In high school, Craig Counsell would walk from his home on N. Berkeley Blvd. in Whitefish Bay to Bayshore Mall, where he would catch a Milwaukee County bus and ride west to Brookfield.
This tedious commute, before smartphones and text messages, was well worth it, and not for his first minimum-wage salary at Mike Hegan's batting cages, where he worked as an attendant. The payoff was in the late hour of the day when the last of the dreamers straggled out of the building.
"I would get to hit after it closed," Counsell said. "I loved it.