Baby Cakes owner pitches baseball dream, says this is Wichita’s ‘moment in time’

With a New England accent and penchant for colorful detail delivered without taking a breath — at least when he’s in sales-pitch mode — Baby Cakes owner Lou Schwechheimer is in Wichita to sell a dream.

Whether Wichita’s buying is yet to be seen.

In Schwechheimer’s telling, the return of affiliated Minor League Baseball to Wichita means the return of the simple joys of a “magical” ballpark serving a slice of “Americana.” He weaves his own “only-in-America” narrative into the story. “I remember as a kid growing up in the projects,” several of his stories begin.

He talks about playing baseball in the streets from early morning until so late in the day he could no longer see the ball.

“That’s kind of the magic that baseball had for me.”

He says he didn’t go to a professional baseball game until age 12 when he won a newspaper contest for selling the most subscriptions to the Daily News of Newburyport in Massachusetts.

He, his father and a busload of kids went to Fenway Park, where Schwechheimer said they walked up a ramp to a sea of people — more than he’d ever seen in one place — and a burst of color in the form of the famous Green Monster wall high in left field.

“I was in awe of that moment.”

Schwechheimer is equally adept at redirecting a conversation he’d rather not have.

Can he understand widespread criticism that the deal to lure him and his team from New Orleans has not been as transparent as it could or should have been?

“I want what’s best for the city of Wichita. We’re in Wichita because we want to be there.”

That’s what he told New Orleans, too, in 2016 when he purchased the Zephyrs, which he renamed the Baby Cakes.

Another group had tried and failed to move the team to Houston.

“Asked if he was going to keep the Zephyrs in New Orleans, Schwechheimer said, ‘Absolutely,’ ” according to an April 2016 story in the New Orleans Advocate.