behalf of our front office, when Connor, who have been here and Ken or GM, who we have to get on here eventually, but we're excited to give you guys the best show as possible because we know Ziggy's working hard building a great roster.
We're trying to work equally as hard to make Witterfield the place to be this summer.
It's one of the things that I really respect about the way things run over there.
The idea, this should be common sense, but it's a little fresh nowadays of hiring somebody and letting them do the job they were hired for.
Absolutely.
Like just getting out of their way, not being jury Jones, basically, it's just like, well, I can do that.
You know, even the popcorn guy, just it's such a unique thing in this day and age and it's not always easy to do.
I admit that too, especially at this level where you got to wear multiple hats no matter what your job is.
That's just how it works. That's how it works in radio too and everything.
But I find that that much our organization that much stronger.
I love all the teams in the Northwoods Lake.
I think we have a great league here and everything, but I'm obviously a homer and I root for the rafters board the daddy.
But I also do that in part because of the front office and the management and the way that they run that team and the way that everything you just said there.
We love to win.
We many of us in this area remember what it's like to win a title.
We're very fortunate to be able to say that and everything.
But we can't guarantee wins or losses.
Nobody can.
Nobody knows.
You can have everything you want on paper, but you get them out there on that field and who knows.
But one thing we can really work to do and almost guarantee is that you have fun things to look forward to.
That you have reasons to want to come to the ballpark.
That regardless of what the score is, you've got something fun.
Look forward to in between innings or or food that you enjoy or just a camaraderie.
Absolutely.
And we're really excited to kind of roll into 2025 roll into May 26.
Get everything going because kind of the coined mantra for this year from coach Ziggy is grab a nor.
We're all in this raft together from the nine players on the field.
The coaches in the dugout, all the players in the bullpen to the front office to all of our game day staff and all of our fans.
We are all on this raft together.
We're all have a mission, a job that we need to get done.
The players are going to play their hearts out this season.
They're young, they're hungry, they're ready for a title.
Same goes to Ziggy, Mike Spears, our coaches coming in.
Our front office, we want to give you the best show possible.
But for our fans, grab in that or it's being at the ballpark, making noise,
being supportive of that hometown team.
Because like you said, this team, this fan base is unlike something I've ever seen before.
And we're seeing that support coming in droves.
And we want to make sure that 2025 is the season you will never forget in Raptor's history.
Want to cannot wait to talk with coach Z.
I look forward to getting to pick his brain a little bit in part because I want to know
how good it felt when he came up with that or line.
Like as a creative and somebody like, oh, that's so good, you write that down, you're
so proud of it.
I got to know what he feels like.
Because that's such a good, it's so good.
That's such a great one.
Everything I've heard and read about him already, I'm excited about and very much looking
forward to.
We are speaking with Assistant GM Jake Adams, who were Wisconsin Rapids, Raptors and Jake
as we were talking promos and Raptor baseball and getting excited about it.
One thing that I have to mention journalistically is you and I are getting to know each other
and everything.
I'm a foolish romantic man.
I am just a sucker for romance.
I go way back in my history.
So I see as a promotion, renew your vows with the Raptors and this one hits my heart
right away because I love sports too.
One lucky couple will renew their vows on the field after the game.
I don't think I've ever heard of a promotion like this before.
It sounds like a really fun thing.
What is this all about?
Yeah, so renew your vows night.
I'll give credit to a previous boss of mine, Ryan Vaz, who kind of helped me come up with
this promotion.
We kind of talked about in the front office during this off season.
We want to show you things you've never seen before and a lot of people have talked about
how they've been going to games with their wife, their husband, their significant other
for years.
We sat down and said, what if we give this couple the opportunity to renew their vows
on the field after the game, but in general, we're going to turn the ballpark into a wedding
that day.
There will be vendors from different wedding shows, wedding opportunities.
We'll have bachelor party, bachelor at party games during the game and then post game.
You are going to be walked down the aisle by coach Ziggy and little plug again for me
and my GM because we're both ordained ministers.
We are going to do the ceremony after the game.
That's I'm an ordained also very nice line, but yeah, that's the same with me.
Yeah.
Okay.
That is awesome.
Yeah.
I love this.
I love this idea.
This is fantastic.
I feel a little foolish not thinking of it right away, but you're so right.
And my own parents have baseball memories of going to games together and stuff and it's
something that is really intertwined with that.
So to bring that to this world is fantastic.
Now, the one thing I did not see in the notes was the idea of turning the whole ballpark
into a wet like that.
Yes.
Wow.
That's going to be fun.
Honestly, we're very excited for the night because the more we talk about it, the more
ideas are getting thrown out there, like what if we have the whole team stay after and
attend the wedding?
What if we can turn Witterfield into the biggest wedding Wisconsin rapids has seen in
a long time?
And that's the goal and we've already started to get submissions for this couple and
we're reading these love stories that are born in baseball like people are intertwining
Witterfield rafters, the twins, anyone who was here into their love story and we love
to see that because we have the baseball mine of heart, but no one really talks about
that intertwined of romance and baseball and we're seeing it in person.
They're intertwined whether it's TV shows, movies we've seen it before done and it's sometimes
it feels like they have the force of love story into a movie or like an action movie as
they do it all the time.
In baseball, it never felt forced to me.
Whatever movie, whatever scenario you're talking about because I think that this is just
kind of something that's almost intertwined to what we don't really talk about or see
very much.
We're going to be able to really put a spotlight on it that day.
Absolutely.
It's going to be a fun one.
You can enter your submissions at northwoodsleag.com and encourage you all to do that out there
all you couples.
While we're talking promos and we certainly, there's other things that will be released
and in the works as we're building up to opening day, I do want to remind everybody
about your, I don't want to say every day, but every week kind of promotions like military
Mondays and some of those things.
Are you guys bringing those back?
Yep.
We will be doing military Monday again where all veterans, anyone who serve, current
serve, will get a free ticket into the game, receive a hot dog and we're trying to build
that a little bit more where our partnership with Ho-Chung Gaming, Nikusa has allowed us
to kind of branch that out a little more.
We're introducing the military member of the game this year where we will be building
a private hospitality area where we're also accepting submissions now for a military
member of the game and you will be honored as our military member and you will receive
complimentary tickets.
That's not just Mondays, that's every game this season, we'll be doing that, but some
of the popular ones are coming back, our Thursday, Thursday specials, everyone loves the beer
at a ball game.
So buy one, get one, we'll be returning, firework Fridays, who doesn't love fireworks
after a game of baseball.
We're making sure that comes back and we're going to have a lot of firework shows with
how many Friday games we have, our home opener and our closing ceremonies will have fireworks.
But there are a couple of surprises that are yet to come out where I'll give you the
first dib's benefit of knowing we will be releasing our promo schedule in full next
Monday.
So we wanted to keep it close enough to when single game tickets are released, but we
wanted to give you a little suspense.
We have a couple more teasers coming out where you'll get those first kind of looks at
what we're doing.
But full promo schedule, all of our giveaways, all of our fun that we're having will be
next Monday.
I heard you hear first, everybody.
Thank you for that, Jay.
I appreciate that.
It's very excited about it, especially to hear what you're the above and beyond you
guys and whole chunk are doing for our military, our veterans and all that.
We greatly appreciate that.
Any chance to be able to do that, we love winning, we love being able to watch the games
going to the ballpark, this level and what we're doing here is on so many other levels
and means so much else, whether we're talking about the players and trying to help these
kids chase their dream down and reach the next level, we're talking about that with anybody
and involved with the rafters, or we're talking about what it means to this community and
bringing us together and how we have less and less opportunities in society for strangers
sitting next to the stranger and enjoying themselves and being on the same page and laughing
whether they're at a movie theater and laughing at a scene in the movie or you know see
a home run happen in the ninth inning or something like that and cheering together.
We need more of that in our society and baseball brings it to us.
It's a very cool opportunity for us and we're cannot wait for the season to kick off and
get going.
And as we're living the last minutes here and in the last months and last weeks I should
say before the season, what's it like in these last days as you're dotting your eyes crossing
your teeth getting ready for opening day?
I mean, the excitement is palpable.
I've said that all off season for our fans.
Now we're feeling that in the front office too because snow even though we got a little
bit yesterday, we're going to start seeing that melting and we see the green popping
out on the winter field field.
We're starting to get things done.
Our clubhouse is getting renovated.
We're starting to see the ballpark coming to life again and we're very excited for all
the dates coming up.
We're going to be getting our game day staff already.
We're going to have our interns coming in on May 12th and getting them used to the Wisconsin
Rapids Raptors lifestyle.
But I think in general, we are ready to get this started because we see how exciting this
town can get around the rafters and we want that back.
We want to be in the midst of it.
I want to remind everybody too that the rafters all season off season regularly season whenever
it is are really good at keeping up to date on player signings and you know, coach signings
and some of those things.
So it's a great idea to follow them on northwards league.com or follow them on social media wherever
you are on social media or all of them.
It's a great way to keep up to date on your rafters and some of the cool signings and
different things that go on over there and certainly some of the stuff we've talked
about and next week you're going to want to be able to go over there and check out that
promo page and check out all of the amazing promos and all the cool things that are going
to be him coming up.
Jake always appreciate the time to look forward to hanging out all summer along with you
and the team.
It's going to be a blast.
If people have follow up questions or if there's a business out there that would like to reach
out to you guys, any of the above, how can they get a hold of you?
Yeah, real easy to get a hold of us.
You can reach us at our office phone 715 424 5400 reach out email.
We have both info at rafters baseball.com and PR at rafters baseball.com both are being
monitored.
We'll answer all our questions, get everything all set, but also stop in.
We have our log cabin.
That's the merch store during the season.
We want to see everyone.
We love talking rafters baseball with people last week on Thursday, MLB opening day.
I had a bunch of people stop in to talk about baseball.
We want to see you guys.
We want to have these conversations.
Have an or and get ready for another great season of rafter baseball.
Keep in mind every hit, every pitch, every win at rafter baseball right here at WFH are
all season long.
And we encourage you to get to the ballpark and get those single game tickets and northwoods
league.com.
Be sure to follow the rafters on social media.
Jake will talk again real soon.
Thanks for the time, man.
Thank you.
I always appreciate it.
And of course, again, northwoods league.com.
Be sure to follow them on social media, get those tickets and get ready to go for another
great season of rafter baseball.
We'll have a great week of Midday Magazine lined up for you.
Be listening for that right here at 975 FM 1320 AM, WFHR.
We are locally grown radio.
