Sum­mer is com­ing, but its boys are not, our bird call go­ing un­an­swered.

Where are the Mud Hens?

Not here, and, sadly, it ap­pears they aren’t on the way, ei­ther.

With any com­ing deal to bring back Ma­jor League Base­ball ex­pected to be ac­com­pa­nied by the of­fi­cial can­cel­la­tion of the mi­nor league sea­son, the pros­pect of the Mud Hens not play­ing in 2020 is be­gin­ning to sink in.

And it is a sink­ing feel­ing, as if sum­mer it­self has been called off, too.

What to do with our lost base­ball souls? Good ques­tion.

For more than a cen­tury, the Mud Hens — sol­dered into the iden­tity of the Glass City since 1896 — have been the city’s bea­con of sum­mer­time, with the ex­cep­tion of two long-ago stretches.

The first was in 1914 and 1915, when the Hens moved to Cleve­land as part of a pre­emp­tive plot to thwart a sec­ond ma­jor league team from set­ting up in the city. (The Blade even crafted the Hens’ obit­u­ary: “Passed away Feb­ru­ary 14, 1914. Funeral: Cleve­land, Ohio.”)

To make a bi­zarre story short, Char­les Somers owned both the Hens and the strug­gling In­di­ans, then known as the Naps af­ter star sec­ond base­man Nap La­joie. He up­rooted the Hens to Cleve­land to have them play their home games while the In­di­ans were on the road, mean­ing one of his teams al­ways oc­cu­pied League Park. The idea was there would be no open­ing in the sud­denly base­ball-sat­u­rated city for a a fran­chise from the ri­val Fed­eral League — a new third ma­jor league in com­pe­ti­tion with the Amer­i­can and Na­tional Leagues.

How’d that go?

For­tu­nately for Toledo, not well for Somers. While he suc­cess­fully fended off the short-lived Fed­eral League, his for­tunes col­lapsed af­ter the 1915 sea­son. He was forced to sell his teams, in­clud­ing the Hens to Roger Bre­s­na­han, a Toledo Cen­tral High School grad­u­ate who be­came a Hall of Fame catcher.

Bre­s­na­han re­turned the fran­chise to his home­town, and pro base­ball re­mained here — by one name or an­other (the Toledo club was also named the Iron Men and Sox) — for the next four de­cades, play­ing on through wars, pan­dem­ics, and ev­ery­thing in be­tween.

The sec­ond sep­a­ra­tion came af­ter the 1955 sea­son when the Toledo club moved to Wi­ch­ita, Kan., af­ter the ‘55 sea­son.

Yet the mar­riage en­dured, the Mud Hens re­turn­ing for good in 1965 af­ter the New York Yan­kees moved their top mi­nor league team from Rich­mond, Va., to Toledo.

knows run­ning backs coach Duce Sta­ley. Sta­ley was a run­ning back for both the Eagles (1997-2003) and Pitts­burgh Steel­ers (2004-06) dur­ing his play­ing ca­reer.

But there was also the fact that there was an open­ing on the Eagles ros­ter for War­ren to make the team as an un­drafted free agent.

“When you go out there, you’ve got to com­pete and make the ros­ter,” War­ren told The Blade in April. “But that’s the type of player I am.

checked, then it was mak­ing sure your pro­gram was aligned with the uni­ver­sity. Part of that is gen­eral plan­ning for test­ing, con­tact trac­ing, places for quar­an­tine for those on cam­pus — all those pieces that we couldn’t han­dle on our own. We had to be part of that greater uni­ver­sity plan.”

From there, Jones, with the help of se­nior as­so­ci­ate ath­letic di­rec­tor Kelly An­drews and oth­ers, nar­rowed down

ECHL’s MVP award.

Kest­ner, a 26-year-old na­tive of Hunts­ville, Ala., said his play­ing time at Ala­bama-Hunts­ville played a key role in his de­vel­op­ment.

“It was ev­ery­thing,” Kest­ner said. “It gave me the op­por­tu­nity to pur­sue my dream of play­ing pro hockey. They gave that to me. It was a great group of guys and the coaches there helped me get bet­ter.”

Univer­sity of­fi­cials at Ala­bama-Hunts­ville an­nounced on May 22 that the pro­gram had be­come a vic­tim of the fi­nan­cial bur­den brought on by the cor­o­navi­rus pan­demic. The school an­nounced that the hockey pro­gram would be elim­i­nated along with men’s and women’s ten­nis.

“I was in shock,” Kest­ner said. “I didn’t see it com­ing. I was caught off

guard. It seemed such a rash de­ci­sion to come to so swiftly. It was a stun­ner. It was heart­break­ing.”

How­ever, for­mer Ala­bama-Hunts­ville play­ers, alumni, and sup­port­ers quickly de­vised a fund-rais­ing plan to save the pro­gram.

The GoFundMe ac­count raised more than $500,000.

UAH, which plays in the same league as Bowl­ing Green State Univer­sity — the Western Col­le­giate Hockey As­so­ci­a­tion — will con­tinue to play next sea­son.

“That was a pretty cool thing to see,” Kest­ner said. “It would have been a sad thing to see the pro­gram fold. There is a spark and life there again.”

UT as­sis­tant ath­letic di­rec­tor for sports med­i­cine Brian Jones