The charitable arm of the Mud Hens — the Helping Hens — organize the distribution of Mud Hens tickets to underprivileged kids, arrange player visits, auction jerseys for charity and donate Mud Hens memorabilia and tickets to local charities.

“Helping Hens is the official charitable fund of the Toledo Mud Hens and is administered through the Toledo Community Foundation,” Mud Hens Communications Director Andi Roman said by email. “It was established to provide financial support to local non-profit organizations with an emphasis on education and development of local youth.”

Last year, the Helping Hens Foundation donated $50,000 to local nonprofits. The fund

contributes in-kind and monetary donations to nearly 1,000 organizations every year. The in-kind donations include jerseys, tickets, appearances and merchandise, which alone raised thousands of dollars for charity, Roman said.

This year’s season of giving kicked off Jan. 23 with the Helping Hens’ “Tiger Talk,” an evening with Detroit Tigers’ new manager Brad Ausmus and right fielder Torii Hunter. The night raised more than $3,000, Roman said

Helping Hens partners with local organizations to help underprivileged kids.

This year will be its ninth year partnering with local drug enforcement agencies for its Substance Abuse Prevention Program, which teaches “positive choices” to underprivileged youth, she said.

Underprivileged kids who can’t afford tickets can be a part of Muddy’s Knothole Club, which partners with area businesses.

For schools and local nonprofits that want their students or clients to attend a game but who may not have transportation, the Helping Hens Foundation offers a transportation grant.

This year will also see its share of jersey auctions. A Ghostbuster jerseys, two Christmas in July jerseys and a pink jersey for Susan G. Komen for the Cure are some of the jerseys to be auctioned for charity this season.

Rob Wiercinski, a Toledo native and former reporter with WTOL News 11, is the new community relations manager for the Mud Hens and will join Roman working with the Helping Hens Foundation. Wiercinski and Roman also worked together at 1370 WSPD and WTOL.

Wiercinski had developed a relationship with the Mud Hens organization as a reporter covering the Walleye for WTOL. When the communications position opened up, the Mud Hens asked if he was interested, Wiercinski said. He worked for WTOL for eight years and started with the Mud Hens three weeks ago.

“I went to many Hens games at the Lucas County Rec Center and saw a lot of hockey at the old sports center,” Wiercinski said, adding that he covered the groundbreaking of Fifth Third Field as a radio reporter.

“I’m joining the organization that helped make Toledo the No. 1 minor league sports market in America,” Wiercinski said, referring to the title of Top Minor League Market Toledo earned last year in a ranking of 235 minor league sports cities by Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal. “I’m joining an outstanding organization and I want to be a part of the team.”

The ultimate career goal for many is being able to do something you love, get paid for it and keep that job for many years. Carol Hamilton is the epitome of that reality.

Hamilton is the office manager for the Toledo Mud Hens and the Toledo Walleye. For 30 years, she has been a vital part of the Mud Hens organization. Her career in Toledo baseball began when the team was still grinding out games at Ned Skeldon Stadium in Maumee.

“I was just basically hired as someone to assist filling out the Mud Hens season ticket envelopes,” Hamilton said. “Then I just stuck around and started doing more and more and more.”

Over the years she has handled the team’s payroll, performed a lot of secretarial work and answered many, many phone calls.

Hamilton, a polite and quiet yet amiable woman of small frame with a welcoming smile, was raised in Toledo and raised a Mud Hens fan, as well. She recalled her memories of the Ned Skeldon years with fondness.

“It was a ballpark that needed a Band-Aid, but it was homey, and it served its purpose for a long time,” she said.

When the team moved to its current home at Fifth Third Field in 2002, many Toledo baseball fans rejoiced at the idea of a Mud Hens makeover. Hamilton was thoughtfully cautious in her initial response.

“I was skeptical, because [at first] I didn’t really care for the Downtown setting, but once we arrived down here, it was an incredible fit,” she said.

Hamilton said the most noticeable difference about her job between the Skeldon years and the present is the number of people now on the office staff and working in the ballpark.

“When I started, it was just a handful of people, and now we have 58,” she said.

Hamilton described her daily responsibilities as a hodgepodge of getting done whatever needs done.

“I’m one of the first people in here to get the machines ready for the day’s work, I answer the phone, I do all of the ordering of office supplies,” she said.

Though the players seldom visit the offices, which are usually pretty low-key and don’t see much “craziness,” Hamilton does recall an occasion when excitement levels rose and phone calls got a bit out of hand.

“When [professional golfer] Phil Mickelson tried out for the Mud Hens — that was probably the craziest time. People were calling as they got wind of it, and asked, ‘Is Phil Mickelson really trying out for the team?’”

Aside from the Mickelson incident, Hamilton said her career has been fairly tame. However, in 2009, Hamilton had a front row seat for a major shift within the organization as well as in Toledo sports.

In 2007, Toledo Arena Sports, a subsidiary of the Mud Hens ball club, purchased the rights to run hockey in Toledo, which was then the Toledo Storm. Two years later, with a new Downtown arena and a new mascot, the everyday operations of the Toledo Walleye fell in the laps of Hamilton and her Mud Hens coworkers.

“Before, we’d be taking a deep breath after baseball season and rest up, and [then] start focusing on the next season,” she said. “With the Walleye, it made it more of a year-round event. We had down time with just baseball. Now when baseball ends, hockey is getting ready to start, so it’s just a complete circle.”

Hamilton’s work space at Fifth Third Field recently received a makeover. The reception area was reconstructed to resemble a hockey arena, complete with circles and blue lines on the floor. Hamilton’s desk sits behind what hockey fans would identify as “boards and glass,” just like the protective walls that enclose the ice. Hamilton jokingly referred to it as “the penalty box.”

As coworkers passed by, it was obvious they held her in high esteem — and that she is probably the last person one would expect to find in a penalty box. That fondness is reciprocated by Hamilton. She cites the people she works with as the aspect of her work she loves most.

“They keep me young. It’s a wonderful bunch, and it’s enjoyable to come to work and be with them,” Hamilton said. “Everybody is supportive of each other. It’s a great place.”

The Swamp Shop recently unveiled its new merchandise for fans looking to support the Mud Hens this season.

“About 90 percent of the merchandise is new,” said Craig Katz, director of merchandise and licensing for the Toledo Mud Hens.

The new rotation of merchandise includes new hats, as well as 15 new T-shirts and 25 new sweatshirts, which are all listed on the store website, swampshop.milbstore.com.

“The new merchandise is already ready to go. It’s already in the store as well as the online store,” Katz said. “We expect the sweatshirts to sell well this year with it being as cold as it’s been.”

The women’s and children’s merchandise has also been completely redone to include the new merchandise.

“Almost the entire kids and ladies line is brand new items,” Katz said.

Another new addition to the shop is the line of Under Armor products. Katz projects this line of apparel will sell well this season.

“They are a well-known brand that fans have been looking for,” Katz said. “This is the first year being licensed with Major League and Minor League Baseball.”

Under Armor is a popular brand among athletes as well as fans.

Another line of apparel projected to sell well is the ‘Holy Toledo’ line. The line consists of four T-shirts at the moment, but there is potential for expanding at a later date, Katz said.

“It appeals to all Toledo natives, not just baseball and hockey fans,” he said.

A staple that sells well is typically the baseball caps, a necessity for many baseball fans, Katz said.

“This year we’re introducing a new flat-bill snapback,” Katz said. “And our batting practice caps always sell well.”

The flat-bill snapback style caps are becoming popular with many sports fans, and come in a variety of styles.

Some merchandise has already sold well, both online and in the store locations.

According to Katz, items such as the youth Nike Henley jersey, the red Pep Rally zip hoodie, the heather grey Diner hoodie, the official logo T-shirt and the New Era batting practice Diamond Era cap have all sold well recently.

Hours for the Swamp Shop at Fifth Third Field is 11 a.m.to  5 p.m. Monday-Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. The Swamp Shop at Huntington Center will be open until hockey season is over. Hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday-Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.

Other Swamp Shop locations — Swamp Shop Express and Tackle Box at the Huntington Center and the Hen Hut at Fifth Third Field — are open only during games.

Longtime Toledo Mud Hens broadcaster Jim Weber said being inducted this year into the International League Hall of Fame is humbling.

“Anytime you get inducted into any hall of fame you’re either retired or dead,” said Weber during a phone interview from Florida. “And I’m neither of those.”

Weber is certainly alive and shows no signs of slowing down. He’s headed into his 40^th season with the Mud Hens.

“It takes seven years to get 1,000 games in so I tell everybody I’m going to take [future games] 1,000 at a time,” Weber joked. “There’s no goal. Fifty years would be nice. And it’s a job that you don’t mind going to every day.”

Indeed, Weber called his 5,000 consecutive game in his 39^th season last year, the longest tenure of any announcer in the International League.

Team historian John Husman found that no other announcer could match Weber’s record. The closest he could find were Detroit’s Ernie Harwell, who missed two games between 1960 and 2002, Harry Caray, who called more than 6,000 consecutive games between 1945 and 1987 but for four different teams, and Toronto’s Tom Cheek, who had 4,306 consecutive games from 1977 to 2004.

“It is very likely that Jim Weber has done more consecutive scheduled broadcasts, for the same team, than anyone else ever has, major or minor league,” Husman said in a news release. “Comparisons are difficult, especially for the minor leagues, but it appears that Jim Weber’s streak is unmatched.”

Just because he never missed a game doesn’t mean he was never sick, Weber said.

“I had sick games when I could barely make it through,” he said. “I’d get a throat infection and couldn’t talk too well and muscle it out. I did a doubleheader in Denver just above a whisper.”

Weber was raised in South Toledo and attended Bowsher High School. He dabbled in radio in 1969 and then started helping a friend announce high school football and basketball games. By the mid-1970s, he helped arrange radio agreements for the Mud Hens and in 1975 became the team’s play-by-play announcer.

Weber has been a constant with the franchise. Since 1975, 18 managers and more than 1,000 players have passed through the organization.

In addition to his radio duties, Weber broadcasts on TV and has been the team’s traveling secretary since 1984. He has also covered games for Bowling Green State University.

“The things that make Jim so amazing as a broadcaster is his passion for the game,” said Mud Hens broadcaster Matt Melzak in an email.  “You can tell it in his voice how much he cares for the sport, its players and fans. It comes through each and every broadcast.

“One great thing that I have learned from Jim is the timing in a broadcast. He has such a great feel of how to work in a story to a broadcast. Whether it is through something historical about the team, its players, the ballpark or the city, he is able to weave that into the game without losing what is going on in the game itself.”

Weber is the first announcer to be inducted into the International League Hall of Fame. Joining him this year are infielder/outfielder Jeff Manto and manager Dave Miley.

Weber considers the Mud Hens’ back-to-back Governor’s Cup championships in 2005 and 2006 his career highlight.

“I never thought I’d see one, but I saw two in a row,” Weber said. “It was in my 31^st  year. It took that long before we won a championship. Lots of those guys are in the major leagues now. That was the highlight. Now I have two rings to show for it.”

Weber said he’s most proud of the fact that he hasn’t missed a game in his career and that he’s a local guy in a franchise that sees a lot of employees from outside Toledo.

“I think if you looked at all our organization there’s not a lot of people from our area,” Weber said. “They have careers, they move on, they come from other places. There’s not a lot of natives in there — there are some but a lot of them are from somewhere else.”

He’s also seen two generations of employees grow up – the league president, Randy Mobley, was an intern for Columbus when Weber was broadcasting years ago. If he sticks around a few more years, he’ll see a third generation, he said.

Weber has lived in Perrysburg for the past eight years. He has two daughters and two grandchildren.

The Mud Hens will honor Weber with a bronze statue at a home game May 29. He said he doesn’t necessarily like the attention and can’t wait for the ceremony to be over so he can focus on his announcing.

“After this year, things will quiet down and get back to normal,” he said.

Social media and smartphone use has grown in popularity to the point where a majority of users are on their phones all the time — whether they are watching the Oscars, the Super Bowl or a baseball game, said Nathan Steinmetz, manager of online marketing for the Toledo Mud Hens.

That “second-screen mentality” is why Steinmetz is excited for a new Minor League Baseball (MiLB) app set to debut by Opening Day.

The free app, Inside the Park, was developed by Boomaphone, a subsidiary of sports marketing company Brandiose, in partnership with MiLB and will include all 160 minor league teams, including the Mud Hens.

“You walk around our games the past few years and you’ll see that everyone’s on their phone, whether they are checking their Twitter or texting their friends or posting their own photos on Instagram. It’s happening everywhere,” Steinmetz said.

“At any of these big events that everybody watches, that second-screen mentality is you’ve got your phone out and you’re following along on Twitter to see what everybody else is saying or you’re getting engaged and putting your own thoughts and jokes out there. It’s happening at home and it’s happening at our games. This app is a perfect culmination of all those things and we think it’s going to be really great.”

Each team will supply its own inning-by-inning content for the app, which will be available for both iPhone and Android users.

“We’re confident it will be up and operational on Opening Day or soon thereafter,” Steinmetz said. “Realistically it will probably take us a homestand or two to work through the kinks. But it should be really cool.”

The app is expected to serve as a “companion piece” to the fan experience, Steinmetz said.

“It lets fans know what special events might be happening before the game, what promotions will be happening during the game and what’s happening after the game, if there’s fireworks or any special events worth sticking around for,” Steinmetz said.

App users can vote on mascot races, sign up for promotions, earn points and reward coupons, interact through social media accounts, explore the ballpark via an interactive map and more, said app developer Jason Klein of Boomaphone.

The app will use geolocation to recognize what ballpark the user is in and pull up that feed, Steinmetz said. The user can also manually switch to a different ballpark, Klein said.

“This is connecting the ballpark experience in a way that’s never been done before,” Klein said. “It completely enhances the fan experience.”

All the Mud Hens social media platforms will be integrated into the app, so fans following the game will get Facebook posts, tweets and Instagram posts from the Mud Hens within the app.

Fans can also sign into their own social media platforms using the app. Photos, tweets and statuses shared via the app will automatically get a game hashtag that will be searchable and viewable by the Mud Hens and other fans at the game as well as your own friends, Steinmetz said.

“The idea is that if people are here, they can just have this app up the entire time and do everything they would want to do from the app,” Steinmetz said.

Steinmetz said he also hopes the app will help fans take control of their game experience.

“There are events happening all over the concourse and if you walk in the wrong gate, you might not walk by it,” Steinmetz said. “People might not know the mascots sign autographs in the seventh inning because they sit over there and have no reason to come over here for example. So we’re hoping this really helps people increase the value of their ticket and be able to experience more.”

Last year, seven minor league teams participated in a pilot program with the app, including the Buffalo Bisons and Lehigh Valley IronPigs of the International League.

“One of the teams came to us so we built a minor league baseball app from the ground up,” Klein siad. “We’re not bringing this over from any other sport or business. It was designed specifically for minor league baseball fans. We took a lot of notes and a lot of feedback from the teams last year and the app will be way better than last year.”

Many minor league fans are more interested in promotional events than baseball stats, Steinmetz said.

“Sports information is important, but our philosophy has always been that’s part of it,” he said. “Some people just want to know, ‘Is SpongeBob going to be at the game today? Are there fireworks tonight?’ That’s what this app is. Twenty percent of the screen is taken up with information on the game and the rest is information about what’s going on and that’s what most people are here for.”

Steinmetz said he’s excited to use the app both as his job and as a fan.

“They get what we’re all about — the differences between our fans and fans of other sports and even of the major leagues,” Steinmetz said of Boomaphone. “They get how it’s all about fun and entertainment here and that’s all built into the app.”

Social media users comprise all age groups, from children to seniors, Steinmetz said.

“It’s getting to the point where just about everyone’s using it,” Steinmetz said. “A good example is the Throwback Thursday hashtag. We’ve been taking advantage of our storied history and sharing some of our old photos from our archives.”

Each week, the Hens get responses from fans who remember attending games at Swayne Field and Ned Skeldon Stadium.

“The conversations that come out of that are amazing. We get incredible engagement from it,” Steinmetz said. “Right there is a great example of how social media has reached across all age groups and our messaging has changed a little bit to reflect that.”

Because the app is made by Minor League Baseball, it won’t transfer to the Walleye, but it’s something the team would be interested in offering in the future, Steinmetz said.

“It’s that second-screen mentality coming right into our ballpark. That’s where we’re at now,” Steinmetz said. “It all kind of comes together, that you can communicate with other people, you can communicate with the team, you can get news and information — all from your seat. It’s pretty cool.”