Iowa Cubs President Sam Bernabe received a personalized gem-encrusted ring when the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016.
Writer: Mike Wellman
Photos: Duane Tinkey
After the Iowa Cubs’ last game of 2025, the big news was that something more significant than the team’s season had ended: so too had Sam Bernabe’s run as the general manager.
But let’s clarify something right off the bat: He didn’t retire. It’s more accurate to say he pulled himself out of the I-Cubs’ everyday lineup, like Cal Ripken did when he voluntarily ended his record-breaking run of 2,632 consecutive games played before the last home game of the 1998 season. Ripken remained a Baltimore Oriole, just as Bernabe remains an I-Cub. Going forward, he’s still the team president, but his streak as GM has ended after 38 seasons — more than twice as long as Ripken manned shortstop for the O’s.
Careers in pro baseball aren’t lifetime appointments. Indeed, if there’s one word that describes the many-splendored racket known as minor league baseball, it’s transience. Players come and go, literally on a daily basis. Consider that the I-Cubs’ log of player transactions averages more than one per game during the season. Staffers move, too, sometimes en route to the big leagues, which is what the players are also chasing. Was that the ultimate gig Bernabe eyed when he was hired as an I-Cub intern in 1983, fresh out of college?
“Sure, I suppose that was somewhere in the grand plan when I started out,” said Bernabe, who rooted for the Cardinals as a kid and pitched in high school for the West Des Moines Valley Tigers. “But Mary and I got married in 1984, and she had a career as a lawyer to consider then. We started a family, and eventually I realized how good I had it right here in my hometown.”
So he stayed and tasted the big leagues from here. When the I-Cub parent team in Chicago finally won the World Series in 2016, Bernabe was awarded the same gaudy ring that all the players received. After all, no major league team snags the Commissioner’s Trophy without a fertile farm system of minor league affiliates. His longevity at the helm stands in stark contrast to the nine GMs the C-Cubs cycled through during his tenure.
Bernabe’s tenure included a golden era of Des Moines’ long history as a professional baseball town, dating back to the 1880s. When Sec Taylor Stadium (formerly Pioneer Stadium) was razed in 1991, he oversaw a public-private effort to rebuild it with buy-in from a coalition of metro communities. Crews built the new stadium from scratch in just 208 days during the 1991-1992 offseason. It was renamed Principal Park in 2004.
They built it and the people came, they most definitely came. Season attendance totaled 257,857 in 1987, his first year at the helm, and steadily rose to a franchise record of 576,310 by 2007. Is there another local attraction with a wider customer base than the House That Sam Built? School buses unload schoolkids every spring, and shuttle vans from retirement communities pull up at the curb all summer long. In this market, calling the local team “minor” league is a major misnomer.
Bernabe’s career even spans generations of family traditions. “I get people now who are bringing their grandkids who tell me they started coming when they were little and joined our Knothole Gang kids’ club,” he said.
Of course, slumps are endemic to the game of baseball, and there have been low points during the Bernabe era, too. In 2008 the team played a game with a paid attendance of zero while floodwaters lapped at the gates. But that was nothing compared to 2020, when the entire season was called off on account of the pandemic.
“That changed people’s habits in ways that are still impacting us,” Bernabe said. Total attendance in 2025 topped 400,000, well off the ’07 record, but the per-game average of more than 5,000 still sat comfortably — and profitably — above the minor league average of roughly 3,800.
Bernabe’s end-of-season announcement surprised most colleagues, but he and his successor, Randy Wehofer, an 18-year team veteran, had planned the transition with the same care the grounds crew brings to chalking the baselines before the first pitch. “Randy is ready,” Bernabe said. “He won’t miss a beat, and he won’t have to worry about me second-guessing him or looking over his shoulder. I couldn’t have asked for a smoother succession plan.”
I’d hoped to meet Bernabe in his ballpark office, imagining it would be like a Little Leaguer’s bedroom on steroids, his own personal Cooperstown of memorabilia. But he’d already made way for Wehofer to slide into his chair and fill his shoes. “I packed up about 30 boxes,” he said. “It’s all stashed in the spare bay of our garage waiting for our son and daughter-in-law to come help sift through it.”
Speaking of family, Nick Bernabe has succeeded his dad in a couple of ways. Not only is he the assistant GM for Georgia’s Gwinnett Stripers, a triple-A affiliate of the Atlanta Braves, but he and his wife, Kate, made their son his grandfather’s namesake. Toddler Sam definitely played a role in his grandpa’s decision to ease himself out of the daily grind.
“I’ll miss 99.9 percent of the [GM] job,” said Bernabe, whose many duties have included pinch-hitting as the Cubbie Bear mascot. “The one thing I absolutely will not miss is fretting over the weather. … We have three weather radar systems at the ballpark, and if I never look at a radar screen again that’ll be fine with me.”
When the 2026 season opens March 27, fans will notice the relocated bullpens at Sec Taylor Field. But a less obvious change is more noteworthy: the long-planned handoff from Bernabe to Wehofer. In baseball, it’s said that you can tell the umpires are doing their jobs well when they go unnoticed. The same is true of GMs. But when one steps out of the lineup after four decades, that calls for a timeout to honor the moment.
“There are three levels of partnership that have to be maintained for this to work as well and as long as it has: the city, the organization in Chicago and, most of all, the fans,” Bernabe summed up.
After going three for three all 38 years, it’s time for a new position. He’s a natural for general manager emeritus.
Contributor Mike Wellman is a local freelancer and author who can’t wait to get back to the ballpark after off-season shoulder surgery.
