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Boston City Councilor John Tobin’s dream comes with a name, and it’s not of a higher political office. “The Boston Nine—what do you think?” he asks. Tobin has hopes of owning a minor-league baseball team, and putting it right here in the major-league city of Boston at that. Tobin and his brother-in-law and partner, commercial real estate executive J.P. Plunkett, have a backup name—the Commonwealth Nine—if they are forced to live out their minor-league dream outside their hometown. But Boston is the target, and a unique one at that.
The area surrounding Boston has quickly become a hotbed of the independent Can-Am League, with four teams within a 45-mile radius of the city: the Brockton Rox, the North Shore Spirit in Lynn, the Worcester Tornadoes, and the latest entry (from the Atlantic League), the Nashua, NH, Pride. These ball clubs, along with Red Sox affiliates Pawtucket Red Sox, Lowell Spinners, and Portland, Maine, Sea Dogs, have become key attractions, as well as sources of civic pride, for small cities, many of them struggling, on the fringes of the metropolitan area (See “Rooting for the Home Team,” CW, Fall ’05).
But the notion of minor-league baseball of any kind inside a major city is almost unprecedented. Dan Moushon, the Can-Am League’s president, says that the Brooklyn and Staten Island franchises of the Major League Baseball–affiliated New York/Penn League come the closest. There are also independent-league teams in secondary cities within large metro areas—such as in Newark and Camden, NJ; St. Paul, Minn.; and Fort Worth, Texas. An independent-league team in the capital of Red Sox Nation, however, would be novel, to say the least.
Plunkett had his first discussion with Can-Am commissioner Miles Wolff during the summer. Since then, according to Moushon, support for a Boston team has broken out like wild fire.
“The interesting thing is that we got two other calls from two separate groups this week about putting a team in Boston,” says Moushon, reached in early December.
Indeed, the entire region seems to have caught baseball fever. There is also a prospective ownership group in Plymouth that is hoping to land a Can-Am or other independent-league franchise—they’ve already come up with the name River Eels and plan to start playing in 2007. According to Democratic state Rep. Tom O’Brien of Kingston, who is president of Bay Colony Baseball and Athletics LLC, a private organization representing the ownership group for the purposes of pursuing the franchise, the owners group has already picked out a 28-acre site off the new connection of Route 3 and Route 44 for a ballpark. “This will all be done with private funding,” says O’Brien.
Moushon, who is based in Durham, NC, has taken note of his league’s northward drift. “We’ve kind of shifted and become a New England–based league, which is fine,” he says. But Mouton has his doubts about Boston as a minor-league venue; the big city could be just too expensive to provide a low-cost alternative to a night at Fenway Park, he says. And he also worries about a glut in the market.
“There are four teams right there already, and we would have to consider those teams,” says Moushon. “Would we rule out Boston? No. But it’s not as much of a slam dunk as people might think.”
The Can-Am League is expected to have two franchise openings available in 2007, but that may be too soon for Boston, with Tobin and Plunkett both aware that things take time in the city. As for a stadium, Tobin is enough of a political veteran to know what not to ask for.
“This would not be something that would have us going to a municipality with our hands out,” he points out. “As big a lover as I am of sports, I’m not into municipalities spending money on this sort of thing. There are too many other needs. We have enough trouble finding funding for potholes and schools.”
Though Plunkett, a Boston College alumnus, hasn’t contacted his alma mater, the college’s athletic program is about to upgrade its baseball facility, Shea Field, to meet the standard of its new affiliation with the Atlantic Coast Conference —one of the nation’s largest collegiate baseball conferences. And Plunkett is well aware that the Worcester Tornedoes forged a partnership with the College of the Holy Cross to make a 3,500-seat ballpark out of Fitton Field, without public funding.
Then there are the Red Sox, which have territorial stakes in Pawtucket, Lowell, and Portland as well as Boston, who might frown on unaffiliated competition in their own back yard. But Tobin, a season ticket holder, sees reason for hope. He was in the audience November 4 when Dr. Charles Steinberg, the team’s vice president of public affairs, kicked off a CommonWealth Forum on baseball and urban renewal by speaking of his love for the minor-league game. (A detailed summary of the forum provided by State House News Service can be found here.)
“Some people with the Red Sox might not be happy,” says Tobin. “But I was encouraged by Dr. Charles Steinberg’s comments, [about] how he grew up watching minor-league baseball. I would think the Red Sox would want to enhance this experience, with a fan base they’ll eventually inherit.”
Mark Murphy is a sportswriter for the Boston Herald.