Spectating: Mallards stage a 'circus' that pleases the purists
Madison Mallards general manager Vern Stenman likes to walk against the grain following many of his team's games. As the fans head for the exit, Stenman will wade into the Duck Pond to shake hands and take the pulse of the customers.
It was during some of those meet-and-greets in the midst of the Mallards' mid-season swoon last year that Stenman encountered that rarest of birds ndsh the disgruntled Mallards fan. No, they weren't unhappy with that night's goofy promotion or dissatisfied with the quality of the turkey legs. They were just mildly bummed that their team had lost.
Which is not an altogether bad thing, for it reconfirmed something that Stenman knew all along ndsh that winning matters.
"We had a stretch last year where we were bad," Stenman recalled. "People would come up to me and say, 'Man, what's going on here? What are we going to do about it?' I got that from a lot of people.
"There totally are people who don't care at all about the score of the game. I love the fact that those people come out here. Honestly, if we just marketed ourselves to baseball purists, we'd get 1,000 fans a night if we were lucky."
But, of course, the Mallards are not marketed just to baseball purists. And the inspired marketing schemes of Stenman and his merry band of promoters have attracted more than a million fans to the Duck Pond over the team's first seven years of existence, surpassing the 200,000 mark each of the past three seasons.
The Mallards' eighth season, which begins next Thursday, will feature many of the same kind of promotions their fans have come to expect, from Friday the 13th Night with Eddie Munster (June 13) to Leave it to Beaver Night starring Jerry Mathers as the Beaver (July 11) to William Hung Karaoke Night (July 26).
And then there's what is rapidly becoming Stenman's favorite promotion: good baseball. Hopefully, on display every night.
"We kind of see ourselves right now as a little bit of a baseball team with a circus attached to it," he said. "That's fine. That's the thing that's gotten us here. But as we look long term five or 10 years down the road we're always going to have the fun atmosphere, but we want people to know this is pretty good baseball, too.
"The baseball side of things is always No. 1 with me, followed closely by all those other things. But at the end of the day, are we going to have loyal fans of a circus 10 years from today? Maybe. But are we going to have loyal fans of a baseball team 10 years from today? For sure, we are.
"That's why it's important to have the crazy atmosphere, but it's baseball ndsh good baseball ndsh that I think people really enjoy."
Changes at ballpark
Stenman and manager C.J. Thieleke have been busy the past several months trying to put together a team of college players from around the country that will help entertain the throngs at Warner Park this summer.
The challenge is to draw about 6,000 fans for each of the 34 dates this summer, despite having only about 250 season ticket holders. They're able to pull it off by developing a wide, if shallow, pool of fans willing to spend a couple nights a year at the Duck Pond. Market research shows that almost 100,000 different people come to a Mallards game in a given year.
"There are a lot of things going on in Madison in the summer," Stenman said. "That's why it's such a great place to be. And we love to be a part of that mix. We accept that people are going to come to two or three or four games a year and there's nothing wrong with that. We just need to get a lot of different people out here and broaden our base.
"When I meet people around town, I almost never meet anybody that hasn't been to a game. But I almost never meet somebody that comes to 20 games a year."
Fans returning to the Duck Pond this season will notice a couple additions aimed to enhance the experience. Added to the culinary options will be Maynard's, a 100 percent locally sourced burger joint featuring fresh meat from Stoddard's Meat Market in Cottage Grove.
"People love coming to the ballpark and throwing their diet out the window, sitting back and eating really good food," Stenman said. "There's an emotional connection people make with the atmosphere here, and the food is part of that. And whenever we can we will always go with the local product."
The most noticeable addition this year will be a video board installed on the left field fence. It will be used to show instant replays and biographical information on the players. That's all good, but Stenman is admittedly a little reluctant to move into the digital world, pointing to the manually operated scoreboard in right field that replaced the electronic scoreboard that never really worked.
"It's almost bittersweet," he said, "because I always liked the fact that we were kind of anti-technology."
What helped sell him on the idea is that the video board will also be used to deliver commercial messages that previously had to be read between innings by Mallards public address announcer/comedian Aaron Sims. The PA announcements will be cut from about 115 a game last year to maybe 20 this year.
"We always felt like we could never have too many PA announcements," Stenman said. "But I was sitting at a game last year and it was overwhelming. It was the eighth inning and here's Aaron scrambling to get six more live reads in. I said this isn't good. It's taking away from the product on the field and it's taking away from what Aaron can do. It's like a 60 minute show with 45 minutes of commercials.
"The thing I'm most excited about this year off the field is that we're going to have less of that pounded over your head and a better stage for Aaron to do what he does and to play music. I think it's going to have a huge impact on our whole presentation."
Still 'subversive' enough
It's all part of the delicate balancing act of meshing a sporting event with entertaining embellishments, without letting the sideshow overwhelm the main event. And as the Mallards have grown increasingly popular ndsh their average attendance has gone from 1,039 in 2001 to over 6,000 in each of the past two seasons ndsh they strive to maintain their humble, anti-establishment aura that has been part of their charm.
"Can you be too successful? That's a good question," Stenman said. "We just try to get a little better from year to year and not take ourselves too seriously.
"We understand the cynical nature of the stereotypical Madisonian. They like the alternative lifestyle type of thing. As we've gotten bigger, there's some feeling out there that it's not this little thing that I know about and nobody else does. With the Mallards, yeah, we're successful but I think we're still subversive enough periodically that we can keep those people."
How ever one defines the Mallards' mystique, Stenman is determined to satisfy the fans on all fronts.
"If you ask 10 people what they like about the Mallards, I'm pretty sure you'll get 10 different answers," he said. "Somebody might say they've got great baseball; somebody might say they're affordable; somebody might say they love the commotion off the field. We take it all pretty seriously. I think if you do a good job in all those spots, you're going to have a real broad appeal.
"What I do know is it's more fun when there's a lot of people here. When we have 6,000 or 6,500 people here, everybody has more fun. It's got an electric kind of feel to it.
"And I know for sure that people have more fun when the Mallards win. Even if you're not paying attention to the score, there's something that happens in the crowd when the team is winning and things are going right."
Michelle Stocker/The Capital Times
The Madison Mallards have attracted more than 1 million fans in their first seven seasons.
