Hey, we need a batting practice pitcher. Would you mind throwing a few to Manny Ramirez?

The rededication of Thurman Munson Memorial Stadium, amid a $5 million renovation, rallies a thousand ballpark memories.

The live on in the men who played minor league baseball there in the late 1980s and 90s when Cleveland's Double-A affiliate team played there.

And they live on in those who watched those games and also got to coach or play there, especially once minor league baseball moved on and Munson became a treasured field for adult leagues, and high school and college teams.

Here are 12 quick stories on Munson Stadium.

Akron wasn't interested; Canton built Munson Stadium

"People person" Bob Patt was a Lehman High School freshman when Thurman Munson was a Lehman freshman. He did important legwork that led to building Thurman Munson Memorial Stadium.

Working for the City of Canton in the late 1980s, Patt picked up Mike Agganis at the airport. He showed Agganis around town. Agganis wanted to relocate his minor league franchise in Burlington, Vermont, to Ohio.

"Akron wasn't interested," Patt recalls. "Youngstown might have been considered, but it came down to Agganis focusing on Canton. Sam Purses, the mayor at that time, was really interested in bringing in a team."

A thousand moving parts, including the building of a stadium, had to be crammed into a minuscule time schedule. The appearance of Cleveland's Class AA affiliate in Munson Stadium came off like a bolt out of the blue in April of 1989.

Patt, 71, says Akron soon noticed the move was working out very well for Canton. He finds irony in the fact Agganis and Akron conspired to build a stadium that dislodged the team from Canton.

$100 bet with 'Boot' solved with a blast at Munson

After playing high school and college ball at Jackson and Malone, Rob Dewolf chased a professional dream for six years, getting as far as the Class AAA Las Vegas Stars.

When it ended he came home to Stark County in 1990.

"I had had a lot of experiences in a lot of stadiums, old and new, across the country," he said. "I was away and never got to see Munson Stadium, but I was aware of it and was happy they named it what they named it.

"After I came back, I went to some games. There were some good crowds. It made a helluva lot of noise when people stomped in the metal grandstand. A crowd of 2,000 sounded like 12,000."

Friends talked him into playing for Canton's local adult league in 1990. His team, Buttrey-Mayle, was based at Cook Park, where the fences were way back.

Local legend Don "Boot" Buttrey bet Dewolf $100 he couldn't slug one out at Cook.

"I was hitting a lot of home runs, but we were two-thirds of the way through the season and I hadn't hit one at Cook," Dewolf said. "Boot kept reminding me.

"We played at Munson late in the season when I hit one. I'm rounding the bases and Jeff Hite goes up to Boot and yells, 'That counts, Boot! That counts!'"

Hite laughs at the memory.

"Munson had the dimensions of typical major league parks," Hite said. "Rob hit a bomb ... it was into the night. I said, 'Boot, that would have been way out at Cook.' "

When batting practice is the memory of a lifetime

Hite, a 1982 Hoover graduate, played a marathon career in the local adult amateur league.

One day in 1993, Brian Graham, manager of Cleveland's Class AA Canton affiliate in Canton, surprised him with a request. The pro team needed a lefty to throw batting practice at Munson.

"They get me out there and I'm throwing batting practice to Manny Ramirez," Hite said. "We all liked to think we could play at that level, but those Double-A guys ... the ball came off the bat different. Guys with wood bats were hitting balls over the scoreboard.

"I was so nervous. I was worried I wouldn't throw a strike."

'You can't go home again,' But John Massarelli did, at Munson

John Massarelli was a catcher who could run (54 stolen bases in 60 attempts in the Houston Astros' system in 1990).

His long minor league run was near the end in 1995 when he became the answer to his favorite trivia question: Who is the only player to hit a home run at Munson Stadium as a pro and as an amateur?

"Maz" did it as a pro in the Eastern League and as an amateur in Canton's adult league. He played 55 games for Cleveland's Class AA affiliate in Canton.

"It was my 10th year in pro ball," recalls the former Canton Central Catholic player. "It was a chance to play at home. I lived on 13th Street, close to Tim's Tavern. A couple guys from the team were living at my house.

"Sometimes I would mow the grass at the house and then go to the stadium."

Sometimes playing baseball gets you in trouble

Munson Stadium opened in 1989 with Cleveland's Class AA farm affiliate playing to big crowds.

The local adult league managed to land Munson for one date in July.

"It was the Class A League all-star game," Ross Vukovich said. "It was at Munson and it was on TV.

"Our son was born on a Friday and the game was either Saturday or Saturday, but it was when our baby son was coming home.

"I wanted to be at Munson and play in that game, and I did. My wife's still mad about that."

The son, RJ, grew up and landed on an A League team on which Ross wound up pinch-hitting and scoring the final run in the history of the A League. The game was at Munson.

Now in his 50s, a coach at Jackson High School, Ross plays for a 25-and-older team at Munson.

Anybody here heard of Manny Ramirez?

These days Ray Frisbee is head baseball coach at GlenOak High School. He was the Golden Eagles' catcher and cleanup hitter when they beat Boardman and Shaker Heights in 2002 regional tournament thrillers at Munson.

"My parents took me to games at Munson when I was growing up," Frisbee said. "I got Jim Thome's autograph there. Omar Vizquel had a camp there.

"Manny Ramirez was playing for Canton-Akron one year. Manny came to my grade school, Plain Center, and signed autographs. Nobody really knew who he was."

Ramirez went on to hit 555 Major League home runs.

Baseball man Doug Miller: 'The field looked beautiful'

Local baseball icon Doug Miller, now 70 and coaching at East Canton High School, had season tickets at Munson Stadium when Cleveland's Class AA minor-league affiliate arrived in 1989.

"I kept the tickets until they announced they were going to go to Akron," Miller said. "There were great crowds at Munson. It took a while to get out of there after the games.

"The field looked beautiful. In the early days it was voted as one of the top Double-A ballparks. As the years went on, in the early '90s, other cities were building plush brick ballparks.

"When high school teams came into Munson, they thought it was a palace. ... A lot of high school district and regional tournaments were there. Our Central Catholic team beat Louisville there in the district tournament in 2004. That was a thrill because of the whole history. I knew Thurman. He played for my dad in the A League."

Friends of Thurman Munson the player, Munson the stadium

Like Doug Miller, Joe Gilhousen had season tickets when Cleveland's Double-A team moved into the new Munson Stadium.

Gilhousen was one of Munson's best friends, going back to their days as teammates at Lehman and Kent State. The stadium opened 10 years after Munson's death.

"We saw a lot of really good baseball there," Gilhousen said. "It was an intimate environment. It was a fun place to go to watch a game.

"Our GlenOak team played Cuyahoga Falls there in regionals in 1990. We were the first high school teams to play in the stadium. It was a big thrill for the players and coaches.

"Eventually the districts and regionals were played there on a regular basis. I always enjoyed it because the field was in great shape. The kids always enjoyed it."

Munson Stadium tournament runs 'bring chills'

Rick Rembielak saw the USA in five minor league seasons in the Orioles' and Cubs' chains. He laughs about standing in ankle-deep water in the showers in Durham, North Carolina.

"A lot of parks that were around when Munson Stadium opened were built in the '20s, '30s and '40s," said Rembielak, now the athletic director at Perry High School. "My experience at Munson came when I played in the Canton Class A League for Buttrey Coins.

"That was the nicest playing surface in the area. They did a good job of maintaining that. For them to renovate the stadium and keep all the history is phenomenal."

Bill Gamble, a former Perry player who is head baseball coach at Jackson, has seen Munson Stadium from every angle.

"I love the facility and love the atmosphere," Gamble said. "When the Indians' minor league team was there, it was electric. When you're making a run in the high school tournament, and you're there with the place rocking, it brings chills."

Mike Birkbeck landed at Munson Stadium in the Jim Thome days

Mike Birkbeck grew up in Orrville, pitched at the University of Akron, and moved to Stark County during his years in the Milwaukee Brewers system — Plain Township was close to the Akron-Canton airport, which he used a lot in those days.

Birkbeck was coming off a knee injury when Cleveland acquired him and sent him to Canton.

At Munson Stadium, he generally threw to catcher Jesse Levis. Jim Thome played third base. The bullpen included Rudy Seanez, who, as Birkbeck recalls, "threw 100 mph when nobody was throwing 100," but was a bit of a wild thing.

"I was 30 years old," said Birkbeck, who had posted a 10-win season for the Brewers. "The team was a unique group of young men with high energy, building careers.

"Munson was a neat facility. It would get loud in there when folks started banging on the sheet metal. It fascinated me that the playing surface was always pristine.

"The stands were right on top of the field. From the mound, it felt shorter than 60 feet 6 inches to home plate."

The time at Munson helped Birkbeck get back to the bigs, not in Cleveland but with the New York Mets. Now, at 61, he has a national reputation as a pitching coach at Kent State, Munson's college alma mater.

"Thurman Munson Stadium has meant a lot to me on a lot of different levels," Birkbeck said. "I began to resurrect my career there. I watched my son play there for GlenOak in the districts and the regional.

"It's been a big part of my role in recruiting. I've seen so many really good players there over the last 25 years."

After the Yankees, Shawn Alazaus had a last hurrah at Munson

The Canton Crocodiles, from the independent Frontier League, were an inadequate Munson Stadium replacement for the Cleveland Class AA affiliate that bolted to Akron in 1997.

The Crocodiles, though, were a perfect fit in Shawn Alazaus' baseball journey. The New York Yankees system, which drafted the former Carrollton High School ace in 1993, released him in 1996.

Pitching for an independent team in Fargo, North Dakota, he began to admit his Major League dream "probably wasn't going to happen."

"Thurman Munson Stadium was a good place to give it one more year," Alazaus said. "It was nice getting closer to home. It was a very fun season."

He made 16 starts for the Crocodiles.

"Munson was a beautiful place to play," he said. "The field was in phenomenal shape. In my time in the New York-Penn League, the South Atlantic League and the Florida State League, Thurman Munson was the nicest playing surface."

Alazaus got a kick out of visiting Munson Stadium this spring for a college game, Walsh vs. Malone. His son, Brant Alazaus, is the ace of Walsh's staff.

It sounded like banging 5,000 cookie sheets

Repository photographers Bob Rossiter and Scott Heckel worked numerous games at Munson, including opening day in the first season,1989.

"Being at Munson was a lot of fun because you were so close to the action," Rossiter said. "And when the crowd stomped the metal bleachers, it sounded like banging 5,000 cookie sheets."

Heckel took a panoramic shot of the stadium's first pitch, with Deion Sanders of the Albany-Colonie Yankees in the batter's box.

"It was my priority assignment that night," Heckel said. "We had just begun color photography in the newspaper, so it took some time to produce the image, shooting color film. My memory is that we ran it pretty wide on the front page, perhaps six columns."

Reach Steve at steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com

On Twitter: @sdoerschukREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: 12 baseball stories about Thurman Munson Memorial Stadium renewal