Kamloops' baseball future Golden?

From The Daily News of Friday, Oct. 26, 2007. . . .

Representatives of the independent Golden Baseball League, which now includes franchises in Calgary and Edmonton, were in Kamloops on Thursday and met with city officials.
David Kaval, the league’s CEO and founder, commissioner Kevin Outcalt and Peter Young of the Calgary Vipers met with Mayor Terry Lake and representatives of the parks and rec department, and toured facilities, including NorBrock Stadium.
“We didn’t really know at what quality and status the facility was,” Kaval said. “It’s in better shape than what we had anticipated. It is very impressive in terms of the way it’s maintained and the money that’s recently been put into it.
“I think there’s a real opportunity here because the facility is in much better shape than many of the other ones we’ve seen in Canada at this point.”
Young agreed.
“It’s a good little stadium,” he said. “A couple of little bleachers down past the dugouts on each side, a new scoreboard and you’ve got a park we could work with.”
Kaval said there is a chance that a franchise could be up and running in Kamloops for the 2008 season.
“The key things are,” he said, “one, we have to work quickly with the city to get a suitable lease.
“Two, we really need to find some local partners to make sure we have some local flavour. As we put together the ownership group we would want to have local people involved and people who have been involved with baseball . . . people who understand the work that has been done here over the many generations of baseball.
“We don’t want to come in as outsiders and try to dictate that. In our experience, it’s more important to involve local people who understand the situation.
“That’s one of the big reasons we’re here, meeting with people and starting the process. You have to take the first step . . . sometimes that’s the hardest thing.”
Young noted that there “probably is a 30-day window to see if we can put something together for (the 2008 season). If not, we’re hoping we can come up with a suitable lease and take a whole year to build it up properly.”
Young pointed out that his group bought the Calgary franchise in February 2005, “opened offices March 15 and opened training camp on May 4. So it can be done.”
City officials could not be reached for comment.
The five-year-old GBL had six teams each play a 64-game schedule in 2007. Young said plans are for an 88-game season in 2008, with teams playing 44 home games. It’s a short-schedule summer league that begins in May and runs through the Labour Day weekend.
The league is headquartered in Dublin, Calif., which is near Oakland in the San Francisco Bay area.
For 2008, it expects to field at least eight teams, including the Vipers and Edmonton Cracker Cats. Those teams left the Northern League last week.
“It is in our best interests to get a Canadian division to try and ease travel,” Young said. “But nobody has approached us locally.”
Young did admit that the GBL has heard from people “who do have summer homes in this area.”
“But,” he said, “it’s not like somebody phoned and said we’d like to put a team in here.”
Kaval also admitted the GBL is looking at other Canadian markets.
“If there’s a possibility here in the next 20 or 30 days and things sort of fall the right way with a couple other Canadian markets we could have 10 teams,” he said.
The GBL’s long-term vision includes three eight-team divisions — one based in northern California and Nevada, another in southern California and Arizona, and a third in the Pacific Northwest and Canada.
“We’ve actually gotten to the point where we are in the different geographic areas faster than we had anticipated,” Kaval said, “but that’s pretty exciting for us because we have a lot of great cities like Calgary, Edmonton, Los Angeles, Orange County, Yuma.
“These are great cities with a great quality of baseball.”
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca