WATERLOO - Jack Kuper's basement, in essence, is a museum dedicated to all things Waterloo baseball.

Piles of scorecards date back to 1939 and inspire recollections of names that have passed through Waterloo, like Luis Aparicio, Juan Marichal, Earl Battey and some 4-year-old manager's son whom Kuper played catch with in 1985: Nick Swisher, who currently clubs home runs in Yankee Stadium.

Despite the fact that the Cedar Valley's current boys of summer are collegians, not pros, Kuper has reserved a place in his basement - and his heart - for the Waterloo Bucks.

"I do love baseball, and I think Bucks baseball is good," said Kuper.

"It's just a good way to get away from it all."

Gary Hartwig, a retired Waterloo police officer, has also been a Bucks backer since the club's inception 15 seasons ago. Like Kuper, he appreciates the ebb and flow of a baseball season, getting to know fellow fans, eating peanuts and soaking in the seventh-inning stretch.

For these fans, along with most The Courier spoke to in recent weeks, winning is secondary. The Bucks haven't had a winning season since 2002, yet the fans still turn out at Riverfront Stadium.

"It makes it a lot more interesting when you have a winning team," acknowledged Kuper, a season ticket-holder at Riverfront Stadium since 1958 when the minor-league Waterloo Hawks inhabited the ballpark.

"But (winning) isn't the most important thing," he added. "It's being at the ballpark, and the summer air."

"I think fans obviously would like to see them win. I'd like to see them win," said Paul Huting, Waterloo's Leisure Services Director. "But I think (Riverfront Stadium) is an entertainment venue … and people are still coming out."

Many regular attendees of Bucks home games note that ticket prices largely befit a baseball team in a blue-collar town. Back in 1958, Kuper, then a Rath Packing factory worker, paid $10.20 for a Waterloo Hawks season ticket. In 2009, which will feature 34 total Bucks home games, family patriarchs paid $150 for a box-seat season ticket, $100 for a general-admission season ticket and $75 for youth or senior season ducats. Single-game, adult general admission tickets go for $5.

"If you figure the price per hour of entertainment," said Hartwig, "I don't see how you can beat it."

Of course, local baseball fans aren't without a few complaints. Like everything else, the cost of attending a Bucks game has increased during the past 10 years.

For example, including general admission tickets, food and drinks, a family of four could spend an evening with the Bucks for approximately $34 10 years ago. Today, the same evening of baseball and refreshments costs about $50. That means some fans aren't making it out to the ballpark as often as they used to.

The ongoing re-construction of Riverfront Stadium also seems near the top of the list of customer complaints. The City of Waterloo, which owns the 63-year-old stadium, has dedicated roughly $3.5 million to Riverfront's facelift. To date, an impressive new stadium facade has been built, dugouts and restrooms have been touched up, and the park's infield has been re-sodded. Yet, parts of the grandstands sport noticeable rust and, entering this year, the locker rooms were barely up to code - part of the reason the Midwest League's Waterloo Diamonds were sold following the 1993 season.

"I wish they'd get (renovation) done," noted Hartwig, now a Hudson resident. "It'd be nice if they could assign some city workers to do it until it gets done."

"There are days I wanna bang my head against the wall," Bucks' general manager Dan Corbin said of construction delays. "But the city's doing so much for us that it's hard to be upset."

Huting said reconstruction of Riverfront Stadium - the first stage of which began in 2004 - will be "80 percent done" by next June when Peters Construction is expected to wrap up its current overhaul of the facility's locker rooms, which required a $1.12 million contract.

The city official also noted that the Black Hawk County Gaming Commission has granted nearly $800,000 since 2007 for the project, which should speed up future stages of renovation. The stadium's grandstands are expected to be upgraded next.

"We knew coming into this that we couldn't afford to (renovate) in one full swoop," noted Huting, who said he hopes to see reconstruction completed "within the next two to three years."

On a smaller scale, some Riverfront regulars expressed a desire for an upgrade of between-innings entertainment, such as having local luminaries sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and an increase in bobble-head nights.

The Bucks, who recently signed a new, five-year lease with the city that grants them use of the stadium and downtown office space for $1,250 per month, have set up stakes in the Cedar Valley.

And the baseball squad's fans seem fairly ardent in their support, by Northwoods League standards. Despite the Bucks' 163-234 (.411) record from 2003-2008, the team's per-game attendance average was 1,674 during that time, consistent with the best averages in the franchise's history. Also, two of the Bucks' top four single-game attendance figures occurred in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

"The thing I keep hearing is, 'I went to a Bucks game and had a blast,'" Corbin noted. "Rarely do I hear, 'I went to a Bucks game, they lost, and your bullpen sucks.' Rarely does the win-loss equation come in.

"The average (Bucks) fan isn't gonna be a baseball purist," the current G.M. continued. "We look at ourselves as an entertainment medium."

Maybe that's the mission statement for the Bucks in this, their 15th anniversary season. If it is, a majority of the local fan base seems content.

"In pro baseball you probably get a little more of the budding stars," noted Kuper, whose wife, Barb, was part-owner of the minor-league Waterloo Diamonds. "Professional baseball is probably a little more 'center-ring,' but Bucks baseball is good.

"It's what we've got," Kuper concluded, "and we had better enjoy it."

Next: The Bucks have had their share of successes during the overall tough times of the past six years. What will it take to turn the competitive corner?