At first, Jeff Leystra couldn’t find Evansville on a map, but once he did, he never left. Tired of jaded minor leaguers in higher-profile independent leagues, a reinvigorated Andy McCauley discovered a home with the Evansville Otters and its youthful Frontier League players.
Together, they’ll help usher in the Otters’ 30th anniversary this summer, starting with a celebration May 9.
“It was standing room only,” Leystra recalls of that first opening night on June 15, 1995, when the team took to Bosse Field under Manager Boots Day. “For Evansville to support the organization for 30 years the way it has is unbelievable.”
Evansville is the oldest member of the Frontier League, a professional league that is expanding geographically and numerically. Newly added teams in Kinston, North Carolina, and Pearl, Mississippi, swell membership to 18, broken down into East and West conferences with four divisions for this season. Evansville is a member of the Central Division of the West Conference.
Founded in 1993, the Frontier League is “by far the largest independent league in professional baseball, with teams in Canada down to Mississippi,” says John Stanley, Otters team president since 2017. “The Otters average roughly 100,000 people a year for our games, and it puts us right in mid-pack in the league, even though we are one of the smaller markets.”
Original owner Tom Sullivan brought the team to Evansville from Lancaster, Ohio, and renamed it after the region’s river otters. After two seasons, Sullivan sold the team to Charles Jacey, who in turn sold it to the Bussing family in 2001.
“As much as I loved baseball, I never desired to own a team,” owner Bill Bussing says. But when out-of-town consortium Goldklang Group came looking for a local partner, the Bussings bit, he says, and “our family owned 52 percent of a minor league baseball team. Who would have ever guessed?” The Bussings bought out Goldklang after the 2002 season and have owned the team outright ever since.
The purchase ensured Evansville would continue to host minor league baseball and that Bosse Field would remain viable. Bosse Field’s prior tenant, the Triple-A Triplets, played in Evansville 1970-1984 as a farm club for several Midwestern MLB teams. The stadium remained dormant until the Otters moved in in 1995. Baseball fans responded in a big way: During the 2005 season, home games drew 136,941 people, which remains a single-season attendance record.
McCauley, who became the Otters’ manager in 2010, notes that not many minor league teams have played in the same city and ballpark for 30 years. “It’s a credit for what Mr. Bussing did and has continued to do for so long,” McCauley says.
WHERE’S EVANSVILLE?
Jeff Leystra, who had pitched for nearly five years in the Toronto Blue Jays organization, was recovering from an arm injury and looking for a new gig. He found it with the Otters, who began their first season in the Frontier League in 1995.
“I didn’t know where Indiana was,” says Leystra, a Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, native. “I tried to find Evansville, and it took me a while because it was way at the bottom. I thought, ‘I guess I’ll go down there and play.’”
Leystra says Evansville has the best of both worlds: a small-town feel with some of the amenities of a larger city. He also likes Evansville’s proximity to Louisville, Kentucky, St. Louis, Missouri, Nashville, Tennessee, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati, Ohio.
After pitching three seasons for the Otters, Leystra became a pitching coach in 1998 and 1999 before retiring from baseball and making Evansville his new home.
THE Long Way THERE
There always are stories about the travails of playing minor league baseball. One revolved around a former high school bus nicknamed the “Otter Express,” a long-ago mode of transportation that ran out of gas three-quarters of the way up a mountain in West Virginia.
“It’s funny, under my seat I could smell something burning,” Leystra says. “I could see some smoke coming up.” Finally, another bus came to the Otters’ rescue, and they arrived in Parkersburg for a game with the Ohio Valley Redcoats about an hour later.
A Perfect FIT
Company culture played a big part in McCauley’s decision to manage the Otters. Between 1998 and 2008, he moved between five teams in the U.S. and Canada and collected a Frontier League championship in 1999 with the Werewolves, a now-defunct club in London, Ontario, Canada.
“Working for Mr. Bussing is an absolute blessing,” says McCauley, who guided Evansville to the Frontier League championship in 2016 and has posted a 14-year record of 676-617. “He has such a passion for the game and the community.”
If Bussing’s wife, Phyllis, is out of town, you’ll probably find him working at Bosse Field, even on an off day, sleeves rolled up and drenched in sweat.
“It’s unbelievable,” McCauley says.
Like Leystra, who later spent 25 years as a plant manager for LyondellBasell Industries, McCauley has made Evansville his home yearround. Tired of the brutal winters in Binghamton, New York, McCauley and his wife, Rachel, moved to Evansville full time in summer 2022. The couple have three children — Erin, 9; A.J., 7; and Ryan, 4 — and McCauley says his wife had grown tired of coaching NCAA Division I volleyball as an assistant at State University of New York at Binghamton.
McCauley has had offers to manage in the Atlantic League and American Association, but gave them “a defiant no.” He prefers to stay in Evansville and in the Frontier League, relishing the chance to tutor the Otters’ younger players. The Frontier League allows only two veterans age 30 or older on a team’s roster. A minimum of 10 of a team’s 24 players must be rookies.
He loves younger players’ energy and enthusiasm and receptiveness to learning, as opposed to an older player who might have been released by three or four organizations and no longer has a positive outlook.
“The big thing is strong character (players),” McCauley says. “We’ve had a lot of good moments.”
For new and returning players, much has been made of Bosse Field’s historic impact — it’s America’s third-oldest ballpark in continuous operation, trailing Boston, Massachusetts’ Fenway Park and Chicago, Illinois’ Wrigley Field. It is a fact not lost on opposing Frontier League players.
“More than 100 (National Baseball) Hall of Famers have played (at Bosse Field),” McCauley says. “It’s the right place to be. You see players from the visiting team come in and play here for the first time, and they record it with their phones.”
Josh Allen liked playing for the Otters so much, the infielder made a point to return to the team twice.
“I came back for two reasons: Andy McCauley and Mr. Bussing,” says Allen, a Florida native. “Andy McCauley is the greatest man I have ever met in the game of baseball. I have a loyalty to him that is unmatched. … As well as Mr. Bussing, the way he treats all of us like family and not employees is what makes him so special. … I have never had an owner take the time to get to know you and go out of his way to make sure everything is done right for your benefit.”
During his first stint with the Otters from 2014-17, Allen’s nine home runs, 46 runs batted in, and 29 stolen bases helped spark the team to the 2016 Frontier League title.
“What made that team so special is that we all became brothers,” says Allen, who hit .354 on his way to earning league Most Valuable Player honors that championship season. He returned to the team in 2021. “The closeness and love we had for each other is what carried us through playoffs. Everyone wanted to win for our coaches and the city of Evansville and be able to present the trophy to Mr. Bussing as a small thank you for everything he has done for us and the city.”
Allen, who is the team’s career leader in triples (20) and stolen bases (77), was signed by the Otters for the 2023 Frontier League Championship Series, which the team lost to the Quebec Capitales, a team coached in 2002 by McCauley. Allen currently is playing his fourth season in suburban Chicago with the Kane County Cougars of the American Association. Allen, who turns 34 on March 26, plans to retire after this coming season.
Conversely, Central High School graduate Mason White attended a handful of Otters games with his grandfather, Doyle Wilson, while growing up in Evansville.
“At that time, I would’ve loved to play for them and now I finally have been able to live out the dream to play professional baseball and do my best to make a career out of it,” says White, who batted .255 with five home runs and 36 RBIs playing in 63 games for the Otters in 2024. He is signed for the 2025 season.
“Playing for the Otters means a lot. It makes it easier for my family and friends to come out and support me being a local guy,” says White, who helped lead Indiana University Southeast in New Albany, Indiana, to the NAIA World Series last year before joining the Otters. “It prepared me for pro ball because I was able to face the best players in the country at that level. It showed me how much commitment it takes to play at that level, and it showed me what it takes to win and be successful at the highest level. I give a lot of credit to my college coaches and teammates to help me get to that point.”
Baseball fans have flocked to Bosse Field for special occasions, like the 2006 Frontier League All-Star Game. The July 24, 2013, game set a record for the ballpark’s largest crowd: 8,253. The prior record was set, interestingly enough, at Bosse Field’s inaugural game on June 17, 1915.
Bussing says Otters ownership tries to treat fans as though they are “guests in our own home. We want them to have so much fun, they can’t wait to come back. We can’t control some factors — the weather, for example, or how well we are playing — so we focus on those that we can, such as good food, short lines, clean restrooms, and courteous employees.”
OTTERS FRANCHISE CONTINUES TO Grow
The franchise has more than 100 rostered employees during the summer. The team has leadership that oversees financial matters, marketing, human resources, ticketing, concessions, stadium operations, technology and media, sales, and baseball operations. Although, at 24, Brycen Moore is the youngest person ever named an Otters general manager, he’s hardly new to the organization. The Castle High School graduate first interned for the team in 2021 and served as director of operations for two seasons, pulling double duty as assistant general manager in 2024.
Moore says the Otters want to increase their community involvement and brainstorm how to bring more people to the park.
“Just because we work in an old and historic ballpark, doesn’t mean that all of our ideas and tactics have to be old and historic as well,” he says. “We are looking to be more with the times in the coming years and are currently working on our promotional schedule that we think will excite a lot of fans of all demographics.”
Aaron King, assistant director of sports development for Explore Evansville, says the organization values its partnership with the Otters.
“Their historic Bosse Field is both a treasured landmark and a versatile venue,” King says. “We work with the Otters to highlight the facility’s unique charm, helping to host marquee events and engaging the community in new and creative ways. Having such a historic sports venue in our community is an incredible asset that enhances everything we offer from a sports perspective. The Evansville Otters play a vital role in preserving and celebrating that rich history, ensuring it continues to thrive for future generations.”
OTTERS HIGHLIGHTS
1995
Otters begin playing in the independent Frontier League, managed by former major leaguer Boots Day (who remains involved with the ballclub to this day in a coaching role, at age 77). It had been an 11-year absence of minor league baseball in Evansville after the Triple-A Triplets left for Nashville, Tennessee
2001
The Bussing family purchases the team from Charles Jacey
2005
Otters draw 136,941 in 51 home games, still a single-season attendance record
2006
Otters defeat the Chillicothe Paints in three games in the Frontier League Championship Series to win their first title, under the guidance of manager Greg Jelks. Bosse Field hosts the league’s All-Star game
2013
Otters’ single-game attendance of 8,253 on Marathon Oil Night on July 24 is the largest crowd in Bosse Field history
2016
Otters defeat River City Rascals three games to two in the Frontier League Championship Series to win their second title, under the guidance of manager Andy McCauley
2017
Otters win their 1,000th game in franchise history with a 6-5 victory over the Normal CornBelters
2024
Otters draw 96,488 fans for the season, vaulting over 3 million in franchise history (3,052,717)
MAJOR LEAGUE OTTERS
GEORGE SHERRILL
Pitched for the Seattle Mariners 2004-07, Baltimore Orioles 2008-09, Los Angeles Dodgers 2010, Atlanta Braves 2011, and Seattle Mariners 2012; pitched in the 2008 MLB All-Star Game
ANDREW WERNER
Pitched for the San Diego Padres, 2012
BRANDYN SITTINGER
Pitched for the Arizona Diamondbacks, 2021
RANDY WYNNE
Pitched for the Cincinnati Reds, 2023
