Sioux City Explorers
Dad and I return to Lewis and Clark Park for an American Association of Professional Baseball matchup between the Sioux City Explorers and the Cleburne Railroaders.
We successfully accomplished the “Dad’s Nap” phase of our day, then returned to Lewis and Clark Park for Game 6 of our road trip with the Sioux City Explorers of the independent American Association of Professional Baseball.
Pro baseball in Sioux City goes back to 1888 and the Sioux City Huskers, who were known as the Cornhuskers when they won the Western League title in 1894. They were followed by the Soos, Packers, Indians, Cardinals, and Cowboys. An updated version of the Soos played before and after World War II, affiliated with the New York Giants, St. Louis Cardinals, and Kansas City A’s. But the club called it quits after the 1960 season, leaving Sioux City without professional baseball for 32 seasons.
The Explorers arrived in 1993 as an expansion team in the now-defunct Northern League, an independent league that collapsed when most of its teams migrated to the American Association in 2006. The ballpark was built the same year, and they have been together ever since.
Lewis and Clark Park has a capacity of about 3,800. The Explorers drew an average of 1,251 fans per night in 2025 — last in the 12-team American Association. Explorers rosters have included future major leaguers, but its biggest names — Jose Canseco, Rey Ordóñez, Oil Can Boyd, Gerald Young — appeared for Sioux City near the end of their careers.
It was Ag Night at Lewis and Clark Park, with giveaway logo cowboy hats — a fun idea and unique in my collection.
However, the light, felt-and-cardboard construction of the hat left it challenged against the gusty winds swirling through the ballpark, and we set off for the team store to find the real deal.
Amongst a handful of straightforward hat options, I made a solid choice featuring the team’s current “X’s” branding. Dad found a unique digital-camo baseball, and we were on our way to our seats.
There were no Ag Night hats on offer at the ballpark, but the Explorers wore bright yellow, corncob-closeup jerseys for the occasion.
Sioux City was in the early days of a very strong season, a half-game behind the Kansas City Monarchs in the West Division. They would finish the season at 64-36, the best record in the league, before falling to the Sioux Falls Canaries in the first round of the playoffs.
The Cleburne Railroaders are the most remote team in the American Association — their hometown of about 38,000 is located just south of Fort Worth, Texas, while their division rivals are all clustered in a strip between Chicagoland and Milwaukee. They began the day tied for first in the East Division but would tumble to a record of 43-57 by season’s end.
Down the left-field line, kids played whiffle ball in front of the picnic section where Dad and I had been interviewed earlier in the day.
I soon bumped into one of those interviewers, Anthony Mitchell, Sports Director at KCAU-TV, who would be getting shots of us and the game.
The Railroaders took an early lead in the top of the first when an error and a walk set up a double that brought home two runs.
The home team went down 1-2-3 in the first, and Cleburne led it 2-0.
I went exploring for dinner. As I stood in line, I heard broadcaster Dan Vaughan over a loudspeaker, talking about our big Western Midwest Baseball Road Trip. It was a bit surreal. I looked around at the other people in line with a goofy smirk that attempted to convey, “Hey, he’s talking about me!” But my fellow patrons steered clear and ignored my inscrutable grin. How fickle is fame.
We both had outstanding footlong brats with pickles and mustard. A dog of a different sort, Explorers mascot Slider, strode by moments later.
Fun on the field between innings included a ball toss, a cow-milking competition, farm-animal trivia, a t-shirt cannon, and a dancing grounds crew in sleeveless shirts and cut-off shorts. (Watch the video!)
Kyle Marman
The Explorers picked up a run in the third to make it 2-1. Both offenses then went silent for the middle innings as the starting pitchers settled in — 6-foot-8 Derek Craft of Cleburne, who made it to Double-A Somerset before turning to independent ball; and Sioux City’s Kyle Marman, who reached Triple-A with the Columbus Clippers and had been converted from a reliever to a starter in 2025, finishing the season with a tidy 3.09 ERA.
Sioux City tied it in the bottom of the seventh on a solo shot from center fielder Austin Davis, now in his third year of independent baseball with his third different team after a productive collegiate career at the University of West Virginia and TCU.
I went down to the Sioux City bullpen to see J.D., Scholten, a 44-year-old member of the Iowa House of Representatives who also happened to play for the Explorers. The Iowa native had pitched at Morningside University in Sioux City and at the University of Nebraska. His early professional career took him to Saskatoon in the Canadian Baseball League and to Sioux City for four seasons with the Explorers. He went on to pitch in Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Cuba, and he continued to do bullpen work as his political career took off.
In 2024, Explorers manager Steve Montgomery called the 6-foot-6 right-hander to see if he would be willing to throw a spot start that night to spell the ailing arms on his staff. Scholten put on the uniform and tossed 6 2/3 innings, throwing 102 pitches and notching the win as the explorers beat the Milwaukee Milkmen 11-2. He signed with the team the next day and made 11 starts on the season, putting up a 6-2 record and a 5.40 ERA.
Scholten signed again for the 2025 season but had been hampered by injuries and was still a few days away from his first start as he greeted fans near the bullpen in the fading Sioux City sunlight.
Things got a little scruffy in the eighth inning. Marman gave up a leadoff double, and a trio of Explorers relievers struggled to find outs behind him as 10 batters came to the plate and put five runs on the board, making it 7-2 Railroaders. The last of these runs came on a bases-loaded walk that looked very much like a strike, sending Sioux City manager Steve Montgomery onto the field — not just to dispute the call, but to mock home plate umpire Clay Park, getting in a catcher’s crouch to pantomime how Sioux City’s strikes were called balls, and Cleburne’s balls were called strikes. “Mongo” was ejected before his show even started, but he played it out to the end and got his money’s worth.
This riled up the more well-lubricated members of the crowd, who hurled abuse at the umps for the rest of the game. For the loudest few, every pitch, every play became an opportunity to express outsized dissent and personal emotional injury through careless profanity. The skies above Sioux City faded to black as the mood in the ballpark darkened in kind.
The Explorers managed to get a run back in the bottom of the eighth, but another questionable call at the plate led to the dismissal of a Sioux City player who’d been heckling Park from the dugout. The boos and yelling from the crowd extended into the bottom of the ninth, when another Explorers player was asked to leave the premises.
A tight pitcher’s duel had unraveled into an angry mess. Sioux City lost 7-3. A grumbling crowd shuffled out of the stands and into the night.