PLAY BALL!
As the Victoria HarbourCats open the exhibition season today against the Langley Blaze, a new ownership group is glad to leave the “boardroom stuff” behind and get down to the real business on the ball diamond. Meet the new owners and this year’s roster o
The Victoria HarbourCats are back in action today. Meet the new owners and the 2015 roster of players.
Their names are Jim and Ken Swanson, John Wilson and Rich Harder. But maybe just call them the Fearless Four. The new owners of the Victoria HarbourCats of the West Coast League join an esoteric niche in the business world — sports ownership — that everybody talks about but where few dare venture. And with good reason. It can be messy and complicated.
If it were easy, the National Basketball Association would still be in Vancouver and Seattle, the National Hockey League in Quebec City and the National Football League in Los Angeles. The Jazz would still be in New Orleans, Colts in Baltimore, Lakers in Minneapolis and, yes, the Cougars of the Western Hockey League still in Victoria. But not to worry, the Pelicans, Ravens, Timberwolves and Royals filled their places.
The latter shows the vagaries of sports franchise ownership isn’t limited to the big leagues. It abounds at all levels, down to the minor-pro and junior leagues. And don’t Victoria baseball fans know it, after having lost the professional Capitals mid-season in 2003 and the professional Seals in 2010 after two seasons.
Now, the HarbourCats begin their third season at Royal Athletic Park in the WCL, but not without a winter of ownership upheaval and uncertainty. And this after Victoria led the WCL in attendance last year at RAP with an average of 1,576 fans per game. The team was second in league attendance in its inaugural season in 2013, with an average of 1,437 fans. This in a league, featuring top U.S. collegiate NCAA players, in which the average last season was 1,201 fans per game.
But would you have expected any different? This is the business of sport, after all, where slippery slopes abound even while there is the sweet sound of turnstiles whirling.
Let’s be clear. There would be no Victoria HarbourCats without founder and former owner John McLean, a baseball lover and private equity investor from Vancouver. But he lost out when Matthew Stoudt of Santa Monica, California, obtained ownership of the HarbourCats over the winter as the result of a civil case in B.C. Supreme Court against McLean.
After a period of uncertainty, Stoudt agreed to terms that will transfer ownership of the Victoria club to the Swanson brothers, Wilson and Harder. Terms were not disclosed. The group was hurriedly brought together by Jim Swanson, who is also the general manager of the HarbourCats.
Under threat of a start gun that goes off today with the exhibition-season opener against the Canadian senior champion Langley Blaze (featuring local players, since many HarbourCat regulars don’t arrive in town until later this week), and then for real with the WCL season opener Friday at RAP against the Kelowna Falcons, the new owners managed to bring all the loose ends together in time for the 2015 season despite the short window.
Jim Swanson said this week’s first pitches will be “cathartic.” No kidding. It will be good to move from the boardroom outside to the diamond.
Which is where these guys love to be. The boardroom stuff is what has to be done to get to where everybody wants to be — outside having a beer and a ’dog while watching good ball.
“You’re not in a freezing arena and there are no 4 a.m. practices,” said Ken Swanson, about his lifelong love of baseball.
“Regarding the business aspects of this, we did our due diligence.”
Yet jumping from being the owner of an insurance company into the business of balls, strikes, double plays, home runs and beer sales wasn’t exactly where he thought his career would lead. But he had a brother in that world and a team that needed saving.
“Jim is the Man. He is the guy who has worked his tail off to save this team,” said Ken Swanson.
Harder came into the ownership group through Ken Swanson’s connections. Harder is part of a family company that owns apartment buildings and rental properties in the New Westminster area, where he has long been involved in youth baseball and coaches his kids.
“It’s going to be strange sitting in the stands and watching these games from an ownership perspective,” admitted Harder. “But we are fans first and foremost, and that won’t change.”
Harder concurs with Ken Swanson as to the reason there is even a WCL season being played this summer in Victoria.
“If not for Jim [Swanson] putting his heart and soul into this, it would not be happening,” said Harder.
Jim Swanson also brought into the circle Wilson, who also is heavily involved in ownership groups with the Victoria Grizzlies of the B.C. Hockey League and Peninsula Panthers of the Island Junior Hockey League, and wellknown in local sports. The CEO of Wilson’s Transportation Ltd., a deeply entrenched Island company, is a crucial addition to the ownership mix because he brings instant credibility within the Island business community.
The quartet will need that, because Jim Swanson said it costs about $500,000 per season to operate a WCL team in Victoria.
In many ways, this is mostly Jim Swanson’s show. He is the main face of the ownership group. Which is fine by him, and should also be for Island ball fans, because this guy lives baseball. All family vacations were centred on baseball, whether coaching or managing in tournaments or going to Mariners games.
Before becoming GM of the HarbourCats prior to the 2014 WCL season, Jim Swanson was co-chairman of the World Baseball Challenge in Prince George, which from 2009 to 2013 featured the national teams of Canada, the U.S., Cuba, Japan, Taiwan, Germany, China and the Bahamas.
He even operated a minor-pro team in Fargo, North Dakota, named the Varmints, before floods wiped out the stadium and the club’s Prairie League season. Welcome to minor-pro baseball, where Bull Durham was just the tip of the iceberg.
Swanson has coached B.C. teams to a gold medal and two bronze at the Canadian senior championships from 2001 to 2013. He was heard across B.C. for five years as MLB analyst on Dan Russell’s old radio sports talk show.
It is through Swanson’s extensive connections in the game that former Blue Jays greats Roberto Alomar, Devon White, Lloyd Moseby, Jesse Barfield, Brian McRae and Duane Ward conducted a HarbourCats-sponsored kids’ baseball camp at Royal Athletic Park last year. The Jays greats are back this summer at RAP with Alomar, McRae, Homer Bush and Tanyon Sturtze for the second Blue Jays Honda Super Camp for young players July 12-13.
If there is something Jim Swanson doesn’t know about baseball, especially in Canada, it’s not worth knowing.
Swanson appears truly excited about having landed B.C. native Graig Merritt, a pro scout for the Tampa Bay Rays, as head coach for the HarbourCats this year and has set a target of 35 victories for the 54-game regular season. That’s considered the win plateau for the WCL post-season. Victoria was far from that last year at 25-29 or in 2013 at 22-32.
As the players begin arriving Monday and Tuesday from their U.S. university and college teams,“everyone is in first place right now,” said Swanson, reflecting the optimism of fresh starts that every new season brings in sport.
After the HarbourCats’ dark winter of uncertainty, he’s happy just to be able to hear those two sweet words of summer: “Play ball.”