1068
by joez
Mudcats will become Cleveland affiliate
ZEBULON -
Changes are coming, but there will still be baseball in Zebulon.
After the upcoming season, the Double-A franchise affiliated with the Cincinnati Reds will be replaced by the High-A franchise affiliated with the Cleveland Indians, currently operating in Kinston.
"To say that the Mudcats are leaving is not true," Carolina Mudcats owner Steve Bryant said. "We feel strongly about our brand. While the Double-A team will relocate, the Mudcats are going to be here."
Bryant is selling the rights to his Double-A franchise, which move to Pensacola, Fla., and buying the rights to the High-A team in Kinston, where Historic Grainger Stadium was recently featured in Durham-based Baseball America magazine's Great Parks calendar.
Bryant said the sale of the Double-A team is a preemptive measure to avoid having to charter a plane on road trips farther than 500 miles away.
Only three of the other nine teams in the Southern League are within 500 miles of Zebulon, and Bryant.
For five years, Major League Baseball has begun enforcing a rule requiring teams to either fly the team to road destinations that are 500 miles or longer or to schedule a day off for the team after the travel day. The only way around that is to get a waiver from the Major League affiliate.
Bryant said Major League teams have been handing out fewer and fewer waivers. Bryant said there had been talk of realignment in the Southern League, but he didn't want to take any chances.
"I didn't want to be at the whim of what Major League Baseball thought was best for their travel," he said, adding that the cost of flying the team would be "prohibitive."
Even so, Bryant said he wasn't out looking for potential suitors.
"I've had many offers to sell [the team] and I would not be a part of anything that would take baseball out of Five County Stadium," he said.
But he was approached by a buyer, and for the last month, he and other parties have been working towards an agreement.
"When you orchestrate three different cities and two different teams, there's a lot of things that have to fall into place," he said.
Bryant declined to share the terms of the deal, but Southern League Commissioner Don Mincher told the Pensacola News Journal in 2009 that the average cost for a Double-A franchise was between $12 million and $15 million.
Bryant said the Southern League and the Carolina League have both approved the deal, but Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball haven't yet.
"We feel like we'll get their approval," Bryant said.
Under the terms of the deal, the deal would go down late this year or early in 2011, but he would continue to operate the Double-A franchise in Zebulon for one year, reaping the profits or absorbing the losses, and the Kinston owners would do the same with the Indians. The franchises would move for the 2012 seasons.
The Carolina League has history in the Triangle.
The Bulls were once members, as recently as 1997, and four Raleigh teams have been members, as well as three Raleigh-Durham teams, over the years.
There are four teams within 193 miles of Zebulon, including Winston-Salem, Lynchburg, Va., and Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Bryant said he's already had conversations with the managers of Wake County, Zebulon and the mayor of Zebulon. The $20 million stadium was paid for in large part with the local tax, and Bryant is currently bound to keep a baseball team of at least Class-A level here through the 2022 season.
"I think they obviously have a concern when they have an investment like they have, that baseball is going to be here," Bryant said. "I think they like the fact that the Carolina League is close and that our fans would have an opportunity to go on the road and also bring more fans from areas such as the Winston-Salem market."
The Town of Zebulon and Wake County own the stadium, 15 and 85 percent, respectively.
Zebulon mayor Bob Matheny, reached by phone today, declined to talk about the deal until he knew more about it.
"[News] sort of came in through the grapevine," Matheny said. "We were made aware of some possible happenings out there, but beyond that, I don't have any more details."
“Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again. That's the way life is, with a new game every day, and that's the way baseball is.”
-- Bob Feller