Baseball Loaded with Family Ties
Josh Niva - June 2006

Todd Dennis doesn’t hit home runs, steal bases or throw strikes, but he may be the greatest utility man in Alaska Goldpanners history.

Dennis rarely misses an inning of baseball at Fairbanks’ Growden Memorial Park, where he has performed about every off-the-field duty imaginable. He started as a pint-sized independent contractor, chasing down foul balls and selling them back to the team for 70 cents apiece. He joined the Goldpanners payroll at 9, hawking hot dogs while walking the stands. Since, he’s stacked cases of beers, operated a baseball card shop, worked the scoreboard, launched the team’s Web site and ascended to his current title of assistant general manager.

Dennis might not be a player, but he credits his success to a coach — his longtime employer, mentor and father, Goldpanners general manager Don Dennis. For both Dennises, and thousands of others who play or follow the game, baseball is as much about family as it is sport.

“There’s stuff you don’t forget, like growing up a ballpark rat, hanging out with the diehards at the park,” Todd Dennis, 34, said about his time spent at Growden, “but the greatest joy of all is working with my dad and my family.”

Long before columnists dissected baseball’s fallible Bonds, poets pontificated about baseball’s familial bonds. It’s a game of parents and children, from the Ripkens, Griffeys, Boones and Bondses to generations of fans playing catch in the parking lot before a game. It’s a game of brothers, like the DiMaggios, Aarons, Alous and Drews. In the stands, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters discuss strategy and share a summer night over hot dogs and Cokes. Those scenes play out each summer at ballparks across the country and here at Alaska Baseball League ballparks.

Most ABL players even gain new families as locals open their homes as host parents. If you look at the folks running ABL concession stands, ticket booths and the front offices, you’ll often see faces with similar features. For a baseball player, success requires skill, confidence, quick hands and even luck. Success for ABL management comes from experience, hard work and a good home team: partners and children who are as much co-workers than fans.

Don Dennis is entering his 40th year with the Goldpanners. He wonders how long he would have lasted if his family — wife Ann and four children — hadn’t shared his passion for baseball and sacrificed many summer hours working with him.

“It’s hard to explain to someone how much support it really takes,” Dennis, 66, said. “With (amateur) baseball, you pretty much have to live and breathe this to make it all happen on the kind of budgets we have. Over the years, my entire family has participated in numerous ways, and they are the best help. They anticipate most things and always follow through. They are invaluable.”  Dennis also can’t imagine a summer without baseball or family, which now extends to his son Tom, the Goldpanners official photographer. Tom is 10.