Hopefully we’ll hear a great deal from and about Miles Wolff in the next few weeks - and months and years to come. I had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Wolff on the phone, and then spending the better part of last Thursday with him at City Hall. Quite honestly, I wasn’t really aware of his accomplishments until they were very eloquently and directly spelled out for all of us by Baseball Canada’s Jim Baba. I was impressed by how direct Mr. Wolff was with City council and how passionate he is about Independent baseball and the Can Am League in particular. His presence at the table should bring instant credibility to the proposal to bring Independent baseball to Ontario.
Here’s a little more about Mr. Wolff:
MILES WOLFF
He bought the Durham Bulls for less than the price of a used Volkswagen, and turned them into minor league baseball’s most famous team, thanks in part to Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon.
He purchased Baseball America and served as its owner and publisher for 18 years, which was essential in making sure that we’re around to celebrate our 25th anniversary. He has written a novel, owned a minor league hockey team (even though he admits he knows little about hockey), and owned minor league baseball teams around the country.
But Miles Wolff knows that for many people, he’ll always be remembered as the father of independent baseball, and he’s quite happy to have that as his legacy.
In the early 1992, Wolff started getting calls in his role as Baseball America publisher from cities like Thunder Bay, Ontario, and St. Paul, Minn., asking one simple question: “How can we bring baseball to our city?”
Looking at the situation conventionally, the answer was simple: You don’t. The number of minor league teams was fixed by the National Association and Major League Baseball. And territorial restrictions meant that many cities were effectively blocked from ever having a minor league team.
But independent leagues operate without the support of Organized Baseball, and thus are not subject to the same rules.
“I get a phone call from Sioux Falls, Thunder Bay and Duluth, all within a month–how do we get baseball here? It just started growing,” Wolff said. “I thought, ‘We have some cities and ballparks here, if I could put the right people here this could work.’ “
The seeds had been germinating for years. Bob Frietas, a longtime field representative and ambassador of minor league baseball, had preached about the possibilities of developing an independent league. A number of teams inside the NA were operating without affiliation agreements, signing players themselves, and getting players loaned from other teams.
“There were fits and starts of independent baseball before that, but the economics weren’t good enough to make it happen,” Wolff said. “But by the early 1990s, the image of minor league baseball, the marketing of minor league baseball had improved, the time was right. Everything was ready. Cities that in the past didn’t want minor league baseball now were interested.”
So Wolff gathered together Marv Goldklang, Harry Stavrenos, Van Schley and other owners who had experience with running independent teams in affiliated baseball to form the Northern League, with Wolff as the commissioner. It debuted in 1993, and was an instant success. The league packed stadiums in its first year, with the St. Paul Saints selling 97 percent of their tickets for the season.
That success spawned imitators, and while more than a dozen leagues have failed through the years, there are now seven independent leagues around the country, and the college summer league circuit has also exploded in popularity, following in many ways the indy league model.
“If you look back at the glory years of minor league baseball in 1948 and 1949, if you add up the independent leagues and the summer college leagues, there is almost as much baseball being played now as it was then.” Wolff said.
–J.J. COOPER
And this article from SABR.org:
The guest at the recent SABR Quebec chapter meet was Miles Wolff, the man who brought professional baseball back to Quebec City. A native of North Carolina, Miles Wolff decided early in life to build a career in baseball operations. Originally, he had wanted to make it as a player, but by the time he was 15 years old, he knew he would this would never happen, so baseball operations it would have to be.
His first job was in the Atlanta Braves organization as GM of their AA Savannah, Georgia club. He had no training; no experience –but he did make a go of it, and he liked it. By 1979 he was doing play-by-play in Richmond. This led to a decision to buy his own team, and when the Durham Bulls franchise appeared on the market, he bought it – for $2400! Shortly afterwards came the movie, and success, so much so that a new stadium was required. When Miles ran into difficulty with the city on this issue he sold the team. Before that, however, and while he was still owner of the Bulls, Miles became publisher of Baseball America. During this period he also ran a successful team in the Eastern Hockey League, one that functioned independently – it was not affiliated to a NHL team.
As publisher of Baseball America, he seemed to receive a steady stream of calls from people in the mid-west hungry for baseball. Drawing on lessons learned from his unaffiliated hockey team, he set out to apply the same principles to baseball, and behold, the Northern League was born, as an Independent league. [The Northern League had enjoyed a long history in organized baseball, but by this time was defunct.] During this interval Baseball America grew and expanded as well. It had been founded by a Canadian, Alan Simpson of Kelowna, who had been struggling - until finally he was able to secure a visa and move to Durham in 1982. Today the journal is so successful that major league teams refer to it for insider information, much to the chagrin of team owners and presidents. It has nurtured that good a set of sources. A call from Jean-François Coté of Québec is what launched les Capitales. Jean-François had contacted Miles at Baseball America to ask how one might go about establishing an independent league team in Quebec. And this got Miles interested, again. His wife is francophone, from Maine and the family was exploring a return to those roots. A visit to Quebec and the recently renovated Stade Municipal was enough to convince him. He acquired the inactive Bangor, Maine, franchise in the Northeast League, bought a house in Quebec and moved his family here for a year to set up operations. Les Capitals were born. They began playing in 1999. Commenting on the differences between affiliated and independent league baseball, Miles noted that with the former, when the major league clubs are involved, the local ownership has no control over baseball operations. Shots are called by the big-league teams, and their priority is player development; winning is secondary. On the other hand in independent league ball, winning is very important – the success of a franchise depends on it. The Quebec franchise has been successful – attendance averages over 3000 a game – and the players are known in the community.
www.sabr.org
