Indy Notebook: Can-Am Hits Road Again

By J.J. Cooper
May 1, 2005

Just two years ago, the Atlantic League’s Pennsylvania Road Warriors fielded a team where Spanish was spoken in the clubhouse nearly as often as English.

The Can-Am League is becoming expert at hastily cobbling together a traveling team. For the second time in as many years, a club has called it quits just before the season started.

The Bangor Lumberjacks had been looking for a new owner, but when that didn't happen the team said it wouldn’t be able to play in 2005. The league announced that a travel team, known as the Grays, will take over the Bangor schedule. Any Bangor home games will now become home games for the opponents.

Bangor manager Chris Carminucci was hired as the Grays manager, and he'll be responsible for signing players for the new club. All of the Lumberjacks players became free agents when the franchise shut down.

The last-minute move was a case of déjà vu for the league. Last year, when the circuit was known as the Northeast League, the Allentown Ambassadors declared bankruptcy just before the season began, forcing the league to form a traveling team called the Aces (using uniforms from the Central League's defunct Alexandria Aces).

"Obviously it helps (to have experience with a traveling team)," Can-Am League president Dan Moushon said. "We know what the costs are. Spring training in Elmira worked for us before, so we're doing that. There are some benefits."

But having less than a month before the season to shuffle schedules also leads to plenty of headaches. Each other team in the league picked up six to eight more home dates after season tickets and schedules have been printed.

The experience with the Ambassadors last year helped the league realize that it needed to tighten up the league constitution to ensure the strength of the league and its member clubs. The league members voted to dissolve, and re-form as the Can-Am League, with a new constitution. The new constitution meant that when Bangor informed the league that it would not operate in 2005, the league's members were able to quickly act to terminate the franchise.

The Grays will be one of three travel teams in independent baseball this season. The Ohio Valley Redcoats (Frontier) will spend most of the summer on the road, although they will have a limited slate of home games at three sites, while the Samurai Bears (Golden) will field an all-Japanese traveling team.

"I think the Central League is the only independent league that hasn't had a traveling team," Moushon said. "It's not like it's something new. It's been tried before. It can work."

A Big Bet

Gary Wendt knows that he faces a skeptical public when he says the Mid-Missouri Mavericks should be better than they have been in past years.

After all, it would be hard to be worse. In their first two seasons, the Mavericks are 61-123, more than 60 games under .500, finishing in the basement of the Frontier League's Western Division twice.

But Wendt, the team president, hopes to generate enthusiasm for the club with a bet that better times are ahead.

"We're putting our money where our mouth is. If we don't finish .500 or better, we'll give season ticket holders half their money back," Wendt said. "Last year whatever could go wrong, did go wrong. I had to do something, and I felt like this is the best thing to do."

Based on last year's season ticket sales, Wendt said the team would be out roughly $50,000 if it doesn't reach .500 for the first time in team history. He said he has high hopes for the season because the team was able to turn over its roster during the second half of the season to find players who should form a strong nucleus for this season.

"If there was a little silver lining, it's that once we figured out it was a train wreck--and that didn't take long--we started shuffling the deck," he said. "We were able to come up with some decent ballplayers, so we have a core group of players we are confident can compete on this level."

QUICK HITS

• The Pensacola Pelicans (Central) are moving forward with the city of Pensacola on a plan that would bring the team a new stadium as part of a waterfront development. The 3,500-seat stadium would replace 2,500-seat Pelican Park, which was built in 1991.

• The Rockford RiverHawks (Frontier) will not move into their new ballpark until July. The new ballpark was scheduled to be ready for Opening Day, but poor weather and cost overruns led to delays. The club will play at its previous home, Marinelli Field, until the new park is completed.

• The St. Paul Saints (Northern), as usual, have come up with something new. The Saints were scheduled to host Sioux Falls in a May 8 exhibition game at 5:30 a.m., which may be the earliest start ever for a pro baseball game. The game was scheduled as a tie-in with two charities that will get a portion of the ticket proceeds: Darkness to Light, an organization that teaches adults how to protect children from sexual abuse, and the Foundation Fighting Blindness.

• The Northern League suspended a pair of players, Winnipeg righthander Luis Soto and Joliet lefthander Damien Myers, after both tested positive for performance-enhancing substances while they were in spring training with affiliated clubs. Both players will be subject to additional testing during the season.