Paul Welker enjoys his job as GM for Hornell Dodgers

“When I moved to Hornell, when I got the job at Alfred State College, the only thing I knew about this area was that there was a Wegmans, and I knew there was a summer collegiate baseball team here.”

So said Paul Welker as he is in his fifth year as General Manager of the Hornell Dodgers in the New York Collegiate Baseball League (NYCBL).

“I’ve been with the team the 10 years I’ve been down here in Hornell,” the Webster native added. His younger brother Andrew Welker is the Webster Schroeder girls varsity head basketball coach.

“The first night I was here, I was at the stadium watching games. By the next summer, I had gone to meetings and I was part of the NYCBL league order. I was the statistician for the whole league, and I was helping work for the Dodgers.”

Welker and Tom Kennedy, who founded the Dodgers, did the ground work to start another NYCBL team at Alfred State College, the Alfred Thunder.

“Tom wore two hats for a while, he was the general manager of the Dodgers, but I was running the operations,” Welker said. “He was helping getting the operations going for Alfred.

“Down here in the Southern Tier, the same people started three or four teams, then find people to take it over. It’s been nice because we’re relatively close and natural rivals, low cost for travel.”

Q: What has the attendance been like? Seems like you get more here than say in Webster.
A: We average around a couple of hundred on a normal night, between 150 and 250. We have some great sponsors, most every night we have a sponsor who is done some great promotions. We get great publicity from the local newspaper (Hornell Evening Tribune, a GateHouse Media newspaper). They’re here most every day covering the team. Our guys live with host families, and basically they end up with a fan club from that family. I do some stupid things, daring people that I would do something if 400 people get here. We also do a lot in the school year, going to visit schools. We actually played two games at 11 a.m. during the school year where we invited local kids from the four local schools. They guys really didn’t like the 11 a.m. start, but we had 600 kids here when we had Hornell here, and we had 450 here when we had the other three schools. The guys are from all across the country and they want to play in front of people, and they want to sign autographs. Some of these guys are humbled, even if they don’t have a good day, the kids still want their autograph. It’s kind of a neat thing we have here. They’ve had this team here since 1994.

Several former Dodgers are now in the major leagues, including Atlanta Braves pitcher Tim Hudson; Oakland A’s southpaw Dallas Braden; and Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Rajai Davis.

“That’s something the people in this area are proud of,” Welker said. “They lived in one of a fellow family’s house here. We could tell stories about Dallas Braden all day because he’s a character. When you hear him talking on David Letterman, and all the stuff that came after the perfect game (May 9, 2010 vs Tampa Bay Rays). We sit there and laugh, ‘Oh, that’s exactly Dallas,’ because that’s the way he was here as a 19-year-old.”

Q: Are all your games on radio?
A: Yes. We have a nice partnership with a local radio station. They broadcast to the local community. They also have a cable channel that is broadcast live through the Time Warner system. The whole league is supposed to have games on the Internet so the parents (from players from California, Texas, etc.) can follow along since they can’t be here for the two months we’re borrowing their kids. The local sports are big here in Hornell. The (high school) football team hasn’t lost a game in two years. They have this stadium and they host high school sections, and the baseball team here has been very good as well. It’s a proud sports community and it’s fun to be the summer part of it.

Tony Fuller, a former Braman Post player and coach and assistant baseball coach at Monroe Community College, is the new head coach for the Dodgers. He had never been to Maple City Park prior to taking over as coach.

"It's a different stadium," Welker said. "It's land-locked. You hit home runs into the street. Today a guy hit a home run and it bounces off a person's house in center field. We have no out-of-play fence. We have people sitting on the sidelines. I call them the true die-hard Dodger fans. There are two light posts in the field. It's a weird field. Center field is 349, and most places are 385. It seems you should be hitting home runs out of there all the time, but it doesn't happen often.

"I remember playing in this league and playing at this field, and you hear the fans. It's a big grandstand. There are faces who have been here for 10, 15 years.

"We have fans who line up down the (left field) line and watch the game from their cars. We have a fan who actually pays her season seat, but she never comes to the games. She watches it from her porch in right field.

"It's a great community. When they started here, they were drawing 750 to...when they hosted all-star games and big games here, they were drawing close to 1,000 people.

"The town has struggled because the biggest business is trains. They live and die on rehab train and subway cars.

Q: What type of promotions do you run?
A: A lot of it is we just get our guys into the community, into the schools. We go to restaurants and seat people. A lot of the publicity comes through the newspaper. I tell the guys they're our biggest advertisements because they have stories. They're working out in the weight room, they're going to eat at different places. They're really held high here. The first week they probably heard 20 times from me, you're not Ben Gielow (fellow Webster native) anymore, you're a Hornell Dodger.

Q: When was the last time a Webster person played for Hornell?
A: It might be the first time.

"It's interesting, a couple of years ago, the hardest thing I have to do as general manager is to hire a coach. The last couple of years I've got older and my family is growing. It's harder to put asa much into finding the team a coach. I've really relied on a local coach. The last two years we had a guy who was out of Buffalo.

"Tony, being out of the Rochester area has made it easier. We were able to contact each other and have a relationship before the season. It is important that the coaches have a good relationship with me and the Board of Directors. It's such a great relationship when we're your friends.

"It would be a great reference check for him in his future endeavors. It's worked out great. He's a great guy, a great coach. He's probably younger than I normally hire, but it's worked out great. If he says yes, he's back here next year.

"With his connections, he brought a couple more local, Rochester area, players with Ben and a couple other Monroe Community College kids. I started putting a team together, and he helped me fill the spots.

"One of the biggest things for Tony, he had to make phone calls to try to find players, he's getting to know other coaches, buys from Arkansas, Texas; forming some connections because he's not going to be at MCC his whole life. He's a good coach. He's going to get his shot some day as a head coach somewhere.

"I hope he looks back at this experience as managing 44 games in seven weeks, and managing more than just the games. He's managing what time they're doing the early work; what time they're getting here, doing the laundry. Making sure he's communicating well with me. What time the bus is leaving? What is expected at this field trip or community visit?

"He's got a lot on his plate because there is no owner of this team, just a bunch of volunteers who are running a team. We put a lot on him and his assistant, and they've excellent at it. The product is pretty good. We were sitting pretty a couple of weeks ago and struggling a bit now, but we're into the thick of things (5 teams battling for 3 playoff berths)."