Brebeuf, Butler graduate Haddad applying talent with Yankees

BY STEVE KRAH

http://www.IndianaRBI.com

Radley Haddad has built a skill set that he uses to help the New York Yankees as a coaching assistant and bullpen coach.

Haddad is educated on everything from pitch design to game planning. He sits in on hitter’s meetings. He speaks the language of analytics and translates it into terms that players can understand. 

Once a game starts, he’s in the bullpen to assist pitchers in geting ready.

The Yankees have newcomers for 2020 at pitching coach (Matt Blake) and catching coach (Tanner Swanson). 

Haddad has been in the organization since 2013. He was signed by the Yankees as a non-drafted free agent and was a catcher is the system until 2016, when he served as a player-coach at Staten Island in preparation for a minor league coaching assignment. 

But an opportunity came with the major league club and Haddad has been on the Bronx Bombers staff since 2017. He can use his knowledge to help Blake and Swanson with their transition.

“Where those guys will want or need help, I’m there to fill in the gaps,” says Haddad, a graduate of Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory High School (2008) and Butler University (2013) — both in Indianapolis. ”A lot of my time will probably be spent on game planning.”

Radley and wife Arielle, a Franklin, Ind., native who he met at Butler, moved from Manhattan to New Jersey in January. It’s a 20-minute drive to Yankee Stadium. 

Being close year-round has made it easy for Haddad to get to know the ins and outs of the team’s analytics department. 

Hadded earned a Finance degree at Butler. His familiarity with regressions, progressions and algorithms allows him to work with weight averages and other analytic concepts.

“You need to have some experience in some upper level math,” says Haddad. “You don’t have to be a genius. It’s math and it’s computers and being able to write codes.

“(Players) are very open to what we’re trying to do. Kids coming from college programs are more up with technology and buzzwords and they understand the value. We’re all trying to accomplish the same thing. Sometimes you just have to use different verbiage.”

Haddad notes that 29-year-old right-hander Gerrit Cole, who signed as a free agent in December 2019 and likely would have been tabbed by manager Aaron Boone as the Yankees’ Opening Day starter had the 2020 season started on time, has embraced analytics during his career.

“He’s really smart guy and cares about his career,” says Haddad. “He applied what they gave him in Houston. He used the information presented to him.

“We’re trying to parlay off of that and make him just a tick better.”

With Haddad being close by, he’s also been able to catch area residents Coleand righty reliever Adam Ottavino during the current COVID-19-related shutdown. Some of those sessions happened in back yards. The Stadium was just recently made available.

Players and staff are literally spread across the globe and have stayed in-touch through group texts and Zoom calls. Sharing of Google Docs has allowed coaches and other pitchers to keep up with their progress.

Yankees bullpen coach Mike Harkey makes sure they have what they need, including a catcher, so they can stay on track and be ready.

Haddad likes the way Gerrit puts it: “I will keep the pilot light on so I can fire it up.”

As of this writing, Gerrit is in a starting rotation mix that also features Masahiro Tanaka, J.A. Happ, Jordan Montgomery, Jonathan Loaisiga, James Paxton and Domingo German.

Fireballer Aroldis Chapman is the Yankees closer. Besides Ottavino and Chapman, the bullpen includes Zack Britton, Luis Cessa, Chad Green, Jonathan Holder, Tommy Kahnle and Tyler Lyons.

Haddad moved with his family to Carmel, Ind., at 10. He played travel baseball with the Carmel Pups. They were in need of a catcher so Radley put on the gear and fell in love with the position.

“I loved everything about it,” says Haddad, who was primarily a catcher at Brebeuf, two seasons at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C. (2009 and 2010), and two at Butler (2012 and 2013). “I liked the mental side, being involved in every pitching and calling games. I liked working with all the pitchers and seeing how guys can manipulate the ball.”

John Zangrilli was a frequent spectator at Carmel Pups games and is now Greyhounds pitching coach on a staff led by Matt Buczkowski. 

Zangrilli was head coach at Brebeuf when Haddad was there and had a major impact.

“He was the most beneficial person in my baseball career,” says Haddad of Zangrilli. “He taught me about being a real baseball player and taking care of business.

“That meant doing things the right way, paying attention to details.”

It was also the way you treat people. It was more than baseball, it was life skills. 

Zangrilli was at Radley and Arielle’s wedding in 2018.

Haddad earned honorable mention all-state honors at Brebeuf. He helped the Braves to an IHSAA Class 3A No. 1 ranking and a Brebeuf Sectional title while hitting .494 with 38 runs scored as a senior.

Playing time at Western Carolina was limited and Haddad decided to go to Butler, where he started 89 games in his two seasons.

NCAA rules at the time required players transferring between Division I school to sit out a transfer season. That’s what Haddad did when he went to Butler, where Steve Farley was Bulldogs head coach.

“Steve was a great guy,” says Haddad. “He welcomed me. He didn’t have any stigma about who I was and why I was leaving a school. He knew I wanted to get on a field.

“He’s a good man who taught people how to live the right way.”

Though he doesn’t get back to Indiana often, Haddad stays connected to central Indiana baseball men Zangrilli, Farley, Chris Estep, Jay Lehr and Greg Vogt.

During his high school years, Haddad played travel baseball for the Indiana Mustangs which operate out of Estep’s RoundTripper Sports Academy in Westfield. 

Lehr is a long-time baseball instructor based in Hamilton County.

Vogt, a former Carmel Pups teammate of Haddad, runs PRP (Passion Resilience Process) Baseball out of Finch Creek Fieldhouse in Noblesville.

“We played together or against each other our whole lives,” says Haddad of Vogt. “He’s done a great job of building a program he believes in.”

Bob Haddad Jr., Radley’s father, is Chief Operating Officer at Harrison Lake Country Club in Columbus. Radley’s mother, Lauren Schuh, is remarried. 

Radley (30) has two younger brothers — Griffin Haddad (28) and Ian Schuh (20). 

Grffin is an assistant athletic trainer for the Green Bay Packers. He went to Brebeuf for four years, earned his undergraduate degree at Texas Christian University and his master’s at the University of Michigan. 

Ian spent one year at Brebeuf and finished high school at Carmel. He is at South Dakota State University with his sights on being a conservation officer.

Haddad was featured on the Robertson Training Systems podcast in January.

Radley Haddad, a graduate of Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory High School and Butler University – both in Indianapolis, is entering his fourth season on the coaching staff of the New York Yankees. In 2020, he is a coaching assistant and bullpen coach. (New York Yankees Photo)

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Power-Pronation — an alternative way for pitchers to throw

BY STEVE KRAH

http://www.IndianaRBI.com

Pitching a baseball subjects large (sometimes dangerous) forces on the arm particularly on the elbow; the weakest link in overhand throwing activities as most orthopedic surgeons and sports medical experts will attest.

When a ball player throws, a substantial force is concentrated principally on the inner part of the elbow (as the arm rotates first externally and then internally).

Placing undue stress on the inner elbow often results in injury, which can lead to ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) surgery (aka Tommy John surgery).

A physics professor and former pro baseball player in New York — Don R. Mueller, Ph.D. — who knows something about pitching and the physics behind it along with a successful senior adult baseball leaguer in St. Louis — Randy Tiefenthaler — suggest that there is an alternative way to throw (with less chance for UCL injuries).

It’s called Power-Pronation (first you supinate and then you pronate).

“You supinate the wrist as the arm swings back (in preparation to throw) and then you pronate the wrist “naturally” as the arm moves forward to release the ball,” says Mueller. “This method of throwing is also powerful because supination creates two unique opportunities for power: (1) activating the biceps muscle to contract (storing energy within the throwing motion itself) and (2) engaging the band-like pronator teres muscle by stretching it across the inner part of the forearm, which like a stretched rubber band releases its energy as the wrist pronates to release the ball.

“Power-Pronation can be viewed as an efficient way of pulling something like a rope, for example, over-your-shoulder (as a construction worker does) or pulling your arm from back-to-front as a MLB pitcher does to throw a ball.

“If only more folks realized that throwing a ball is more precisely depicted as the action of pulling the ball from back-to-front before it is released by the thrower, then perhaps they would better understand Power-Pronation.”

Mueller, a left-hander who threw hard, pitched in the independent Empire State League in 1987 (injuring his shoulder in 1986 and then tearing his UCL in 1989; ending his quest to play further) wants to help others avoid arm injuries; however, still adding a few mph to their fastball by using the power-pronation technique.

“The inner elbow is a time bomb for pitchers who throw hard,” says Mueller. “My research is focused on moving the force away from the inner elbow more toward the outer elbow, which may be more resilient for some players.

“Pitching like other sports activities, which require the player to essentially do the same thing over-and-over again, is a proving ground for various repetitive strain injuries (RSI). I suggest that they try power-pronation if for nothing more that to give their arm a rest from RSI.”

Mueller offers ball players what he calls “3-Points on Pitching/Throwing.”

1. Get the throwing arm up quickly (supinate the wrist if you choose to power-pronate) 2. Carry the center of mass forward as the arm moves from back-to-front. 3. Get the arm out in front with a longer delivery (less elbow strain more shoulder power) as the back leg drives the body forward.

On the follow-through don’t drag the back leg. Get the back leg off the rubber and into the air as the center of mass rotates forward: Explosive power from the legs, hips and shoulder; not so much emphasis on the arm and its weakest link the elbow.

“I’m a guy who still throws with power even at age 57, but perhaps more importantly I’m an expert in throwing pain,” says Mueller. “I have hurt myself repeatedly (from head-to-toe) in different ways and have learned by many trial-and-error experiments how to throw with more power and less pain.”

Mueller states emphatically: “Harness the power of your overall body. Be more like an Olympic athlete; an overall body user. They are the best athletes in the world. For example, Jan Zelezny (javelin thrower) who had just won the Gold Medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta showed coaches with the Atlanta Braves (a few days later) that he could throw a ball over 400 feet! Although he never made a go of pro baseball, his ability to harness his overall body into a throw was remarkable.”

Tiefenthaler, a 2019 member of the Greater St. Louis Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame, pitched at Missouri Baptist University. By the 1980 Major League Baseball (First-Year Player Draft) he had torn his UCL, teres minor muscle (posterior rotator cuff) and suffered various other muscle and tendon injuries.

More recently, in using Power-Pronation principles, Tiefenthaler helped his fellow Midwest Pirates win the 53-and-over Roy Hobbs World Series in 2015 and he was named tournament MVP in 2017 as the Pirates came close to winning the title again.

Eric Tiefenthaler (Randy’s son) employed Power-Pronation techniques at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith and he now instructs high school and college pitchers.

“In September I will be 60,” says Randy Tiefenthaler. “And I can legitimately say that I can throw 80 mph with no pain or injury.

“It was (former major league pitcher) Mike Marshall that taught me the value of early forearm turnover and powerful pronation as the keys to getting the most out of your throwing arm. Those two keys help unlock increased velocity. “I am totally convinced that powerful and properly timed actuation of the pronator teres not only produces higher spin-rates on all pitches, but has the added benefit of preventing the olecranon process of the ulna (bony tip of the elbow) from violently colliding with the fossa of the humerus (upper arm bone).

“In other words, you can prevent the violent ‘hitting of the doorstop’ so to speak, on the back of your elbow, which can lead to excess ossification of the back of the elbow and sometimes even fractures.”

Mueller emphasizes the importance of the Power-Pronation as a method for kids to try. “

“If young ball players are willing to learn these techniques from a couple of old guys (who have been there and done that with the associated pain) then perhaps they can avoid such injuries altogether or at least greatly reduce the chance of hurting themselves,” says Mueller. “I also think kids need to extend their arm forward a bit with a longer delivery (like Aroldis Chapman who has a long fluid motion from start to finish) to allow for maximum acceleration of the arm forward, but also improved deceleration (slowing) of the arm once the ball is released.

“I see kids wanting to whip their arm forward, when it is still basically stuck behind them. I want them to carry their center-of-mass slightly forward before they begin to think about releasing the ball. In other words, I want kids to throw more downhill (and further down the hill) as they push themselves off the mound with their back leg. As the physics professor, I refer to this as converting potential energy into kinetic energy with maximum efficiency.”

Mueller also contends that kids don’t get their throwing arm up in time. As a consequence, the arm continues to lag behind the lower body, which begins its motion toward the target; with a dragging arm more likely to become an injured arm in time.

“Get the arm high and throw it lower,” says Mueller.

The professor has analyzed pitchers throughout the history of baseball as he applies his knowledge of physics. He still marvels at the compact and efficient delivery of former Detroit Tigers ace Denny McLain.

“Likely the last 30-game winner I will see in my lifetime,” says Mueller. “Dwight Gooden also had a beautiful delivery with near-perfect timing of the lower and upper body to throw his blazing fastball.”

Furthermore, Mueller observed that with both of these hurlers the arm was the “last thing to happen” as the lower body led the way and he prefers that today’s pitchers go back to this efficient use of the leg kick.

He explains that as the leg first kicks out and then pulls in (with the pitcher turning toward home plate) the big moment of inertia of the extended leg is converted into rotational angular acceleration of the upper body. The arm can then follow through more effectively with greater power and in all probability less chance for injury to the relatively delicate structure of the elbow.

Mueller says, “To maximize your pitching potential you need to use the upper body and lower body in tandem. Too many of the MLB pitchers I see in 21st century baseball are more upper body and not enough lower body.”

Although Mueller views the throwing of the arm forward as a pulling activity as it goes from back-to-front he understands and appreciates the importance of pushing (i.e., pushing off the mound) as a key element to pitching with power.

“I think immediately of Newton’s Third Law of Motion — For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” says Mueller. “You probably can’t throw the ball hard unless you are using this ‘ground force’ effectively.”

While Mueller agrees that you should push hard off the mound, he disagrees with “pitching experts” who advocate the dragging of the back foot (what they commonly refer to as the dragline) as part of this process.

He says, “I suggest that the thrower push forcefully off the pitching rubber and as the upper body rotates fully to the target, get the foot off the ground. If you want to have a 6-inch dragline fine, but I see no “physics-based” reason for a 2-foot dragline as recommended by some pitching coaches.”

Mueller also wants to make it clear that “he is not a pitching coach.”

He is a physics professor who investigates the physics of sports.

Tiefenthaler offers the following advice to anyone who wishes to avoid Tommy John surgery:

1. When breaking the pitching hand from the glove, lead with the

pitching hand in a pendulum swinging fashion that gets the hand up to your driveline position, with the forearm laid back in a supinated fashion ready to throw — this before your front foot plants and the hips and shoulders rotate forward.

2. During and after hip and shoulder rotation while you are driving the ball to the plate, powerfully go from forearm supination to full pronation while attempting to “inwardly” rotate your shoulder in a powerful fashion.

3. Learn to pronate the release of not just the fastball but all off speed/breaking pitches as well.

“Do those three things and you can bullet-proof your arm from UCL injuries,” says Tiefenthaler. “Tim Lincecum comes to mind as a Power-Pronator.

“You can see (in the slow-motion video) how Lincecum outwardly rotates his forearm at the beginning of the final drive home. Then the pronation begins as he drives his fingers through the release such that after release, his pitching hand turns inwardly so much that his palm is facing upward.

“For the novice fan, they would think that this action would injure the arm. However, it actually helps to protect the arm from the elbow to the hand, while at the same time maximizing spin torque on the ball at release.

“As far as the timing of when he gets his arm up and into driveline height; he is late with that, but that is another subject. However, as far as the powerful pronation action is concerned this is a good example.

“There aren’t too many MLB guys who understand how important pronation is to being able to throw the ball with ‘life’. The amount of late, sharp movement on the ball is directly related to the amount of ’powerful pronation’ as it is applied through the release.”

Physics professor Don Mueller applies his knowledge on the tennis court, too, and can swing effectively with either hand. Mueller is a proponent of Power-Pronation.

Randy Tiefenthaler (center) is a 2019 inductee into the Greater St. Louis Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame. Here is pictured with two men with St. Louis Cardinals ties — David Freese (left) and National Baseball Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith. Tiefenthaler is a proponent of Power-Pronation.

Former New York Mets pitcher had a delivery which started high and finished low — just like Professor Don Mueller recommends as a part of Power-Pronation.

Denny McLain, the last 30-game winner in the major leagues, was a Power-Pronation kind of pitcher.

Tim Lincecum also pronated his way to effectiveness on a Major League Baseball mound.

The difference between pronation and supination.

 

International baseball expert, Indiana resident Bjarkman to receive SABR’S Chadwick Award

By STEVE KRAH

http://www.IndianaRBI.com

One of the most prestigious baseball awards will be presented to a longtime Indiana resident this summer.

Lafayette’s Peter Bjarkman — aka “Dr. Baseball” — will get the Society for American Baseball Research’s Henry Chadwick Award at the group’s national convention June 28-July 2 in New York.

According to the SABR website, the “Henry Chadwick Award was established in November 2009 to honor baseball’s great researchers—historians, statisticians, annalists, and archivists—for their invaluable contributions to making baseball the game that links America’s present with its past.”

Bjarkman, a Hartford, Conn., native, has authored more than 40 books on sports history. His latest work in “Cuba’s Baseball Defectors: The Inside Story.”

A former professor, he has taught at multiple places including Butler University, Ball State University and Purdue University. Wife Ronnie B. Wilbur, a leading researcher and authority on deaf sign languages, is a Purdue linguistics professor. The couple spends portions of each each in Europe.

At a recent gathering of the Oscar Charleston SABR chapter prior to an Indianapolis Indians game, Bjarkman shared his vast knowledge on the World Baseball Classic (he writes extensively about the subject in “Defectors”) and other diamond topics.

Bjarkman has been to all four WBC’s (2006, 2009, 2013, 2017) as part of the media contingent wherever Cuba was playing. He witnessed the finals in 2006 in San Diego, where Cuba was runner-up to Japan, and 2009 in Los Angeles, where Japan took gold by topping South Korea.

A fan of the old International Baseball Federation World Cup (which breathed its last because of financial reasons), Bjarkman was skeptical when Major League Baseball came along with plans for the WBC. MLB was attempting to take ownership of baseball on a global scale with an Olympic-style event.

“What the original IBAF World Cup did was foster interest in baseball in a lot of countries throughout the world

Sweden would go and lose three games but it would inspire young people in Sweden to try to be on the national team,” Bjarkman said. “You knew from the beginning MLB’s version was designed to showcase international players in the major leagues.

“It did not emphasize and foster international baseball. These guys may be playing for the Dominican now, but they’ll be playing at a ballpark near you soon in April.”

Bjarkman said MLB was hoping to gain financially in the same way FIFA has done with soccer’s World Cup. Of course, the scope could never be the same because not nearly as many countries play baseball and soccer.

IBAF trademarked the term Baseball World Cup in international courts so MLB went with World Baseball Classic.

“There’s a lot of things I love about MLB,” Bjarkman said. “It’s really not about globalizing and internationalizing the game as much as it is about creating international markets for major league products and Major League Baseball — the same way the NFL is doing by having its games in London and the NBA having games at locations outside the United States like China.”

When the WBC came along, Bjarkman enjoyed the event in-person.

“It was really a lot of fun,” Bjarkman said. “There was that element of seeing these players play for their own country.”

That sense of national pride differs from country to country. Bjarkman said players and fans outside the U.S. identify with their national flag. Here, fans tend to be a part of Red Sox Nation, Yankees Nation or wherever their team loyalties lie.

As Bjarkman sees it, the WBC was not marketed probably when the tournament began.

“The first couple tournaments they should have given tickets away,” Bjarkman said. First-round games in Miami in the first few years of the WBC and maybe 1,500 would be there for USA vs. Puerto Rico. “People see these games on TV and there’s nobody there, they say ‘this can’t be worth watching.’”

WBC eventually became a recognized brand and began getting a foothold, but it still has issues.

There’s the timing. Coming during spring training, many players (especially pitchers) are not a full-go yet and team owners don’t like having their expensive talent leaving camp for extended periods.

With the size of the field, Bjarkman there are now eight countries with legitimate national teams with others using mostly players with ethnic ties rather than natives.

Take Team Israel in 2017.

“It was a team full of American players with ethnic Jewish family backgrounds,” Bjarkman said. “This is not an Israeli team.

“This is what MLB has been stuck with by expanding this thing out. You’d probably want to have a six- or eight-team tournament. But that’s going to be a problem because how many games can you market on television?”

Bjarkman also pointed out that countries like the Dominican and Venezuela have much of their baseball talent drained by Major League Baseball.

Two countries who run baseball independent of MLB are Japan with its posting system and Cuba for political reasons.

What happens if Puerto Rico becomes a state, a realistic possibility in the near future?

Bjarkman ask that if there is a Puerto Rican team in the WBC after P.R. becomes a U.S. state, why can’t there be a Miami Cuban team?

A faction in the U.S. would like to put united Cuban team together with players such as Aroldis Chapman and Jose Abreu.

Cuba is opposed to the idea.

“They are still trying to maintain their own national baseball league,” Bjarkman said. “There has been a tremendous loss of players (to defection).”

Team Cuba at the 2013 WBC had seven of eight everyday players go on to the play in the MLB. Bjarkman’s research shows that 200 Cuba-born players since 1871 have played in the majors as of Opening Day 2017. He classifies 66 of those as “defectors.” The first in the post-revolution period (1961 to the present) Barbaro Garbey, who debuted with the Detroit Tigers in 1984. The next one is Rene Arocha, who first pitched in the bigs for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1993.

Discussion in Indianapolis also turned to the international tiebreaker rule used in the 2017 WBC and first adopted at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The “Schiller Rule” allows that the team at bat began the 11th inning with runners on first and second base.

“It’s not baseball as we knew baseball, but tournament baseball isn’t either,” Bjarkman said. “In the context in which it’s used, it’s really exciting.”

The rule, which has been used during regular-season games in Cuba in the past, was adopted for expediency. Tournament directors are trying to avoid extra-long contests.

“How long is it going to be before we see this in Major League Baseball?,” Bjarkman said. “Why are we going to see it in Major League Baseball? Because of the commercial aspect. You don’t want games going past a certain time.

“They do all these things to try to shorten games. If you want to shorten games, don’t have so many commercials between innings.”

Other factors that lengthen games are the way pitchers are now. There are lefty and righty specialists and so many visits to the mound. It was once rare to have a pitching change before the seventh inning unless a pitcher was getting shelled in the early going.

“They’e trying to shorten games on one hand, but there are all these breaks for video reviews,” Bjarkman said.

Lafayette’s Peter Bjarkman — aka “Dr. Baseball” — will get the Society for American Baseball Research’s Henry Chadwick Award at the group’s national convention June 28-July 2 in New York.

South Bend owner Berlin enjoys being part of Cubs organization success

By STEVE KRAH

http://www.IndianaRBI.com

Andrew Berlin is still basking in the glow of the 2016 World Series win by the Chicago Cubs.

The minority partner in the Major League Baseball club and owner of the affiliate South Bend Cubs goes over the highlights of Game 7 (he was there along with his wife and two of his five children) and finds many way connects the bigs and the minors.

“It was the most draining game to be at with the most amazing ending,” says Berlin. “During that rain delay, they had a players-only meeting where they talked about ‘are we winners or are we losers?’”

Bottom line: Cubs 8, Indians 7 (10 innings). The longest championship drought in the history of American sports ended when the Cubs won it all for the first time since 1908.

“That chant of ‘we never quit!’, it never gets old,” says Berlin. “I still get chills when I think about it.”

Berlin, who became owner in South Bend between the 2011 and 2012 seasons and partnered with the Cubs beginning in 2015, talks about how the organization began shedding the tag of “Lovable Losers” when Theo Epstein resigned from the Boston Red Sox after the 2011 season came to Chicago as president of baseball operations.

Epstein started overhauling things from the bottom up while putting his people and plan in place.

One of those people is field manager Joe Maddon, whom Berlin calls Obi-Wan Kenobi himself” and touts some of his quotes like “Never permit the pressure to exceed the pleasure.”

Berlin notes that the keyword for the Cubs in 2017 is “uncomfortable.”

“There’s no complacency,” says Berlin. “The ring ceremony at Wrigley is going to be April 12. the ring is going to be a chandelier of sapphires, rubies and diamonds — all the Cub colors. But they’ve told those guys that ring has to go to a safe deposit box and they have to get another one. That’s the focus.”

It truly is a “C” change.

“The whole culture had to be changed and articulated,” says Berlin.

Part of all that is at the player development level and that’s where South Bend comes in.

“The road to the World Series starts in South Bend. I tell (Chicago Cubs chairman and owner) Tom Ricketts that all the time,” says Berlin, who notes that the world champs would not have had flame-throwing reliever Aroldis Chapman without having a player the caliber of Gleyber Torres, who played in South Bend, to trade to the New York Yankees.

While he played for the South Bend Silver Hawks as an Arizona Diamondbacks prospect, Miguel Montero went on to drive in a key run late in Game 7 for the Chicago Cubs.

“The amount of talent that South Bend has that goes on to the Chicago Cubs is undeniable,” says Berlin. “It’s absolute.”

Berlin also looks back on success at the turnstiles in South Bend and looks for even more exciting things at the downtown ballpark now known as Four Winds Field in 2017 and beyond.

After watching South Bend draw 350,803 customers (an average of 5,084 for 69 openings) in ’16, Berlin has set a goal of 400,000 in ’17.

A year ago, the Cubs ranked No. 5 out of 16 teams in the Low Class-A Midwest League in attendance (behind Dayton’s 548,574, Fort Wayne’s 413,701, Kane County’s 400,931 and West Michigan’s 386,416).

“We only want to be 1,” says Berlin, whose executive teams includes Joe Hart as president and Nick Brown and vice president and general manager.

In order to take a run at the goal, Berlin and his South Bend employees continue to make improvements from ballpark amenities like food to adding seats and (coming in 2018) an apartment complex with balconies overlooking the field.

“The apartments will be sound-proof,” says Berlin, who plans to have a ballpark dwelling of his own. “Unfortunately, we’re going to loose the foghorn. I don’t think residents want that going off every time we score a run.

“It’s not just about baseball. Since we’ve been here, we’ve attracted a lot of development to Downtown South Bend. We showed that it was possible to invest her and be profitable.”

The South Bend Cubs are scheduled to play an exhibition game against Notre Dame Wednesday, April 5. After two games in West Michigan, the 2017 home opener is scheduled for Saturday, April 8.

South Bend Cubs owner Andrew Berlin is also a minority partner with the 2016 World Series champion Chicago Cubs. (MiLB Photo)