2022 Santa Fe Fuego Season Recap - Bill Rogan Builds a Contender but Conflict at Fort Marcy Ends His Tenure

The 2022 Santa Fe Fuego season became one of the more complicated and memorable seasons in franchise history. On the field, the Fuego were competitive again under manager Bill Rogan and showed that Santa Fe could still contend in the Pecos League. Off the field, however, the season became dominated by disagreements involving Rogan, the condition of Fort Marcy Ballpark and the team's sponsorship decisions. What began as a promising summer ultimately became Rogan's final season managing the Fuego and, in retrospect, the last time Santa Fe would field a truly competitive team until the organization's planned rebuilding effort for 2027.

Rogan returned for his second season managing the Fuego after taking over the club in 2021. He brought a demanding approach to the job and wanted Santa Fe to operate like a serious professional baseball team despite the challenges that came with playing independent baseball at Fort Marcy. Early in the 2022 season, his approach appeared to be working. The Fuego opened the year playing some of their best baseball in years and quickly established themselves as a legitimate team in the Mountain Division race. In mid-June, Santa Fe stood 9-4, the second-best record in the division, with several players performing at an All-Star level.

That early success was significant for a franchise that had gone through considerable change. The Fuego had returned to Santa Fe following the disruption of the COVID era and were attempting to reestablish the atmosphere that had made Fort Marcy one of the Pecos League's most recognizable venues. The fans remained one of the organization's greatest strengths. Santa Fe had always possessed a passionate following, and Rogan believed those fans deserved a playing surface that matched their commitment to the team.

Unfortunately, the playing surface became one of the biggest stories of the season. Fort Marcy had always been unusual. It was a historic public park rather than a privately controlled professional baseball stadium, and the field was used for far more than Fuego games. The park was open to the public, and people could walk dogs across the field, children could play on the grass and visitors could enter the facility throughout the day. Major community events also used the property. All of that made maintaining a professional-quality baseball surface extremely difficult.

Rogan eventually reached his breaking point. During a game against Colorado Springs, two Santa Fe infielders were struck in the chest by bad-hop ground balls. The Fuego committed five errors that night and lost 25-9. Rogan later explained that his frustration wasn't really about the score. He yelled toward the press box for the field to be fixed and specifically called on Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber to address the situation.

Instead of keeping his complaints within the organization, Rogan spoke publicly to the Santa Fe New Mexican. He described Fort Marcy's natural-grass playing surface as dangerous and a disaster, arguing that the conditions created an unnecessary risk for professional players. The newspaper story turned what had been an internal baseball concern into a public disagreement involving the manager, the Fuego organization and the City of Santa Fe.

Rogan's complaints weren't simply about appearance. He believed the uneven infield created a legitimate safety issue. He pointed to his own players' concerns and recalled an incident from the previous season in which an Alpine player had been struck in the neck by a bad hop and remained on the ground for an extended period. Rogan believed the ultimate solution would be to remove the existing infield surface and install artificial turf, leaving the natural-grass outfield intact.

The City of Santa Fe saw the situation differently. Parks and Open Space Division Director Melissa McDonald said the city performed the basic maintenance required under its agreement, including mowing and watering the grass, dragging the infield and removing waste. She also said the normal protocol was for concerns to be communicated through Fuego general manager Yvonne Encinias rather than through the newspaper. City officials noted that a major renovation of Fort Marcy could cost an enormous amount of money and would have to be considered alongside the needs of other parks and facilities throughout Santa Fe.

Encinias also disagreed with Rogan's assessment. Having been associated with the Fuego since the early years of the franchise, she understood the limitations and unique character of Fort Marcy. She argued that managers accustomed to privately operated baseball facilities sometimes arrived in Santa Fe expecting conditions that weren't realistic for a historic city-owned public park. Encinias maintained that the field was in better condition than it had been in previous seasons and emphasized that Fort Marcy's historic character and setting were part of the reason the Pecos League played there.

The Pecos League also distanced itself from Rogan's public criticism. League president Andrew Dunn acknowledged that Fort Marcy wasn't comparable to the facilities used in affiliated professional baseball but defended the relationship with the city and said Rogan's comments didn't represent the league's position. At the time, the league was leasing Fort Marcy from the city for $2,642 for the season, with the city also receiving 10 percent of alcohol sales.

The field wasn't Rogan's only disagreement with the direction of the organization. The Fuego had signed Best Daze Cannabis Dispensary as the team's title sponsor following the legalization of recreational marijuana in New Mexico. The sponsorship went beyond an outfield sign or ballpark advertisement. The Best Daze logo was embroidered directly onto the Fuego's caps. Rogan strongly objected to that part of the agreement and refused to wear the 2022 hat, instead continuing to wear the previous season's Fuego cap.

Rogan made it clear that his objection wasn't simply to Best Daze financially supporting the team. His position was that a cannabis business shouldn't be displayed on the team's hats because he viewed baseball as an activity centered around children and families. He also instituted his own team policy prohibiting players from possessing or using cannabis, with dismissal from the club as the potential consequence. That wasn't a Pecos League-wide policy; it was Rogan's rule for the Fuego.

From the organization's perspective, sponsorship revenue was essential. Encinias explained that attracting reliable sponsors had been difficult, while Best Daze had stepped forward as a significant partner. Rogan himself said he had contacted more than 100 businesses during the offseason and received responses from only two, neither of which ultimately became sponsors. That left the Fuego in the unusual position of having a manager publicly objecting to one of the few businesses willing to make a major financial commitment to the club.

The disagreement also produced one of the stranger stories surrounding the 2022 Fuego. During the season there were accusations and rumors that Rogan had personally removed cannabis sponsorship signage from Fort Marcy during the night because of his opposition to the sponsor. Those claims were never confirmed, and they should remain part of the story only as an unproven allegation. What is documented is that Rogan openly opposed displaying the cannabis sponsor on the team's uniform and publicly explained why he refused to wear the sponsored cap. The allegation that he personally removed signs was never established as fact.

All of this created a remarkable contrast with what was happening on the field. While Rogan was fighting battles over the playing surface and sponsorship, his team was competitive. The June newspaper coverage itself described the 25-9 loss to Colorado Springs as a rare stumble for a club that was playing about as well as it had at any point in its Pecos League history. At 9-4, Santa Fe was firmly in the Mountain Division race.

That competitiveness mattered. Fort Marcy had become famous over the years for enormous offensive games, strange bounces and nights when no lead seemed safe. Rogan was attempting to add greater discipline to that environment and build a team capable of doing more than simply winning slugfests. The Fuego had talent and, for significant portions of the summer, gave their fans meaningful baseball.

The relationship between Rogan and the organization, however, had become increasingly difficult to sustain. Going directly to the Santa Fe New Mexican and publicly calling on Mayor Webber to fix Fort Marcy placed the league and team in an uncomfortable position with the city that owned the facility. His criticism of the team's title sponsor created another conflict because sponsorship revenue was critical to keeping independent professional baseball financially viable in Santa Fe. By publicly challenging both relationships, Rogan had moved beyond disagreements about baseball strategy and into issues affecting the business operation of the franchise.

When the season ended, Rogan would not return as manager of the Santa Fe Fuego. His departure ended a two-year run in Santa Fe that had produced one of the more competitive Fuego teams of the period but had also created one of the most public disagreements between a manager and the organization in franchise history.

In retrospect, 2022 became an important dividing line in Fuego history. Santa Fe remained in the Pecos League in the seasons that followed, but the club wasn't able to maintain the same competitive level. The 2022 team would stand as the last genuinely competitive version of the Fuego until the organization's planned return to contention in 2027.

That makes Rogan's final season especially interesting. His tenure didn't end because the Fuego were irrelevant on the field. Quite the opposite. Early in the season, Santa Fe was 9-4 and sitting near the top of the Mountain Division. The team had quality players, a manager determined to win and a fan base that continued supporting professional baseball at Fort Marcy.

But Rogan also believed that winning required better conditions. He was unwilling to remain silent about Fort Marcy simply because criticizing the field could create problems with the city. He was equally unwilling to wear a hat advertising a cannabis dispensary when he believed that sponsorship conflicted with what he wanted the baseball team to represent. Those positions ultimately put him at odds with the people responsible for operating the franchise.

There was also a fundamental difference in perspective. Rogan viewed Fort Marcy primarily as the home field of a professional baseball team and wanted the playing surface brought closer to professional standards. The city had to view Fort Marcy as a public facility serving many different purposes. The Fuego organization had to work somewhere between those two positions, attempting to operate professional baseball while maintaining a workable relationship with the city. That tension had existed for years, but in 2022 Rogan brought it into public view.

The same conflict existed with sponsorship. Rogan approached the cannabis partnership from the perspective of what he believed should appear on a professional baseball uniform. The organization approached it from the financial reality of operating an independent baseball team in a market where major sponsors weren't always easy to find. Neither issue had a simple solution, and by the middle of the season the disagreements had become bigger than baseball.

The 2022 season therefore occupies a unique place in Santa Fe Fuego history. It was a year when the Fuego again looked capable of competing with the better teams in the Pecos League, when Fort Marcy's loyal fans had a team worth following in the standings and when Bill Rogan demonstrated that competitive baseball could still be built in Santa Fe.

It was also the year when nearly every longstanding challenge surrounding the Fuego came together at once: the condition of an aging and heavily used public ballpark, the difficulty of financing independent baseball, disagreements over sponsorship, the relationship between the league and the city and the difficulty of balancing a manager's desire for professional standards with the economic realities of the Pecos League.

Bill Rogan's final season in Santa Fe ultimately became about much more than wins and losses. He built a competitive baseball team, but he also publicly challenged the conditions under which that team was being asked to play. His criticism of Fort Marcy and Mayor Webber made headlines. His opposition to the cannabis sponsorship created additional controversy. And the unconfirmed story that he had removed sponsorship signs only added to what had become an increasingly strained relationship.

When Rogan left after the 2022 season, the Fuego lost the manager who had guided their most recent competitive club. The seasons that followed would make 2022 look increasingly significant. It became the last time until 2027 that Santa Fe could look at the Fuego during the summer and realistically see a club capable of competing with the better teams in the league.

For that reason, the legacy of the 2022 Santa Fe Fuego is complicated. It was a season of winning baseball and controversy, optimism and frustration. It showed both what professional baseball in Santa Fe could still be and the challenges that continued to make operating the Fuego at Fort Marcy unlike managing almost any other team in the Pecos League.

Bill Rogan wanted the Fuego to win. He wanted a better field for his players. He believed Santa Fe had fans worthy of a better playing surface, and he wasn't afraid to say so publicly. In the end, that willingness to publicly challenge the situation helped bring his time with the Fuego to a close.

The 2022 Fuego would be remembered as Bill Rogan's final Santa Fe team, the last competitive Fuego club of the era and a season when the biggest battles at Fort Marcy weren't always the ones taking place between the foul lines.