Dave Meyer has been playing at First National Bank of River Falls Field for the River Falls Groupers over-35-year-old team for the last eight years in the Federal League. The guy loves baseball. It's in his blood. He named his oldest son, Nolan, after Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan.

"I wanted to name my youngest son, Satchel (after Satchel Paige), but Liz (his wife of 17 years) said no," said Meyer. "She chose Wyatt after Wyatt Earp."

Wyatt Meyer and 11 of his friends and teammates on his U-10 Hudson baseball team were celebrating his 11th birthday this past Friday night. The party agenda was as easy to plan as a one, two, three Snapper mow 'em down inning.

Give the boys a Wiffle Ball and a Wiffle Ball bat and have some cake and ice cream. 

When you drive up to the Meyer house, it's takes all of a half second to realize this is a baseball family.

There's a batting cage adjacent to the garage and, as of two weeks ago, the sweetest Wiffle Ball field in Wisconsin.

"It's really fun," said Wyatt. "This is my first time having this many people over. It's probably one of my best birthdays yet!"

Wyatt and his older brother, Nolan, helped their dad for four straight days building the field.

"I worked hard," said Wyatt. "But Nolan probably worked a little harder."

The Meyers named it "Waffles Field" after their golden retriever, Waffles, who passed away two years ago. Waffles Field comes complete with 26 tons of Agrilime dirt base paths, real bases, a fence, and a donated scoreboard with a remote control.

The scoreboard was donated by fellow Federal Leaguer and Lakeville Lobo, Nick Rathmann. It's ironic the rival Lakeville Lobos would be giving anything to Meyer since they haven't been able to hit him for the past eight seasons. Maybe it was a peace offering from Lobo manager Tori Holt?  

"Liz said the boys were tearing up the grass playing ball and asked me to build a field in another part of the yard," said Meyer. "If we're going to do this, we're going to do it right."

As my dad still says, "They aren't raising grass, they're raising boys."

Waffles Field is a long way from Dodgertown Field in Vero Beach, Fla., where Meyer was invited to spring training in 2000 with the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

At spring training, Meyer was trying to make it to the big leagues and was invited to eat breakfast with longtime Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda.

"He noticed my Ringor cleats and my teammates in pro ball always got on me for wearing my college spikes," said Meyer, "But they were like walking on pillows. I loved them."

Lasorda endorsed Ringor cleats, so it's wasn't necessarily who you know but what you wore for the impromptu breakfast meeting.

"At breakfast, Maury Wills and Sandy Koufax sat down and ate with us," said Meyer. "And I was about to get up and leave because I didn't think I belonged there, but Maury said 'I've seen you pitch, you belong here."

Meyer has played on plenty of baseball fields during his 48 years. He grew up in Austin, Minn., and graduated from high school in 1994. He played two years of junior college baseball and then two years pitching at Mayville State University in North Dakota. He went undrafted but was pitching for the Fargo Moorhead RedHawks, an independent Northern League team in the same league with the St. Paul Saints in the late 1990's.

The Dodgers were scouting a Saints' pitcher and the opposing pitcher for the RedHawks that night was Dave Meyer. The Dodgers liked what they saw and offered him a contract right after the game. They made him a closer because of his 95 mph fastball.

Meyer won a Class A World Series title with San Bernardino but after a couple more years in the minors, life and age finished Meyer's dream of playing in the big leagues.

Meyer was a carpenter by trade and was helping flip houses, among some other jobs, but baseball was still in his life. He started the Dave Meyer Baseball Academy about 20 years ago.

In 2017, his shoulder was giving him pain and he went to see Dr. Andrea Saterbak at Twin Cities Orthopedics.

"She said, 'You have the shoulder of a 20-year-old," said Meyer. "She asked me what I did for shoulder exercises. I told her the ones from Dr. Jobe when I played with the Dodgers."

Dr. Frank Jobe was a pioneer in elbow ligament replacement and invented the now famous "Tommy John" surgery. One third of all major league pitchers will have "Tommy John" surgery on their elbows. Dr. Jobe was the Dodgers' "arm doctor" for almost 50 years. He is to arm orthopedics what the Wright Brothers are to flying.

Meyer used much of what he was taught with the Dodgers and Dr. Jobe and brought that to his baseball academy business.

"The number one thing for pitchers is to stay balanced and stay back," said Meyer. "You push your chest out with your back leg."

Meyer has his kids pitch on a 2x4 to learn balance and snap a towel down, the exact same drill Dr. Jobe had their Dodger pitchers do in spring training.

"Very Mr. Miyagi-like," I stated.

"Totally," said Meyer. "I have dads tell me they don't see this stuff online and tell me they're questioning it because they haven't seen it. I ask them if they've seen Bill Belichick's playbook online. The Dodgers or any other major league team aren't going to tell you 'This is what we do.' They keep it a big secret."

A Twin Cities Orthopedic representative noticed a local 17-year-old who had received Tommy John surgery was progressing very well working with Meyer. He asked Meyer what he was doing and why he did it.

The next thing you know, Twin Cities Orthopedics (TCO) offered Meyer a job working with young players' arm rehab. He contracts with TCO from December through April and works seven days a week for them.

"The Dodgers have a 13-step pitching process but I shrunk it down to six for the kids, but it's still the core," said Meyer.

Just before the recent Major League Baseball All-Star break this past week, 248 major league pitchers had been on the injury list this season, according to ESPN. 

"In a typical year, the Dodgers have about 8% of their pitching staff get hurt," said Meyer. "They had 28% hurt after weighted ball training. They stopped doing that, but there are a ton of youth club teams training with weighted balls."

According to Meyer, weighted ball arm training will improve your velocity, on average, by 2.1 miles per hour but he says, "three out of four get hurt."

"If you had three out of four parachutes that won't open, are you going to jump?" said Meyer. "They showed me an X-Ray of a kid's shoulder that had been throwing weighted balls and it looked like a spidered windshield. Nobody focuses on mechanics any more, it's just throwing hard. Everything is max effort now on every single pitch. When you max effort all of the time, you're going to get hurt."

Meyer has pitched on professional baseball fields. He still pitches at First National Bank of River Falls Field. He's also in the medical field helping rehab baseball arm injuries. But this night, he's sitting on his porch overlooking the setting sun on a soft summer night while 12 boys are playing on Waffles Field he built in his backyard.

It is very cliche to conjure up the quote "if you build it, they will come" from the movie, "Field of Dreams," however, it is absolutely allowed in this case because Wyatt Meyer's Hudson U-10 baseball team is skipping a big tournament this weekend. Instead, the team is watching "Field of Dreams" at the Meyers’ house this Sunday night and then traveling to Dyersville, Iowa, to play some pick-up games at the actual "Field of Dreams" movie site on Monday night, an end-of-the-season treat.

Dave Meyer is the field general for this field trip and it’s as baseball as baseball can be. He wouldn’t have it any other way.