The Wisconsin Woodchucks are an American baseball team that plays in the Northwoods League, a collegiate summer baseball league. They play their home games at Athletic Park in Wausau, Wisconsin. The team was known as the Wausau Woodchucks 1994-98.
The team fills the void left by the Wausau Timbers of the Class A Midwest League, who relocated after the 1990 season to Geneva, Illinois, to become the Kane County Cougars.
The 'Chucks gained some star power for the 2007 season, as former Milwaukee Brewer and University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh product Jim Gantner manages the team. Gantner has been involved with the Brewers in various capacities since his retirement in 1992, including some coaching, but the Woodchucks job is his first managerial experience.
Gantner, a native Wisconsinite who owns a second home in Boulder Junction, is familiar with the Wausau area and had expressed interest in coaching college-age players.
A number of major leaguers and other notables have worn a Woodchucks uniform:
- Dave Gassner, 1998 (Hortonville, Wisconsin, native, LHP with Minnesota Twins)
- Casey Janssen, 2001 (RHP, Toronto Blue Jays)
- Mark Lowe, 2002-03 (RHP, Texas Rangers)
- Pat Neshek, 2000 (Madison, Wisconsin, native, relief pitcher with Twins)
- Wes Obermueller, 1995 (relief pitcher with Florida Marlins)
- Ned Yost Jr., 2003 (son of former Brewers player/manager Ned Yost)
- Steve Foster (baseball), 2003 (Bullpen Coach, with Florida Marlins)
- Ben Zobrist, 2003-04 (Outfielder, Tampa Bay Rays)
Ben Zobrist is the only all-star making it in 2009
Famous quotes containing the word woodchucks:
“Once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged my bean-field,—effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would say,—and devour him, partly for experiment’s sake; but though it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the longest use would not make that a good practice, however it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed by the village butcher.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)