Utica (NY) Blue Jays vs. Auburn (NY) Astros
July 30, 1983
Murnane Field
New York-Penn League Programs
6 pages

The Utica Blue Sox were the only independent ball club in America in the summer of 1983.  In the 1990′s a rash of wholly independent baseball leagues would spring up all over the United States.  But back in 1983, playing independent ball wasn’t a choice – it was a sentence.  Playing independent meant that no Major League organization was willing to entrust you with their prospects.  And it meant that there was no one to backstop your payroll and expenses, beyond your own stockholders.

Under normal conditions, the Blue Sox would have bumbled along in obscurity until the owners moved or went bankrupt.  But prior to the 1983 season, Boys of Summer and baseball romantic Roger Kahn bought a controlling interest in the Blue Sox around $25,000.  Kahn got into the Blue Sox adventure with the intention of writing a book.  In the meantime, his personal notoriety generated considerably national coverage for the 1983 Blue Sox. Even People Magazine got into the act – a magazine that typically showed as much interest in minor league baseball as it did in Utica, New York.

On the field, the Blue Sox were led by 31-year old manager Jim Gattis, himself a veteran of several independent ball clubs of the 1970′s.  Gattis’ team of unwanted players surprisingly won the New York-Penn League championship in 1983, adding a little extra drama to Kahn’s book-in-progress.  Nevertheless, none of the 29 players who saw action for the Blue Sox that summer ever made it to the Major Leagues.

Kahn’s book, Good Enough To Dream, came out in 1985 to generally positive reviews.  By then Kahn was out of the business – he owned the Blue Sox for only the one season.  He was a dabbler – unlike many of his fellow stockholders.  The ’83 Blue Sox had more than a dozen investors, including many of the men who went on to lead independent baseball movement of the 1990′s – Durham Bulls owner Miles Wolff, actor Bill Murray, New York Yankees minority partner Marv Goldklang and the investor/recruiter Evander Schley, who specialized in recruiting independent players and helped Gattis assemble the championship team.

The book reportedly aggravated some of those associated with the Blue Sox and required extensive legal wrangling to make it into print.  Blue Sox manager Jim Gattis told The Los Angeles Times in a 1994 retrospective that he “hated” the book for years, before later making peace with it.

Another member of the Blue Sox prominently featured in Good Enough To Dream was 29-year old player/coach Barry Moss, a 12-year minor league veteran and one of the oldest every day player in the New York-Penn League.  Moss went on to a long and respected career as an scout, manager and recruiter, particularly in independent leagues.  In the 2011 film adaptation of Moneyball, Moss has a brief speaking role alongside Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill as an Oakland A’s scout identified simply as “Scout Barry”.

Downloads:

July 30th, 1983 Utica Blue Sox vs. Auburn Astros roster insert

July 30th, 1983 game notes

Portland Mavericks vs. Eugene Emeralds
June 15, 1977
Civic Stadium
Northwest League Programs
14 pages

The Portland Mavericks.  This renegade ball club existed for only five summers, but managed to leave an indelible stamp (their contemporary detractors might have said “stain”) on the landscape of minor league baseball.  The Mavs came to town in 1973 after the Beavers, Portland’s long-time entry in the Pacific Coast League, moved to Spokane, Washington.

It didn’t seem like a promising trade-off for Portland baseball fans at first.  The Beavers played triple-A baseball, just one step removed from the Major Leagues.  Or at least one call up away from their woeful parent club, the Cleveland Indians, who seemed a dozen steps removed from Major League Baseball during the 1970′s.  Unlike all of their rivals in the single-A Northwest League, the Mavs had no Major League affiliation.  They were one of the first and only viable independent clubs, signing their own players wherever they could find them.  The Mavs roster consisted of the unwanted, unwashed and washed-up, many of whom traveled from all over North America to attend owner Bing Russell’s open tryouts each June.

Russell was a long-time character actor in Westerns, best known for portraying Deputy Clem Foster on Bonanza.  His motto for the Mavs was simply “Fun” and Mavs games at Portland’s multi-purpose Civic Stadium had a circus-like atmosphere.  Russell was ahead of his time in emphasizing fun & entertainment as the primary product of minor league baseball.  It was the people’s team and Portland fans flocked to Civic Stadium in record numbers.  During the Mavs first season in 1973, the club set the all-time Class A short-season attendance mark and broke it again for each of the next two years.

A sampling of Mavericks moments:

• First year Mavs manager Hank Robinson was banned from the Northwest League for assaulting an umpire.
• 1975 Mavs player/manager Frank Peters once rotated all nine players in his Mavs lineup to a new position each inning.
• Peters juggled his responsibilities playing for and managing the Mavs with running several nefarious nightclubs in Portland, including “Satan’s Disco”.  He became a marijuana grower in Portland in the late 1980′s and spent time in prison for sex offenses.
• Russell appointed pro baseball’s first female General Manager in Lanny Moss in 1975 and first Asian-American GM with Jon Yoshiwara in 1977. (oddly, the 22-year old Yoshiwara was also a Mavs’ utility infielder that summer)
• The club (twice) signed dead-armed ex-Yankee Jim Bouton, who was more or less blackballed by organized baseball for his taboo-shattering 1970 memoir Ball Four.  Bouton ultimately made it back to the Majors after his second stint with the Mavs.
• Bouton and Mavericks pitching coach Rob Nelson came up with the concept for Big League Chew shredded chewing gum during a lazy night in the Mavs bullpen.
• Bing Russell’s son Kurt played for the Mavs in 1973.  The future star of Escape From New York and Miracle hit .229 in 23 games for the Mavs that summer.
• Mavs batboy Todd Field grew up to become the Academy Award-nominated writer/director of the films Little Children and In The  Bedroom

Unlike virtually all other defunct ball clubs, the Mavs never folded or moved.  They were paid to go away.  In late 1977, the Pacific Coast League decided to expand back into Portland.  All of organized baseball operated under the auspices of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues.  In order for the PCL to get back into Portland, National Association President Bobby Bragan had to hammer out a settlement between the PCL and Bing Russell for rights to the Portland market.  The going compensation rate to abandon a city to a higher level league was about $25,000.  Russell demanded $206,000 and after a long winter of wrangling in various airport hotel rooms, he got every penny of it.

During the last season of Mavericks baseball in 1977, the low-level independent club drew 125,300 to see 33 games at Civic Stadium. When the Beavers, triple-A baseball and the Cleveland Indians returned in 1978, only 96,395 turned out for 69 games.

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Bing Russell passed away in April 2003 at age 76.  His blueprint for running a ball club influenced both the resurgence of independent baseball leagues in the mid-1990′s and the general re-branding and revival of minor league baseball as “affordable family entertainment” in the 1980′s.

Big League Chew – Mavs’ pitcher Rob Nelson’s substitute for chewing tobacco – has gone on to sell more than a half a billion pouches worldwide since its introduction in 1980.  If you missed the link earlier, check out this amazing blog on the history of Big League Chew at CollectingCandy.com

1993 Albany-Colonie Yankees Yearbook
Eastern League Programs
64 pages

I plucked this one from the files when I read of the recent arrest of former Yankees phenom Brien Taylor for cocaine trafficking.   Taylor might have been one of the great power-pitching left-handers of the 1990′s alongside the Seattle Mariners’ Randy Johnson.  Certainly that’s what the New York Yankees expected when they made the 19-year old fireballer out of North Carolina’s East Cataret High School the #1 overall pick in the 1991 amateur draft. Taylor’s ticket was his fastball, which clocked as high as 99 mph in high school.  During his senior year, he struck out 213 batters in only 88 innings.

Taylor’s family held out through the summer of 1991, rebuffing lowball offers from the Yankees and threatening to enroll Brien in junior college instead.  Jeff Passan wrote a great retrospective on the Taylor negotiations for Yahoo! Sports in 2006.  With assistance from agent Scott Borras, Taylor’s mom Bettie, who worked in a seafood processing plant, ultimately faced down the Yankees negotiators and secured a record $1.55 million signing bonus for Taylor.  At the time, it was the largest bonus paid to a draftee in the history of professional baseball.

Taylor pro debut came in 1992 with the Ft. Lauderdale Yankees of the Florida State League.  By all accounts, he lived up to the hype, striking out 187 batters in 161 innings and posting a miserly 2.57 ERA.  Taylor headed to Albany-Colonie in the double-A Eastern League out of spring training in 1993.  Every thing was on schedule for Taylor to be a fixture in the Yankees rotation by 1995 at age 23.

The summer of 1993 in Albany turned out to be Taylor’s peak.  He won 13 games and continued to strike out bushels of opponents (he also led the league in walks issued).  Baseball America named him the game’s best prospect that year.  Back home in Beaufort, North Carolina in December 1993, Taylor and his cousin drove to the home of a man who assaulted his brother Brenden in an earlier dispute.  In the altercation that ensued, Taylor was knocked over and suffered a catastrophic tear to the labrum and capsule of his pitching arm.

After surgery, Taylor sat out the 1994 season.  He lost his control and 8 mph off his fastball.  The Yankees let Taylor go and he puttered around the low minors as late as 2000, but never again rose above A-ball after the fight.  He became the second #1 overall pick in the amateur draft to never play in the Major Leagues, following Steve Chilcotte, the New York Mets #1 pick in 1966.

Knoxville Smokies vs. Birmingham Barons
July 15, 1994
Bill Meyer Stadium
Southern League Programs
76 Pages

This July 15th, 1994 minor league baseball game in the double-A Southern League is notable mainly (well, only)  as a meeting between two stars of other sports.  The Birmingham Barons brought to town a weak-hitting rookie outfielder named Michael Jordan.  Jordan, the NBA’s greatest superstar, was playing hooky from the Chicago Bulls during his first retirement from basketball.  Things weren’t going particularly well…Jordan came into this game hitting .194 with an appalling 78 strikeouts in 304 at-bats.  He may have been a terrible baseball player, but Jordan attracted record crowds wherever the Barons travelled in the summer of 1994.  Some Southern League clubs roped off the warning track of their outfields to accomodate overflow crowds who spilled out into the field of play.

Across the diamond, the Knoxville Smokies started a 21-year old Toronto Blue Jays prospect named Chris Weinke at first base.  Things were going a little better for Weinke than for Jordan that summer.  He led the weak-hitting Smokies in homers with 7 and was second in RBIs with 53.  Weinke’s best day were yet to come…and not in baseball.

After six years in the Blue Jays system, Weinke quit baseball in 1997.  He spent most of 1995 and 1996 at triple-A Syracuse, just one step away from the majors, but he stopped hitting at that level.  In the fall of 1997, Weinke enrolled at Florida State University, finally accepting the football scholarship he walked away from seven years earlier to play pro baseball.  As a junior in 1999, Weinke led the Seminoles to the school’s first ever undefeated season and a college football national championship.  As a senior in 2000, he won the Heisman Trophy - at age 28.  The Carolina Panthers of the NFL selected Weinke late in the 1st round of the 2001 NFL draft.  Weinke started most of 2001 for a terrible 1-15 Panthers team and then settled into the rest of a seven-year NFL career spent mostly as a back-up to Panthers starter Jake Delhomme.

As for Jordan, he finished the year hitting .202 for the Barons and then spent the autumn in the Arizona Fall League for Major League prospects, where he fared marginally better.  But on March 10, 1995 he abandoned his quixotic baseball adventure and a few days later announced his return to the NBA after nearly two years absence with a two-word press release: “I’m Back”.

Erie (PA) Cardinals vs. Jamestown (NY) Expos
June 20, 1981
Ainsworth Field
New York-Penn League Programs
30 pages

This sharp looking program marked the return of professional baseball to Erie, Pennsylvania after a 13-year absence in the summer of 1981.  Beginning in 1976, it took local businessmen Dave Masi and Joe Castelli nearly five years to secure a franchise for Erie, but in the summer of 1980 New York-Penn League President Vince McNamara gave the men an opportunity to operate his league’s rudderless franchise in Auburn, New York.  Operating without a Major League affiliation in 1980, their Auburn Americans were a “co-op” club, accepting low-level draftees from the Cleveland Indians and Boston Red Sox.

The arrangement was essentially a quid pro quo, guaranteeing the Erie businessmen a franchise in 1981 – after refurbishments were completed to Erie’s ancient Ainsworth Field – in return for propping up a dog in 1980.  Keep in mind this was well before the minor league baseball renaissance of the late 1980′s.  Back in 1980, even powerhouse clubs like the Reading (PA) Phillies still occasionally drew crowds in the low triple digits.  Auburn drew 9,474 fans during the entire summer of 1980, or about 250 lonely spectators per game.

At the Dallas winter meetings in late 1980, Masi and Castelli landed an affiliation deal with the St. Louis Cardinals, who agreed to place their short-season single-A farm club in Erie for the 1981 season.  The relationship would prove to be unusually enduring, as the Cards would stick with the Erie franchise through numerous name changes and relocations for the next quarter century until 2006.

On this night of June 20th, 1981, the Cardinals faced the Expos of Jamestown, New York.  The Expos featured a strapping 6′ 3″ first baseman from Caracas, Venezuela who turned 20 years old just two days earlier.  Andres Galarraga still had another four years to go in the minor leagues before he would debut with the Montreal Expos in late 1985.  Over the course of his 20-year Major League career, Galarrage would earn 5 All-Star selections, 2 Gold Gloves, a batting title and a home run crown and he would beat cancer in between.  The Big Cat finished with 399 career home runs, currently ranked #36 on the all-time list.

The Cardinals stayed in Erie through the summer of 1987.  The team moved to Hamilton, Ontario for the summer of 1988 and wound its was through several subsequent purchases and relocations.  The franchise still exists in the New York-Penn League today, back in Pennsylvania as the State College Spikes since 2006 and currently affiliated with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Lancaster (PA) Red Roses vs. York (PA) White Roses
April 22, 1959
Stumpf Field
Eastern League Programs
4 Pages

There are a handful of communities around the United States where fondness and attachment to a particular name transcends not only time but sport as well.  After Brooklyn’s beloved Dodgers moved to California in 1958, the name was revived for both a 1960′s professional football team (with Jackie Robinson as General Manager) and a 1970′s minor league basketball outfit.  Scranton-Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania cheered on their Barons in both baseball and basketball for decades.

Today we’ve got a pair of rare programs from the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania and its Red Roses of both baseball and basketball.  The first baseball team dubbed the Red Roses debuted in the Tri-State League in 1906 and lasted until 1914.  The selection of the Red Roses name was viewed as an affront by the Tri-State League’s White Roses from the nearby city of York, Pennsylvania and sparked an enduring rivalry.  When minor league baseball returned to both cities in the early 1940′s after the Great Depression, the Red Roses and White Roses nicknames were revived.

Meanwhile, a Red Roses basketball team joined the Eastern Professional Basketball League in 1946.  For much of the next decade, Lancaster sports fans could root for their Red Roses during both the summer and winter.  The original basketball team closed down in 1955 (another version would return in the 1970′s) and the Red Roses baseball team lasted only a few years longer, playing its final season in the summer of 1961.

This beautiful baseball scorecard is from a “War of the Roses” game in 1959 – near the end of the road for the Lancaster ball club.  By this time, the Red Roses were in the Eastern League, playing as a farm club of the Chicago Cubs.

Professional baseball returned to both Lancaster and York after long absences in the early 21st century in the form of the independent Atlantic League of Professional Baseball.  Although the rival clubs adopted new names, the Lancaster Barnstormers and the York Revolution continue to re-enact “The War of the Roses” series every summer, with the winner receiving the Community Cup.

2002 Trenton Thunder media guide
Eastern League Media Guides
64 pages

“I have gold in my arm.”  So said the mysterious Cuban left-hander Rolando Viera, describing his pitching prowess after his bizarre defection to the United States in 2001.  Viera put together a strong record for Havana Industriales in Cuba, but after his wife Lorraine filed for a U.S. visa without his knowledge, he fell out of favor politically with the club.  Banned from Cuban baseball, Viera divorced Lorraine, married his mistress and defected to the United States in 2001.  While trying to get a visa for his 2nd wife to enter the U.S., Lorraine scored one instead, arriving in the states with their son Rolando Jr.  At which point, Rolando divorced his ex-mistress/2nd wife and remarried Lorraine.

With his home life “settled”, Rolando turned his attention to re-booting his baseball career.  He went about this in his typically low-key fashion, starting with a lawsuit against Major League Baseball to avoid the entry draft and be declared a free agent.  That novel approach failed and Viera was drafted one week later by the lefthander-starved Boston Red Sox in the 7th round of the 2001 Major League Baseball draft.  Two months shy of his 28th birthday, Viera – registered in the draft with a fake birthdate - was the oldest player selected that year.  The Red Sox may - or may not – have drafted him sight unseen, depending on whom you ask.  General Manager Dan Duquette claims the club never scouted him and selected him purely based on his statistical production in Cuba.  A Red Sox scout named Ray Poitevint claims he discovered Viera during a clandestine scouting mission of the Cuban National Team during a game in Mexico.  Poitevint scouted the secretive Cubans while in disguise as a gardener.  Viera, for his part, claims never to have set foot in Mexico and ESPN makes an intriguing case that the Red Sox drafted Viera in a case of mistaken identity, after Poitevint the Gardener watched a different Cuban named Norge Vera.

Viera threw a few innings for the Red Sox’ Florida State League affiliate in late 2001.  He saw his first serious action with the Sox’ double-A Trenton Thunder farm club in the spring of 2002.   The Cuban southpaw acquitted himself fairly well in 45 appearances and earned a late season promotion to triple-A Pawtucket.  But after the season, the Red Sox cut him loose, offering the free agency he originally sought in a court of law.

No other Major League teams bit and Viera spent the rest of his career wandering among independent minor league clubs on the Eastern seaboard of the United States.   I met Rolando – and his 1st/3rd wife Lorraine and son Rolando Jr. – during my first season as General Manager of the Brockton Rox in 2006.  He was a happy-go-lucky guy and was our left-handed ace, posting twenty wins for the Rox over the 2006 and 2007 seasons.  I remember him skipping a few road trips we made to Quebec because of his still murky immigration issues.  He last pitched for the York (PA) Revolution in 2008 at the (supposed) age of 35.

Brockton (MA) Rox vs. Elmira (NY) Pioneers
May 31, 2002
Campanelli Stadium
Northeast League Programs

Speak to long-time fans of the Rox baseball club in Brockton, Massachusetts and many will tell you that the team’s most memorable game is one that was never played.  The Brockton Rox were an expansion club in the independent Northern League in the spring of 2002.  Although an especially mild New England winter helped contractors complete Brockton’s new $17 million Campanelli Stadium in time for the Rox’ inaugural home game on May 31, 2002, the weather gods stopped cooperating moments before the first pitch.

As a sellout crowd of 5,000+ searched for their seats in the brand new ballpark, the award-winning Brockton High School Boxers marching band took their places for the Star Spangled Banner.  The crowd roared as Brockton Mayor Jack Yunits tossed the ceremonial first pitch to Rox investor Bill Murray.  And then the sky turned black.  End of days black.  As the rain poured down, the Rox and the Elmira Pioneers fled back into their clubhouses and the crowd huddled on the concourse under the partial roof provided by Campanelli Stadium’s luxury suites.  Enter Murray.  As the fans waited in vain for a break in the storm system, the ex-Saturday Night Live star and long-time baseball owner grabbed a baton and commandeered the marching band, leading the students up and down the concourse in a rambling, impromptu performance of Mustang Sally.

The Rox’ debut against the Pioneers would have to wait until a doubleheader for the following evening.  But most of the locals who turned out on opening night 2002 still felt like they got their five bucks worth, thanks to Murray and the Boxers.

The Rox game program in 2002 was a single-edition Yearbook, sold at all home games with a simple roster insert to update each homestand.  The cover artwork was drawn by Andy Nelson, the long-time house artist for Mike Veeck and the Goldklang Group, the investor/advisors behind the Rox and several other independent and affiliated minor league ballclubs.  Nelson’s artwork rarely featured the typical imagery of  ballplayers in action.  Instead, his art featured mascots, fans, entertainers and team luminaries such as Murray and Veeck.  Besides creating programs and pocket schedule art, Nelson also travelled the country each spring, spending a few weeks in each Goldklang Group ballpark, brightening concessions, restrooms, and concourse areas with murals and other art projects.  Every spring from 2002 through 2006, Nelson showed up in Brockton, commandeered a luxury suite as a combination art studio/bedroom and added new touches to the park.

Andy passed away unexpectedly in 2008 at the age of 52.  Visitors to Campanelli Stadium in 2012 can still see Andy’s murals of boxers, clowns and birds in the men’s and women’s restrooms, a collage of African-American baseball pioneer Larry Doby in an upstairs luxury suite, and his painted paw prints of the Rox’ marsupial mascot leading children through the stadium gates and down to the ballpark’s play area.

The Holyoke (MA) Millers played six summers of minor league baseball in the double-A Eastern League between 1977 and 1982.  The Millers took their name from Holyoke’s proud industrial heritage.  At one time, the small Western Massachusetts city on the banks of the Connecticut River was a center of both textile and paper manufacturing.  A grid of man-made canals powered the city’s booming mills and in the early decades of the 20th century Holyoke was known as “The Paper City”.

By the time the Milwaukee Brewers relocated their Berkshire (MA) Brewers farm club fifty miles east to Holyoke in February 1977, both the city’s manufacturing base and its population had entered into a steady decline.

“In the 1970′s Holyoke was the fire capital of the world; all kinds of fires, arson, spontaneous combustion,” local historian Craig Della Penna told Commonwealth Magazine in 2011, “Holyoke looked like Dresden in 1945.”

Holyoke itself had virtually no history with minor league baseball.  The last professional club to make a home in the city was the Holyoke Papermakers of the Eastern Association way back in 1913.  But for much of the postwar era, local baseball fans could enjoy games in the larger city of Springfield, Massachusetts, just eight miles to the south.  The Golden Era of minor league ball in the Pioneer Valley came from 1957 to 1965 when the New York/San Francisco Giants of the National League had a terrific farm club in Springfield.  The Springfield Giants won consecutive Eastern League titles from 1959 to 1961 and developed future Major League stars such as Juan Marichal, Frank Linzy, Manny Mota and the Alou Brothers, Felipe and Matty.  But the Giants left Springfield in 1965 and the city’s Pynchon Park burned to the ground a year later.

From 1977 to 1980, the Millers were the double-A farm club of the Brewers.  The Brewers’ era produced a few feature Major League journeymen such as Frank DiPino, Marshall Edwards and Ed Romero.  The most enduring Major Leaguer to come out of Holyoke was outfielder Kevin Bass, who played the entirety of the 1979 and 1980 seasons with the Millers.  Bass would spend the best seasons of his 14-year Major League career with the Houston Astros and made the National League All-Star team in 1986.  During the Millers’ final season as a Brewers farm club in 1980, Holyoke won the Eastern League crown under manager Lee Sigman.

Prior to the 1981 season, the Brewers pulled out of their affiliation deal with Holyoke and moved their double-A farm club to El Paso of the Texas League.  The California Angels moved in and would stock the Millers with prospects for their final two seasons in Holyoke in 1981 and 1982.

Ownership changed hands around the same time.  Original Millers owner Lynn “Spike” Herzig, a New Yorker, arrived with the club from Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1977.  Herzig owned the club during its previous incarnations as the Pittsfield Rangers and later the Berkshire Brewers.  In 1981, a new ownership group led by Jerome Mileur, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, purchased the Millers for a reported $85,000.

During the Angels era, the Millers developed a handful of ballplayers that went on to significant Major League careers, including 5-time Gold Glove winning center fielder Gary Pettis (Millers ’81) and pitcher Dennis Rasmussen (Millers ’81) who won 91 games in the Majors over twelve seasons between 1983 and 1995.

In the early 1980′s, the Millers faced scheduling problems at city-owned Mackenzie Field, which was also used for baseball and track and field by the local public and parochial high schools.  Attendance was soft, as it was across much of the Eastern League in this era, shortly before the minor league boom of the mid-1980′s.  During the Millers final season in the summer of 1982, the club attracted  total attendance of 53,555 fans according to The Nashua Telegraph, well under 1,000 spectators per game.  In December 1982, after months of public negotiation, Mileur moved his ballclub to Nashua, New Hampshire’s Holman Stadium.  The ballclub became the Nashua Angels for the 1983 season.

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Professional baseball never returned to Holyoke after the Millers left in December 1982.  One big reason was the condition of Mackenzie Field.  The ballpark, built in 1933, still stands today on Beech Street.  A modern day baseball fan driving past would be shocked to learn that Major League teams sent their prospects to play in such a modest, ramshackle facility as recently as the 1980′s.  Eric and Wendy Pastore, curators of the great Digital Ballparks website, have a great modern-day photo gallery of Mackenzie Field here.  Mackenzie has hosted amateur teams in the New England Collegiate Baseball League since 2004.

The Eastern League franchise that once was the Holyoke Millers still exists today.  After four seasons in Nashua, first as the Nashua Angels (1983) and later as the Nashua Pirates (1984-1986), Jerome Mileur moved his club again to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  The team continues to play there today (ownership has since changed hands a couple of times) as the Harrisburg Senators, who celebrated their 25th season of play in 2011.

Last September, my wife and her sister entered a team in Pigskin Fantasies, the fantasy football league of which I have been a member for 10 years.  The $140 entry fee was a modest investment compared with the $700 million that Bob McNair forked over for the NFL’s most recent expansion team, the Houston Texans, in 2002.  Nevertheless, “Mayhem & Foolishness” shared a few of the basic trappings of a real professional football franchise: they drafted players, generated a modest revenue stream, established an online presence, and even created their own apparel - long sleeved t-shirts featuring the pirated likenesses of Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street.

For the record, Mayhem & Foolishness posted a record of 2-12 in 2011 and an operating loss of about $100.  Now I know that my wife and my sister-in-law don’t think of fantasy football in terms of net profits.  If they did, they wouldn’t have stuck with Ryan Fitzgerald down the stretch this fall.  My wife is an entrepeneur, however.  She runs her own busy psychotherapy practice and she identifies herself, with good justification, as both a therapist and a small business owner.

But what if my wife got it into her head that she was fundamentally in the business of fantasy football ownership – i.e. a professional gambler?  At what point does an idea become an enterprise?  When a business goes bankrupt the precise condition and timing of its demise is recorded. But can a dream that fails to catch fire ever cease to exist?  If a friend insists that they are, despite all evidence to the contrary, a classic car mechanic or a bounty hunter or a professional magician, who am I to say otherwise?  Maybe business is just really slow.

Consider the long, strange journey of the Plymouth River Eels,  a proposed independent baseball team in Southeastern Massachusetts that insisted it was in business for upwards of four years but never truly was.  Founded in 2005, the River Eels did almost everything you’d expect a minor league baseball team to do.  Everything except play baseball games.  They conducted clinics and name-the-mascot contests for local school children.  They had a architectural renderings and hired a groundskeeper and even commissioned a team song.  At one time, the River Eels claimed over 1,500 season ticket reservations and signed 10-year sponsorship deals with local car dealerships and insurance agencies.  As late as 2010, one team official continued to promote merchandise for the River Eels on Twitter.

When it comes to the Plymouth River Eels, two things are certain.  The River Eels never played a game of baseball. And for (at least) three summers, the River Eels were Plymouth’s home town ball club.  Only one of these statements can be true, but neither of them is wrong.

Massachusetts State Representative Tom O’Brien announced the formation of Bay Colony Baseball and Athletics, LLC and the Plymouth River Eels baseball club in November 2005, flanked by business partners Mike Rothberg and Erik Christensen.  At the introductory press conference, the trio unveiled architectural drawings for a privately funded 5,500 seat ballpark with adjacent convention center and restaurant.  Total price tag: an estimated $34.5 million.  The River Eels expected to throw out their first pitch in May of 2007.

The Eels drew inspiration from the success of the nearby Brockton Rox of the independent Can-Am League.  During the summer of 2004, the three-year old Rox drew 204,000 fans to Campanelli Stadium, an $18 million ballpark and convention center complex built in 2002.  The Rox also ran the Campanelli Stadium concessions business, and grossed over $100,000 a night when Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and Def Leppard came through town on summer ballpark tours.

But if the Rox offered a tempting model they also presented a problem: proximity.  Campanelli Stadium is only 35 miles from Plymouth and the Rox tapped into the bedroom communities along the Route 3 corridor to Plymouth for a significant portion of their fan base.  If Bay Colony Baseball and Athletics wanted a Can-Am League membership, it was going to have to buy the Rox’ permission.

Rox management was divided on the River Eels.  The team’s out of state owners and advisors were skeptical of the project and of opening the market to a potential competitor.  But Rox President Jim Lucas wanted to work with the River Eels on a deal: the Rox would help broker the acquisition of the Can-Am League’s struggling Elmira Pioneers franchise for somewhere between $500,000 and $750,000.  On top of that, the  the River Eels would pay a six-figure annual territorial rights fee to the Rox for several years.  Lucas and O’Brien negotiated until August 2006, when the Rox abruptly ousted Lucas.  Two months later The Brockton Enterprise reported that the former Rox President was under investigation by the Plymouth County District Attorney.  Lucas was indicted by a grand jury in 2007 for allegedly embezzling $50,000 from the ballclub.  The charges were later dismissed, but with Lucas gone, negotiations with the Rox and the Can-Am League ended for good.

In 2006, the River Eels reached agreement with former California Angels shortstop Gary DiSarcina to manage the ball club, but on the eve of that announcement the Boston Red Sox offered DiSarcina a managerial post in their farm system.  The River Eels let him go and it was just as well – the planned May 2007 debut came and went with no league membership, no groundbreaking and no deal to purchase the 28 acre parcel of land eyed for the ballpark.

“We haven’t heard from them in more than a year,” Plymouth Planning Director Lee Hartmann told The Patriot-Ledger newspaper in February 2008.

But the team continued to market itself in the community, hosting a used equipment drive and later a baseball clinic in January and February 2008.  The team inked a 10-year sponsorship deal with a local Chevy dealer to sponsor the dugouts tops at the ballpark.

In May 2008 activity ticked up once again as the River Eels signed a purchase and sale agreement to acquire the stadium land for $5.1 million.  By this time Bay Colony Baseball and Athletics was up against a deadline – the company needed to file a written plan for the property by June, or else lose favorable tax breaks approved by local voters in October 2007.  But the land deal blew up for unspecified reasons on the day of closing.  By this point, the looming economic crisis began to impact the project as well.  Stadium contractor Payton Construction, which also built Brockton’s Campanelli Stadium, filed for bankruptcy and closed its doors in September 2007, leaving the River Eels without a builder.

After the land deal collapsed in May 2008, the River Eels went silent again, as they had for much of 2007.  The last media article published on the team arrived in June 2009, in which River Eels Vice President Mike Rothberg insisted the project was still a matter of when, not if.  River Eels front man Tom O’Brien was notably absent from that article.

Today, the River Eel has become more of a Loch Ness monster – an acknowledged myth that periodically raises its head in view of a few onlookers.   O’Brien is now the Treasurer of Plymouth County.  He has not commented in the press about the River Eels since May 2008.  As late as March 2010, team co-founder Mike Rothberg posted an update on his Twitter account plugging a new and improved version of the River Eels website.  However, that website finally came down later in 2010, nearly five years after the launch of the team.

The idea of the River Eels seems to have finally met its end sometime in 2010 or 2011 .  On the other hand, the team remains only one tweet, one Facebook post, or one $25 box of business cards away from a return to its former condition.

Update! (1/17/12)

The River Eels live?! A member of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League writes in to say that a man with Plymouth River Eels business cards attended an organizational meeting for the start-up collegiate wooden bat league in December 2010 or January 2011.  But the new league debuted in the summer of 2011 and has since conducted another round of expansion for 2012 and a Plymouth River Eels entry has yet to surface.

Downloads:

Plymouth River Eels sources