IBL can’t wait to hear ‘Play ball!’
The oldest independent baseball league in Canada is even talking about expansion
A league that put together a 100-year streak of playing games before spending a season on the sidelines can’t wait to begin a new streak.
In a state-of-the-league message, Intercounty Baseball League (IBL) commissioner John Kastner concedes, while ongoing COVID-19 restrictions could delay season openers from the traditional May starting date, Canada’s oldest independent baseball league is determined to be back on the field in 2021.
“A later start seems prudent and extending the playoffs into September seems the most likely scenario,” he said.
The commissioner cautioned fans not to expect the IBL to be fully “back to normal” following a year off.
“It’s reasonable to expect some antiCOVID conditions dictated by provincial and regional health authorities,” he said.
Whenever that first pitch is thrown, it can’t happen soon enough for Kastner, whose eight-team league includes the Welland Jackfish.
“By the time we throw the first pitch in 2021 — and we will throw the first pitch — it will have been 20, 21, maybe even 22 months since the Jack and Lynne Dominico Trophy was presented to the defending champion Barrie Baycats,” he said.
Jackfish majority owner and president Ryan Harrison said the league’s “target date” of early June makes the most sense for two reasons.
“It gives us more time for the pandemic and, number two, it’s probably going to be better weather,” he said. “What we don’t want to happen is weather giving us a hard time on top of the pandemic.”
Traditionally, the second half of May has been “problematic” for the league in terms of weather
The league is still hoping to play 36 games.
Delaying the start of the season by three weeks would extend the playoffs into September, which would affect a team’s ability to keep college-bound players on their rosters. “We don’t target college-bound players for that reason alone,” Harrison said. “Even before the pandemic and moving schedules deeper, it was already an issue trying to keep college players around anyway.
“We found that out in the playoffs with Caleb Feuerstake leaving and one or two others.”
When it comes to welcoming back fans, each team is different when it comes to the percentage of ballpark capacity it needs.
The Jackfish need at least 300 fans, or 10.6 per cent of Welland Stadium’s 2,840 capacity, “to be viable.”
“We’re hoping for 300 people,” Harrison said. “I think some other teams are less than that, but I’m not sure.”
A rollout of vaccines isn’t the only “light at the end of the tunnel” that has the league optimistic for the future. Kastner said: “Broader interest in the IBL has never been higher. We have had conversations with several groups about bringing the IBL to their communities. We can say with some certainty that by opening day 2021, we will be announcing a new team for 2022.”
However, expansion may not stop there. “Given the conversations we have had with other interested groups in our footprint, there’s even a possibility we will have a 10th team,” the commissioner said.
Between four and six different groups have reached out about establishing an expansion franchise
“Some of them are a little bit more concrete than others, they’re a little more serious than others,” Harrison said.
He is a little surprised in the interest in becoming part of the league given COVID-19 wiped an entire year off the schedule.
“We haven’t had this much interest in, I don’t know how long. I’ve been in the league for 10 years,” Harrison said.
The league, which played with a high of 11 teams in 1979 and ’81, isn’t tipping its hand on where the next expansion team will be located, but Harrison said the team will go into a “brand-new territory.”
That rules out Burlington and Mississauga, where the Jackfish played before relocating to Niagara, as well as Oakes Park in Niagara Falls, where the Niagara Falls Mariners played from1985 to ’89 before folding.
St. Catharines also can be removed from the list, as well as other centres in Niagara. The Jackfish have territorial rights to the region, as the Kitchener Panthers have for Waterloo Region, including Cambridge, and the London Majors have for nearby St. Thomas.
“We don’t feel baseball is built up enough around here to field two teams. It would be very tough to do that,” Harrison said.
He also pointed out, “Local talent is not where it should be at this point. Maybe in the future, it will be.”
Another factor against expanding into Niagara is the need to build a fan base, which would be tough to do given Welland Stadium is “centrally located.”
“We’re right at the border of Thorold, Pelham, Welland. We’re 20 minutes from Niagara Falls,” Harrison said. “We get fans from Grimsby, we get fans from Beamsville.”
He also said the timing is not right to put another team in the region.
“From a business standpoint — especially, after taking a year off — allowing another Niagara-based team in the same league, 20 minutes apart, doesn’t make much business sense to us,” Harrison said. “Maybe down the line we get so big it doesn’t matter, but right now it doesn’t make any sense.”
Despite an absence of on-field action in the nine-inning, wood-bat league, a lot of work has been taking place behind the scenes.
Several schedule options for the 2021 season are under consideration.
Teams likewise have been busy signing players and putting together rosters for the upcoming season.
Welland, the Guelph Royals, Hamilton Cardinals, Toronto Maple Leafs and London held out hope of playing a shortened season or championship tournament after the Brantford Red Sox, Barrie and Kitchener opted to sit out the 2020 campaign.
The holdouts reluctantly agreed on July 11, two months after the original start to the season, playing would not be possible.
“Try as we might, there was no chance to have IBL baseball last year, breaking a 100-season streak,” Kastner said. “As we flip the calendar to 2021, we involved with the IBL look back to 2020 with no fondness whatsoever.”
The last change to the IBL lineup happened following the ’18 season when the Burlington Herd received approval to relocate to Niagara Region and begin playing home games out of Welland Stadium as the Welland Jackfish.
Established in 2009, the franchise spent two seasons as the Mississauga Twins before moving to Burlington where they were nicknamed the Twins, Bandits and, for their final three years, the Herd.