Welland lands IBL team
Welland has rounded up a herd.
Specifically, the Burlington Herd.
That’s the Intercounty Baseball League franchise that will move and begin playing out of Welland Stadium in May 2019.
Niagara’s second-ever IBL team and first in nearly 30 years will either be called the Jackfish, Pirates or Trail Raiders.
Results of an online name-theteam contest will be announced shortly.
A three-year contract with the municipality for use of the 2,500seat ballpark went into effect after the bid to bring ticket-based baseball back to Welland cleared its final hurdle, approval from the league’s board of directors.
Ryan Harrison, Welland Baseball chief executive officer and a Herd part-owner, received the green light from the league Monday. A contract with the City of Welland was announced the following day.
Terms of the contract were not disclosed.
“Our organization is very excited to call Welland and Welland Stadium home for the 2019 season,” Welland Baseball chief executive officer Ryan Harrison, a part owner of the Herd, said in a news release.
Harrison, who early in the summer conducted a fact-finding mission on whether Welland could support a team in the 100year-old league, said he was encouraged by the results.
“We have already seen a tremendous amount of support from the city, and we are very happy to be playing out of a first-class facility that will be one of the best in the league.”
A single-deck facility built in 1989 to accommodate the Welland Pirates, the then New York-Pennsylvania League Class A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Welland Stadium would also be among the largest in the eight-team IBL.
Only Labatt Stadium in London, 5,200, and Dominico Field at Christie Pits Park in Toronto, 3,000, have a larger seating capacity than the ballpark on Quaker Road off Niagara Street near the Welland-Thorold boundary.
“We’re looking forward to an exciting product for our fans to enjoy, and a fabulous use or our baseball stadium field, one of the best of its size in Ontario,” Richard Dalton, manager of recreation and culture, said on behalf of the municipality.
In his tour of the stadium Harrison was impressed with the amenities available to players as well as fans.
In addition to dressing rooms for home and visiting teams and dugouts with washrooms, the stadium has a concession stand, press box, ticket booth and a change room for umpires.
Casey Cosgrove Field, the Herd’s home in Burlington since 2012 only accommodated 1,000 spectators and while the team could put up advertising, it had to take the ads down after every game.
“It’s not conducive to what this league is now,” Harrison said at the time of the tour. “We’re a fan-based league, we need ticket sales, we need everything like that.”
The league, which unanimously approved the relocation bid in a vote Monday in Cambridge, likewise was impressed on the two occasions Welland Stadium housed the Hamilton Cardinals when Bernie Armour Memorial Stadium was undergoing repairs early this season.
“The team is moving to a great ballpark and we think a great community that is excited about having an IBL team,” commissioner John Kastner said. “We had two games there last year when Hamilton’s park was unavailable and the players and teams thought it was great.”
The new team is scheduled to play Thursday evenings, Saturday afternoons, and occasionally on Sundays beginning in May and concluding the season in late
July.
For more information about the new team or to purchase season memberships, visit wellandbaseball.com. This won’t be the IBL’s first foray into the region. From 1985 until 1989, the Niagara Falls Mariners played out of Oakes Park.
Welland Stadium has not been without baseball since the Niagara Stars left in 2003. Both the Rose City Thorns and Welland Chiefs senior teams in the Niagara District Baseball Association play the home half of their 24-game schedules there at the stadium, but neither charges admission. The last fan-based team that depended on sponsorships and ticket sales was the Niagara Stars.