Area players Beier, Kopfer look back at UW baseball on 25th anniversary of discontinuation

The Purdue University baseball team came to Guy Lowman Field that day with extra gear – plain black baseball caps and black stirrups donated to members of the other team. It felt like a funeral already on May 10, 1991, even with a huge crowd of 1,200 fans on hand, and members of the Badgers baseball team were going to look the part.

'At that point, the decision had been made,' said Kettle Moraine High School graduate Jason Beier, 45, a redshirt freshman on the final baseball team in University of Wisconsin history. 'It was well along (in the process), and they let us kind of say whatever we wanted to say and (wear the black items). It was sort of a silent protest.'

News had reached the players just two months earlier that the program would discontinue after that season, the victim of budgetary woes within the Wisconsin athletics department and the requirement to comply with Title IX standards that stipulated universities must apply equal resources to athletics for both genders.

'They tried saying it was money, which it was, but we had heard from a few people who were supportive of keeping those sports that it was more of a Title-IX based decision than it was budgetary,' said Oconomowoc native Ross Kopfer, 46, a junior in 1991 on the baseball team. 'That last year, we had a huge booster club paying a lot out of pocket. I think expenses for baseball my last year there were $100,000. The booster club (Dugout Club) funded the program.'

Purdue won both halves of a doubleheader that day, including a 1-0 nightcap.

'I tell folks I'm the answer to the trivia question you'll never get asked, 'Who scored the last run in Badger baseball history?'' Beier said, referring the final run of the first game that day.

Twenty-five years later, Beier remains the correct answer.

Cruelest cut

The UW program also cut men's and women's gymnastics and men's and women's fencing that year as a means of meeting its budget shortfall, but none of the cuts resonated long-term the way baseball has. UW became the first and remains the only Big Ten school to lack a baseball program.

Under the leadership of Jeff Block, who founded the UW club baseball team in 1999, a grassroots movement to get baseball back onto the varsity landscape hopes to convince athletics director Barry Alvarez to revisit the issue, but his response to the sentiments Tuesday didn't offer much hope.

One of the biggest reasons is simple dollars and cents. All of the other 13 teams in Big Ten baseball have expenses greater than their revenues, and UW would be in the position of needing a new facility to accommodate a varsity baseball team, not to mention the associated expenses with any additions needed for Title IX compliance.

'I just think unless there's someone who shows up with a check, that's the reality of it, in my opinion,' Kopfer said. 'Barry Alvarez has always said he likes baseball. He played baseball. He'd love to see it. With the Big Ten Network, (UW) is probably a little embarrassed that there are these games on TV and Wisconsin doesn't have a program.'

Kopfer suggested Bud Selig, the former commissioner of baseball, a Wisconsin resident and UW-Madison alumnus, as the example of someone who has the power to save the day.

'That would be a great legacy,' Kopfer said.

Had the current UW landscape in 1991 looked like today's, the budget cut may not have ever happened in the first place.

'The athletic department was in a different position,' Kopfer said. 'The football team was not good; they weren't filling the stadium. The basketball team was mediocre; they weren't getting the contributions and donations they get today. I actually have been surprised since the football team and basketball team turned it around that there hasn't been a push before recently (to restore baseball). I don't think a grassroots effort does it. Someone showing them the money is the only way this comes back.'

Lake Country to UW

Beier won state championships in football and baseball at Kettle Moraine, playing alongside future long-tenured Major Leaguer Joe Randa at KM and with the Genesee Twins of the Land O'Lakes. He walked on in 1990 and played first base for the Badgers in 1991.

'I simply can't believe it, that there's still no baseball program in Madison,' Beier said. 'You know it's a baseball city given the success of the (independent baseball team) Madison Mallards. The sense was in order to have the campus love baseball in the same way, you'd have to invest in the program and make the baseball stadium a destination. At that time, it would have taken an investment that didn't fit the financial situation they were in.

'I think there's an awful lot of talent you could draw to UW-Madison,' he added. 'if you made it a fun place to go, you could get a lot of people there.'

Beier said he refused to attend Badgers football games for roughly 15 years thereafter. He transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and made the playoffs with the baseball team during both of his seasons. The initial vote to eliminate the UW program left him in denial.

'As I recall, the vote of the athletic board was going to be close,' Beier said. 'Other players and I went to the meeting of the board where they were going to vote. Just before the vote happened, a member was installed on the board to make sure there wouldn't be a tie vote. but when the vote went down, the student representative on the board voted to cut the program. We were thinking, 'C'mon man, you're one of us.' We were just completely shocked. I don't know there's any way I could have stayed there; I was so upset by the whole process.'

The 1991 team struggled on the field, but Beier pointed out that many players on the squad were young.

'Our starting rotation, I think three of those guys got drafted at some point, so we had a lot of upward potential,' he said.

Kopfer, an outfielder was one of the team's elder statesmen as a junior. The multi-sport standout at Oconomowoc High School played in the 1987 state-championship football game during his senior year and toyed with the idea of playing at another school in either sport, including Randa's stomping grounds at Tennessee. He considered Minnesota, where his older brother, John, played baseball, and Iowa, where Oconomowoc product John Derby was competing in football. In the end, he decided to stay at Wisconsin and finish out his degree.

'I just felt bad for the other players and the coaches,' Kopfer said. 'At that point, I knew I wasn't going to be a professional baseball player. I could have gone to the minor leagues, but realistically, it would have been a long shot. But a lot of (my teammates) were pinning their hopes on this. I knew I was going to be fine in my baseball career, but for a lot of people, that was their life.'

Where they are now

Kopfer, who still lives in Oconomowoc and buys and sells stocks for Robert W. Baird and Company, vividly recalls the morose scene of that final game.

'It's not like senior year where you're gone and the program goes on,' he said. 'Everybody went their separate ways, and you knew that's what was going to happen after that game.'

For Beier, now a Mount Horeb resident, the 25-year anniversary of the final game comes at a time when he's been thinking about the circumstances yet again, anyway.

'The saddest thing to think about is my kid, now a sophomore in high school, does not have the option to be a Badger baseball player,' he said.

Pictured: Ross Kopfer of Oconomowoc was a junior on the 1991 Wisconsin Badgers baseball team, the final varsity team in program history.