Midwestern floodwaters force minor league baseball team on the road for weeks

May 4, 2019, 15:08 UTC

By Phil McCausland

The historic and deadly flood that has devastated the Midwest for several months and caused billions of dollars in damage to farms and state infrastructure has also prevented a minor league baseball team from Davenport, Iowa, from play the nation's favorite pastime.

The rising waters, which is expected to affect millions of people in no fewer than 25 states during the summer, has prevented the Quad City River Bandits, a team of minor A-class affiliates affiliated with the Houston Astros, play at home.

The Mississippi's invasive waters forced the team to stay almost perpetually on the road for the first six weeks of the season.

"To be honest with you, the wall that breaks down a few days ago and you look at the downtown images is pretty shocking," said Matt Ruppenthal, who was selected by the Houston Astros in 2017. "We are currently in a situation where we do not know when we can play at home."

Although the team remains in first place, it can not reach its stadium because it is surrounded by water. This means that players can not train regularly, stadium employees have had to find other jobs and the team has not known much else than the road for most of the season.

"As a staff, we rent a house in Davenport and have slept there four times," said Ray Hernandez, the team's first-year manager. "We are on the road every day. Fortunately, the Astros allow us to spend the night in places where we should be on the bus. "

The bus is no longer just a means of transportation for the River Bandits. It serves as Hernandez's office and team headquarters, but it does not allow these baseball hopefuls – still far from major leagues – to grow or play in front of a crowd of fans.

"They had three practices in our field," said Jacqueline Holm, Executive Director since October. "They have hardly been on the ground. It's hard for them to do anything. We basically had to use the bus teams as clubhouse and storage unit. "

While the River Bandit Stadium is flood-protected by a dike system and can be accessed in case of flood, thanks to a parade of footbridges at an altitude of 21 feet, this is not enough yet to cope to record high of 22.64 feet reaches 22.64 feet Thursday. the national meteorological service.

Even though the waters are high and made the stadium inaccessible, it did not have a major impact on the city itself. With a unique flood protection system, only a few dozen businesses and residents in Davenport, about 103,000 people, are affected by the floods.

Many cities along the Mississippi have built flood walls to protect themselves from the rising waters, but the city has been refusing to do the same for decades. Instead, she worked on the construction of flood-proof buildings and created a walking area along the river around the baseball stadium that can accommodate extra water while building a temporary berm system as needed.

"We kissed the Mississippi River," said Frank Klipsch, Davenport's mayor since 2016. "It is becoming increasingly popular to adopt this type of resilience plan because if we build a wall, it will worsen the situation for communities further downstream."

Nevertheless, some unlucky contractors saw several feet of water running through their restaurants and storefronts this week when this temporary lift, which had already lasted 40 days this year, suddenly broke.

New rains are also expected to hit the area early next week – a well-known fact of Kyle Carter, who has a downtown bar and is executive director of the Downtown Davenport Partnership.

"This community is used to flooding," he said on the phone, as he and other business owners were working on putting in extra sandbag protections. "We are not strangers, but it is historic at the moment, we are dealing with something we have never seen."

It's certainly not something that baseball hopefully saw, and it made it even harder for a difficult career path.

While many major league baseball players can earn astronomical sums – more than $ 4 million on average, according to the Associated Press -, minor leagues are often left behind to cover their needs. The maximum starting salary of USD 5,500 in 2014 was weakened when Congress passed its spending bill in March 2018. The law contained a provision protecting the teams from the payment of the minimum wage and overtime of minor leagues, effectively making a league minimum obsolete.

For the River Bandits, this means that players live in host families or in swimming pools in order to rent apartments near the stadium. The floods have added to the difficulties they are already facing.

The first year manager of River Bandit certainly did not miss the additional challenges that praised him for his resilience and ability to stay focused.

Nevertheless, it's a unique and difficult situation, admitted Hernandez.

"Even though it was my 15th season at the helm, I do not know if I would know how to handle it," he said. "I mean, who can I even call to ask for advice?"