THUNDER BAY – The Thunder Bay Border Cats are here to stay, promise the new owners of the summer league baseball team.
Members of the organization’s new brass reaffirmed their commitment to keeping the Northwoods League club in Thunder Bay for the long-term at a media conference held Saturday afternoon at the Marriott TownPlace Suites.
The group, Florida-based Superior Baseball Club Inc., is led by team founder John Wendel and new president Kyle Smith, who bought the team from previous owner Brad Jorgenson earlier this off-season.
That transaction was made with the intent on keeping the team in Thunder Bay.
“All of that has to come from the community but we have an excellent base,” Wendel said. “We are very determined to stay here and make this thing work.”
Smith, who previously served as general manager of Florida’s Brevard County Manatees, the Class-A advanced affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers, is charged with guiding the ship on a day-to-day basis.
Both Smith and Wendel said the team has a completely fresh financial slate with no debt and the group is committed to making the team financially viable.
“We didn’t do this to be short-term,” Smith said, adding the slumping Canadian dollar didn’t factor in the decision to purchase the team.
“It’s going to take a lot of effort, especially the short timeframe in getting ready for (Opening Day) on May 31 but we would not have done this if we didn’t think this was an opportunity to be a team in the upper echelon of this league.”
One of the primary orders of business for the new ownership is to get more fans in the stands at Port Arthur Stadium.
Despite playing in one of the larger markets in the league, the Border Cats have been firmly entrenched with the league’s second-lowest attendance figure in the past five years with an average of 773 fans per game, though the average from each of the past three seasons has not exceeded that number.
“There are a couple of different things we can do to make that happen. One is to get in touch with the business community and have those party decks full every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. That’s an easy way to build attendance,” Smith said.
“Our big thing going forward is making the women and kids in this community our fans…We want to make it a clean place for women to come, kids to come, men to come and we’re going to start growing our fan base through the women and children in this community.”
Boosting attendance will be a primary goal of new general Dan Grant, a Thunder Bay native and player on the inaugural Border Cats team. He is looking to draw at least 900 fans per game in this first year and hopefully regularly go beyond 1,000 after that.
In addition to building a lively ballpark atmosphere, Grant wants the current players to become involved members of the local community during their summer stays.
“I think it just builds the connection with the community. When you separate the team from the community, the fans don’t have that connection and it’s easy to stop caring about the product,” Grant said.
“If you have the connection with the people you’re going to support them, win or lose. If you really care about these players and you have them helping kids out and hopefully helping them learn life lessons or baseball skills and these kids grab on to that (people) are going to support you.”
Manager Danny Benedetti will return for his second season at the helm of the team and Grant said the skipper will have complete control over building the roster and lineup decisions once the season starts.
The group anticipates the first roster moves to be announced in the coming week.
The Border Cats open the 2016 Northwoods League season on May 31 at home against the Mankato MoonDogs.
