Are the Bay Days Back?

The rivalry between the Sister Bay Bays and Baileys Harbor As fuels competitive, and community, fires every summer. Photo by Dan Eggert.

It’s only June, but a hot start has people celebrating Bay Days again in Sister Bay. This Sunday the 5-1 Sister Bay Bays will host the undefeated Egg Harbor Indians in a battle for the top of the Door County League baseball standings at the Sister Bay Sports Complex.

Bays catcher James Larsen called it the biggest game in almost two decades for a team that once knew nothing but big games. From 1974 to 1994 summer Sundays were celebration days in Sister Bay. In an unprecedented run of league dominance the Sister Bay Bays won 11 regular season Door County League Baseball championships, including four in a row from 1988 – 1991 and six out of seven from 1988 – 1994. In five other seasons the Bays lost the regular season crown but took home the playoff championship.

Those teams were powered by the arm of Mark Woerfel, widely regarded as the best player in league history, and a rabid fan base that made Sundays at the old ballpark by the water-tower a village-wide tradition. But when the core of that team began to retire in the early 1990s the team struggled to reload. By 2000 the once-proud Bays had gone from competing for titles to battling to stay out of the cellar, bottoming out with five straight last-place finishes from 2004 – 2008. Gone were the days of trophies and victory celebrations – the stiffest Sunday competition in Baysville was to avoid the Boobie Prize at the Red Putter Mini Golf Course after the game.

Larsen came to the Bays in 2009 from West Jacksonport, where he won three championships. He said an insurgence of young talent (the so-called “Baby Bays”) and veteran maturation turned the team around in the middle of the 2010 season.

“We started 1 – 6 and finished with 5 wins,” he said. “Suddenly guys started feeling like we deserved to win games again.”

Those “Baby Bays” include young southpaws Sam Forkert and Will Henriksen on the mound, 2nd baseman Tom Sawyer, left fielder Dusty Johnson, and 3rd baseman Alan Peterson, all just 19 years old. Larsen said Sunday’s game will be a match-up of two of the league’s best pitchers, with Forkert as the young gun and Egg Harbor’s Robbie Schartner the dominant, crafty old pro. Sawyer is fast developing into one of the league’s top players whose mere presence on the basepaths “is a game-changer.”

Those young players aren’t just performing, they’re leading, Larsen said. Their play pushed the team’s veterans to another level, as Justin Hartl, Alex Higginbotham, Adam Biwer and Tucker Emerson are all playing some of the best ball of their careers.

“I think those young guys made the older veterans realize they better start playing or they were going to be gone,” Larsen said. They’re reward is playing meaningful baseball and making the term “Bay Day” mean something more than just showing up for the first time in 17 years.

Managers Jason Bauldry and Clark Erickson, a key player in the Bays title run, are enjoying the return to the top.

“You wouldn’t believe how happy they are now,” Larsen said. “They’ve always been really positive, but now they’re really enjoying it again.”

On Sunday at 1:30 pm at the Sister Bay Sports Complex, the county league will find out if the Bays, indeed, are back.