DAN HICKLING
Minor League News
 

ATLANTIC CITY – There’s going to be a shoot-out in the Old West, but this one won’t involve cowboys firing blanks and falling dramatically from rustic buildings.  Dave Kaval’s live ammo is round, white, and best fired off the end of a piece of lumber.

Kaval, the league's CEO and one of three managing directors, and his partners are taking aim at affiliated baseball’s Arizona, California and Mexican League’s baseball estates with the launch of the Golden Baseball League (GBL), an upstart startup with eight locales in the sun-drenched Southwest.

The West is old baseball, largely the domain of the MLB-related teams working around the majors’ markets in Arizona, California, and Mexico. 

Despite Kaval’s optimism, and two years of planning. it’s a tough market for a start-up indy league.

The Western League folded three years ago, and the indy Arizona-Mexico League is still planning a roll-out in Bisbee/Douglas, Arizona, its one US market, as well as the Mexican border towns of Cananea, Juarez, Nogales, and Tecate.

The GBL's inaugural cities feature three Arizona sites (Surprise, Yuma, and Mesa), and four in California (San Diego, Fullerton, Chico, and Long Beach). Pleasanton, Calif., will likely come online in 2006.

The Arizona market is a tough haul for indy teams in an area saturated with baseball. Spring hosts the Cactus League Spring training sites of Major League Baseball. The Rookie level Arizona League owns the summer. Mesa itself is home to their Rookie Cubs and Angels teams. The Arizona Fall League dominates the baseball post-season. There are also big college programs, and two rounds of college and high school scouting that take place within spitting distance of the GBL’s teams.

The GBL announced a prize at the winter meetings: Los Toros de Tijuana (The Tijuana Bulls)was supposed to be jumping from the affiliated Mexican League.  Heavy pressure from the Mexican League, a AAA level of affiliated Minor League Baseball, opened the affiliated Potros and kept the Bulls from operating in Tijuana.

Unlike the other indy leagues, which have to initiate new ball park projects in most of their markets, the GBL will piggyback onto existing facilities. Some are Spring Training sites, others house college programs. All of them fit Kaval's vision of what a fan friendly venue should be.

"We're playing in beautiful stadiums," he said. "That's really one of the key things. When you have a stadium that's new and nice, and that people want to go to, that insures that you'll be successful.  There will be a standard level of service at every Golden League stadium," he said. "We want to make sure you have a great experience, that you're taken care of.”

Of course all the bells and whistles won't keep the fans coming, if the baseball is no good.

"We have a lot of great talent in California. There are a lot of guys who played in college at Fullerton, or Stanford, or Chico. They just stop playing. We think we can position ourselves as High-A or Double-A with all the talent we have here."

Marketing hype aside, the High-A and Class-AA players that can play usually don’t stop playing.  Most either find their way into affiliated baseball, one of the indy leagues, or teams in Asia or Latin America. As the Western League learned, the remainder tends to be of the Rookie to low class A level players. 

To mold that talent, the GBL has hired some interesting names as managers, including former big league players Ozzie Virgil (Surprise), Terry Kennedy (San Diego), Les Lancaster (Mesa), and Mark Parent (Chico). Benny Castillo (Yuma) comes over from the Florida Marlins chain.

The other challenge to the GBL comes from the same college powerhouses from which they hope to draw talent.  Long Beach, Chico, and even Arizona have strong baseball programs that attract their own followings.

The San Diego market is a black hole that has consumed minor league franchises other than the venerable ECHL San Diego Gulls.  The Padres’ new Petco, and the Lake Elsinore Storm, one of the most popular High-A California league teams, whose ballpark is situated on the edge of one of the best recreational lakes in California, also present potential problems.

In spite of the challenges of fitting the league into markets crowded in by affiliated and college baseball, Kaval and his partners remain optimistic.

"I feel like this is a fantastic time to start a new league, in the West," Kaval said at the Independent Winter League Meetings earlier this year.

Hopefully he’ll still be smiling four years from now.