Western Baseball League explores expansion in Rocky Mountain region

New hope for a Rocky Mountain professional baseball league came out of left field when an out-of-state player stepped up to load the region’s bases with independent league teams.

Jim Goldsmith, franchise member of the independent Western Baseball League and owner of the dormant Valley Vipers, is heading up plans to expand the league into the Rocky Mountain region. Goldsmith arrived in Northern Colorado in early December to pitch his plan to baseball organizers in Fort Collins, Windsor, Greeley, Cheyenne and Laramie.

Goldsmith’s list of communities vying for teams also includes Boulder, Grand Junction, Pueblo and Montrose in Colorado and Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Las Cruces in New Mexico.

?This is going to happen,? said Goldsmith, a former minor league player for the Houston Astros and Atlanta Braves. ?We have a great advantage there that the last go-around did not have ? we are an existing league. At present there are three prospective owners and probably three facilities. The rest is in the works.?

Boulder is also a possible Front Range entry, Goldsmith said, depending in part upon the University of Colorado’s decision about reviving its collegiate baseball program.

?Boulder would be contingent on the university being involved and having the baseball program back,? Goldsmith said. ?If the timing lines up such that it happens in 2003 or if it comes along at a later date then fantastic. We see it as a bonus city.?

Goldsmith’s plan calls for the relocation of three existing teams, including his own Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Vipers, to the Rocky Mountain region and the formation of one to three additional teams.

?We would like to keep the league’s interdivisional travel to about a 450-mile loop north to south,? he said. ?To the north, Laramie and Cheyenne, to the south, Las Cruces and Santa Fe, N.M.?

Goldsmith, whose wife is also his business partner, said he and the owners of one to two other teams are looking at moving their families to the region.

Plans for the expansion include a 2003 start date and a minimum of four-to-six teams along the Rocky Mountain corridor. The ill-fated Rocky Mountain Professional Rookie Baseball League, torpedoed by Major League Baseball a year ago, included seven host communities in its application to MLB. But that league never fully resolved issues of proximity linked to sites in Loveland and Windsor ? less than 15 miles apart ? and a problem with having multiple teams in the same county.

While the Western League, as an independently owned operation, does not need to comply with Major League proximity regulations, fans still won’t find too many cross-county rivalries on the 2003 schedule.

?I would think that to make sense out of it, the Fort Collins-Loveland-Windsor area is one market. I don’t think multiple teams in a tiny area makes sense,? Goldsmith said. ?Certainly not Fort Collins and Windsor. That’s the same team.?

The Fort Collins-Loveland-Windsor market probably would also include Greeley, Goldsmith said, which would leave fans in all four communities cheering for the same team, and a franchise likely would go to either Cheyenne or Laramie but not to both.

Efforts to bring professional baseball to Northern Colorado have struck out twice in recent years. Organizers first came up short in 1992 when one of the participating Major League affiliates backed out at the last minute.

The idea was derailed again in 2000 when plans to move a rookie baseball league from Arizona to the Rocky Mountains ended after sixteen months with the Colorado Rockies’ decision to send its Tucson-based rookie team to Casper, Wyo. Both efforts ultimately failed, league organizers said, because of the same catch-22 bind: Host communities refused to build stadiums without commitments from professional teams, which refused to commit without stadiums.

?I think this one has a lot better chance because politics won’t play a role,? said Diamond Valley developer and Windsor baseball organizer Martin Lind, who met with the Goldsmiths Dec. 6. ?They’re extremely knowledgeable about this industry and it’s unrestricted by MLB, so when they come to the table with a deal, it doesn’t have to be approved by what’s been our nemesis (MLB) in the past.?

Local officials who met with Goldsmith said the absence of MLB backing would not diminish the region’s interest in the league, which recruits players of a higher caliber ? between A and AA by MLB minor league standards ? than the Arizona rookie league. The Rockies, who have led the charge in previous bids for Rocky Mountain baseball, have yet to take an official position on the proposed independent division, but organizers suggested the Major League team’s mere presence might add to the league’s appeal to both owners and players.

?Our slate is open to any kind of discussion the Rockies have,? Goldsmith said. ?If they want involvement we would welcome it gladly, but even if they don’t we’ll pursue our interests.?

on Facebook on LinkedIn