Waterloo Bucks
We’re back in the collegiate Northwoods League to see the Waterloo Bucks take on the Rochester Honkers in a doubleheader at Riverfront Stadium.
We pulled up to the gates at Riverfront Stadium in Waterloo, Iowa, and waited in our rental. The start time had been moved up for a makeshift doubleheader between the Waterloo Bucks and the visiting Rochester Honkers, and staff were scrambling to get things ready. I sat with Dad in the car and watched the wind whip banners representing each team in the Northwoods League, one of the top collegiate summer leagues in the country.
Riverfront Stadium was built in 1946 and, like many older ballparks across America, has a history of hosting affiliated minor league baseball. The Waterloo Hawks played in the Midwest League from 1958 to 1969, affiliated with the Boston Red Sox and Kansas City Royals; and the Waterloo Diamonds — another Midwest League club — called Riverfront home from 1989 to 1993, affiliated with the Baltimore Orioles and San Diego Padres.
The collegiate Waterloo Bucks were founded in 1995 and have won two Northwoods League titles, in 1996 and 2002. The team has had about two dozen players make the major leagues, including A.J. Puk, Zach McKinstry, Ryan Goins, and Kyle Leahy.
The Bucks averaged 823 fans per game in 2025 — 21st-best in the 24-team Northwoods League.
Just inside the ballpark, Dad and I ducked into the small but well-stocked team store to see what we absolutely needed to make our own.
Waterloo has a relatively straightforward logo portfolio, but the club had recently adopted an alternate identity, the Iowa Sweet Corn, with a sharp green-and-yellow color combo and featuring a corncob holding a bat and ball. On the t-shirt, a corn skewer acts as a pin on a map of Iowa, indicating Waterloo.
I kept it traditional with the home cap, and Dad found a good ball. Check.
Waterloo entered the contest with a 10-3 record and sat just a half-game behind the La Crosse Loggers in the Great Plains East Division of the Northwoods League. They would finish both halves of the season with a winning record but would narrowly miss the playoffs.
The Honkers would have a rough go of it in 2025. They started the day with a 5-8 record but would lose 20 of their next 23 games. Rochester “improved” to a 10-26 record in the second half and owned the cellar for the season.
Mascot Bucky certainly seemed relaxed about Waterloo’s prospects.
Game 1 began as a pitcher’s duel between Waterloo’s starter, Parker Sweeney, a freshman at the College of Charleston; and Rochester’s Ian Regal, a redshirt freshman at Butler University. Both pitchers kept a clean sheet for the first three innings, with Regal facing just nine batters.
We couldn’t help but to notice Antler Man, a 10-point Bucks superfan, living his best life with a front-row seat and a beer bat.
I took a walk around the back of the ballpark to see the Kids Zone and other bits of family-friendly fun. A heated three-kid wiffle ball game was underway in Bucky’s Backyard Ballpark on the first-base side.
It was still a bit early for dinner, but not too early for a Berry Good Wheat Ale from SingleSpeed Brewing Co. in Waterloo.
Rochester scored single runs in the fifth and sixth innings to take a 2-1 lead and end Sweeney’s day on the mound.
The teams were playing two seven-inning games, so it got down to the wire quickly. Behind 2-1 in the bottom of the seventh, the Bucks turned a walk, a sacrifice bunt, and a single into a game-tying run, and suddenly we were in for extra innings on top of our doubleheader.
It was just one extra inning, but what an inning it was. In the top half, with a ghost runner on second, the Honkers slapped three singles off Waterloo reliever Tyler Glowicki and scored three, making it 5-2 Rochester.
Jake Bechtel
In the bottom half, Bucks first baseman Marcus Heusohn, a senior at McNeese St., hit a one-out bomb to right field to bring the score to 5-4. The next two Waterloo batters walked, bringing to the plate Jake Bechtel, a 6-foot-5 sophomore at UNC Wilmington by way of NC State who would hit .304 in 62 games with the Bucks. He boomed a 0-1 pitch high over the left-field wall, a walk-off homer that sent players bouncing onto the field.
Bucks win, 7-5.
Game 2
It was about 8:00 p.m. when the second game began, which put a little pressure on my plan to drive an hour after the doubleheader to Cedar Rapids — our next ballpark stop — to give us a rare two-night hotel room. It still seemed like a good idea, but it was going to be a late night.
In the first game of the double bill, an errant bat flew out of a Rochester batter’s hands and smacked Bucky’s big head while he looked on atop the Waterloo dugout. Bucky prepared a message in response before Game 2.
Overloaded with pastrami and pork, I tried a chicken sandwich for dinner. It was good but could have used lettuce and tomato. Dad was happy with peanuts.
Waterloo opened the scoring in the bottom of the second, but Rochester responded with three runs in the third. The Bucks manufactured a run in the home half, and it was 3-2 Honkers after three.
Rochester added two more in the fifth, making it — as in the first game — 5-2 Rochester.
The Bucks team did a nice job with the fun between innings, kicking things off with a rack-of-ribs eating contest. That was followed by a contestant tossing pizzas for a partner to catch in a pizza box; another contestant tossing water balloons backwards while a partner “caught” them in a bowl strapped to their head; a race between three types of sausages; and a pretty tepid Dizzy Bat race. A few of these were repeated in the nightcap, drawing from an older, more lubricated set of contestants who were partying in box seats down the left-field line.
The ballgame took a dramatic swing in the bottom of the sixth — dramatic, but at the same time long and drawn out, with a pitching change in the middle. The Bucks led off with three straight singles, chasing starter Ryan Higgins from the game and bringing on right-hander Harrison Cordeiro, a junior at Cal State San Bernardino. Cordeiro faced nine batters in all, giving up four hits and a couple of walks on the way to an eight-run inning for the Bucks. Waterloo now led 10-5.
Rochester scored a run in the top of the seventh, but the game had been decided. Waterloo completed its doubleheader sweep with a 10-6 win.
Dad and I left the ballpark a little after 10:30 p.m. and made the drive to Cedar Rapids, checking in just before midnight. A day that began with sightseeing in Omaha, a long drive across Iowa, and more sightseeing in Waterloo had finished with 5 1/2 hours of baseball and another hour of driving. We were ready for the easier" day ahead.