A Cyclone Over Brooklyn
By Tom Kertes

A scant few months back, when the Cyclones were not even born yet, everyone who’s anyone in (and outside of) baseball was already predicting a sorrowfully brief lifespan for Brooklyn’s novice baseball team. “Minor league baseball is nothing,” the theory went. “Especially after what the Dodgers did–leaving Brooklyn high and dry 44 years ago–Brooklyn deserves a major league team.”

Of course, the chattering nabobs of negativity couldn’t have been more wrong. The Cyclones have not only been a near-unbelievable New York success story, but their success can be directly derived from the very “smallness” that was so decried.

The recipe was simple: take $38 million in public money, build a homey ballpark so charming it makes Yankee Stadium look like a soulless mausoleum, add a dash of fan-friendly nostalgia, and season all of that with a team of hard-hitting, baby-faced kids who run out every play as if their lives depended on it.

They built beautiful KeySpan Park and the fans came in record numbers with an all-time New York-Penn League high: 290,000 for 37 home dates. As the Cyclones took a nonstop joyride to the championship in their very first year, it’s been nothing less than one big continuous party in Brooklyn.

“I was so furious with (Dodger owner) Walter O’Malley, I swore that professional baseball would never take a dime of my money again,” said inveterate Brooklynite Irwin Brandon, who has not seen a professional baseball game since 1957. Yet there he was, waiving a huge Cyclones flag in the stands during the second playoff game against the Staten Island Yankees. “But this is fun. This is the way I remember baseball. And, I still wouldn’t go to a major league game, believe me.”

“There’s just an indescribable feeling in this stadium, one that’s just right,” said Cameron Fleming, a fan in his 30’s. “It’s like destiny: Brooklyn missed baseball – and baseball came home to Brooklyn. Plus, it’s clean, safe, and completely kid–friendly. I’ve got four of them little guys here; look around, seven out of every ten fans here is a kid.”

The Cyclones embraced the community as well, especially the children. The team ran a “joint program with the Public Library” all summer, issuing 75,000 specialized library cards with the Cyclones logo. “Every single day during the season, we have had several Cyclone players go to a library or a public school to speak to the kids about the importance of reading and the importance of staying in school,” said the team’s Community Director Gary Perrone. One hundred tickets have been given away to four different Brooklyn high schools for every game as well. And, for their upcoming second season, the team is already planning feverishly to step up the educational impact.

“We’re going to come up with a specific incentive system for prizes,” Perrone said. “Along the lines of, ‘the better your school attendance, the better grades you receive, the more Cyclone prizes you’ll be able to get’.”

He added, “We are very much aware of the fact that the overwhelming majority of our fans are little kids and students. So we will do everything to be there for them, and to be a positive influence on them, as an organization and as a team.”

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