Know Your Foe: The Great Falls Voyagers

Welcome to Know Your Foe, your friendly fast facts to get to know the Ballers’ opponents at Raimondi Park this season.

Next up: The Great Falls Voyagers!   

Their Season So Far:

The Voyagers are  32-58 overall and 18-24 in the second half, well outside the playoff push. They are coming off their final homestand of the season where they went 3-3 against the Glacier Range Riders. AJ Fritz (#9) is second on the team in average and first in homers; outfielder Emilio Corona (#2) leads the team in average and is top-ten leaguewide in steals. On the mound, Wyatt Cameron (#8) leads the team in ERA and saves and CJ Czerwinski (#30) in wins and strikeouts. The team is second in the league in triples hit.

Courtesy Guzman Energy

Hometown: Great Falls, Montana

-              Great Falls has a population around 60,000, making it Montana’s third-largest city after Billings and Missoula.

-              Nicknamed “The Electric City,” it neighbors five hydroelectric dams along the Missouri River, convenient for the city’s early growth and very inconvenient for Lewis and Clark, who portaged the great falls for 18 miles over nearly a month.  

-              The city hosts Malmstrom Air Force base, for a time the largest Cold War hub for Minuteman nuclear missiles.

-              It’s home to the museum for Charles M. Russell, the “cowboy artist,” whose relationships with and representations of native peoples were revolutionary for his time. His 1918 oil “Piegans” was sold at auction for $5.6 million in 2005.

-              The nearby Roe River holds the (retired) record for World’s Shortest River.

-              Great Falls was the first city affected by a wave of hacking hoaxes in 2013 that caused daytime television programs to be interrupted with the warning that zombies were rising from the grave and attacking people.

-              Famous Great Falls residents span from Ru Paul alum Bosco to NFL bust Ryan Leaf to novelist Wallace Stegner.

Mascot:  Orbit the Alien!  

-              The team’s name and mascot come from the Pioneer League’s best backstory: In 1950, Nick Mariana, the general manager of the Great Falls Electrics baseball team, recorded 16 seconds of flying objects zipping above Legion Field. The “Mariana Incident” is famous as one of the first motion picture footages of UFOs and has featured prominently in the lore ever since. (And for those of you who think this kind of thing matters, yes, the Malmstrom base is blocks away.)

-              Orbit is a baseball-loving alien, or, in his own words: “Someone had hit a home run and it went so far that it came up to our planet…I ended up loving baseball so much that I ended up staying.”

-              If you’re more inclined to earthly reasoning, Great Falls is the home to the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, marking the voyagers’ very terrestrial passage through the area.

Team History:

-              Great Falls has been part of the Pioneer League forever, from 1948-1963 and from ’69 to the present. They’ve been the Electrics, the Giants, the Dodgers, the White Sox, and, since 2008, the Voyagers.  In that time, they’ve won the league championship 13 times, most recently in 2018.

-              Plenty of big baseball names have come through the small town, including some Bay Area royalty: Willie McCovey (someone give that man a cove!), Vida Blue (a rehab stint), and Marcus Semien.

-              Great Falls claims that they are the smallest metro area with a professional baseball team, and the team has been continuously locally owned.

-              The team currently plays at Centene Field, built in 1940(!) and the same ground as the famous 1950 UFO sighting. 

The 1952 Great Falls Electrics squad.

Best Promos (I’ll say it: the Voyagers have the best promos in the league):

-              This month, Hall of Fame Pitcher (and funnyman) and Don Zimmer thrower Pedro Martinez Day! The Great Falls alum had a mural unveiled and threw out the first pitch as the city celebrated his namesake day.

-              Tip of the Week! Fun non-baseball questions answered by the players are great, but sometimes you just need some actual gritty baseball advice—pitch grips, batter routines, dugout culture—from professional baseball players.

-              Out of Town Fan of the Game! You get your picture taken for your geographic adventuring! (If you are from another planet you should say so!)

-              Bowling Coupons! Superhero Cape Giveaway! Movie Night! (Recently, Rookie of the Year.) Grandma Beauty Pageant!

-              Diamond Dig! You can dig for a buried diamond in the infield, courtesy of a local jeweler!

-              Free Money Night! (Ok, it’s a “mystery voucher” to the local casino, but still…)

What to Watch For:

-              My vote for cutest ever team alter-ego is the Great Falls River Otters, the mascot of Great Falls College. While alternate identities are mostly worn for a team’s home games, we got the Papas Fritas last week from Boise at Raimondi. Give us the otters! I mean, a guy can dream, right? Those jerseys I mean COME ON.

Special thanks to Sarah Miller, Marketing and Communications Manager for the Voyagers