How It All Began
The story of the Bay County Sports Page and the people who made it matter.
The idea of the Sports Page newspaper was conceived on a Sunday night in May of 1976 at Denny Hayes’s Green Hut Tavern on Columbus Avenue in Bay City, Michigan.
I was sitting at a corner table with several members of the Green Hut softball team who had just won a hard-fought weekend fastpitch tournament. The championship trophy sat proudly in the middle of the table while pitchers of beer were passed around.
If you’ve ever been to the Green Hut, we were sitting beneath the murals celebrating the sports achievements of Olympic gold medalist Terry McDermott, NFL legend Bill Hewitt, and baseball’s most famous pinch hitter Jerry Lynch.
The conversation turned toward the fact that the team’s championship performance would probably receive little coverage in the local daily newspaper.
Complaints turned into ideas. Ideas turned into challenges.
Without thinking much about it, I said:
Everyone at the table stopped talking and just stared at me.
“I made newspapers in Colorado for three years after I got out of the Air Force,” I explained.
That’s when Del Benson stood up, pulled out his wallet, and spun it across the table.
“Maybe five dollars a year,” I guessed.
Benson pulled a ten-dollar bill from his wallet.
Del Benson
Del Benson became the first Sports Page subscriber in 1976. When the idea for a local sports newspaper was first discussed at the Green Hut, Benson was first in line to support it.
“How much for a 1-year subscription?” Benson asked. “Five dollars,” I said. Benson’s answer was simple: “I’m in.”
That early show of confidence mattered. The first issue of the Sports Page would appear on July 5, 1976.
The early issues established the tone and purpose of the publication: local sports, local people, and the kind of community coverage that larger papers often overlooked.
Over time, the publication grew in identity and reach. The Sports Page became a weekly publication in 1978, changed to the Bay City Enterprise in 1980, and continued through its final issue in October of 1984.
The next day I met with Mel Kent, Vice-President of Peoples National Bank in Bay City.
Mel Kent & Early Support
Mel Kent listened to a proposal concerning a start-up sports newspaper in Bay City and Bay County that would concentrate on local and recreation sports.
Kent liked the idea and purchased the Back Page advertising space in the Sports Page for six months.
That early support gave the paper immediate credibility and practical momentum. In many ways, it helped move the idea from a tavern conversation to a real publication.