Tigers

1-29-10

One door closes, another opens.
The expected New York-Penn League announcement that the Oneonta Tigers are moving to Norwich, Conn., wasn’t due until Friday, Jan. 29.
But Mayor Richard P. Miller, Jr., saying “it seems to me likely the Tigers will not be here this year,” was already looking ahead.
While emphasizing he’s heard “nothing official,” Miller – a heretofore Tigers’ season-ticket holder – said he’s determined there will be “some sort of organized baseball here this summer, because the community enjoys it.”
While avoiding specifics, he said there is independent professional league” and “a collegiate league” that very well might be interested in a park like Damaschke Field.
“I will be pursuing those options,” Miller said.
Certainly, he continued, American Legion and the older youth-baseball leagues would be interested in playing in the city’s park.
It surfaced in recent days that the eastern Connecticut city of Norwich, which had lost the Connecticut Defenders (formerly the Norwich Navigators) to Richmond, Va., in September, might have successfully lured the Tigers there.
E. Miles Prentice, a New York City lawyer, bought the Tigers last year from former mayor Sam Nader and his partner Sid Levine, promising to keep the team in Oneonta for at least two years, through the end of its contract.
“Last time I looked at the calendar,” said Rob Robinson, Otsego County Chamber president, “we hadn’t had our two years.”
While New York-Penn League president Ben Hayes had issued a “gag order” about anything associated with a prospective Tigers move, the Norwich Bulletin, the local paper there, was reporting a member of the Tigers’ “relocation team” had toured Dodd Stadium in recent days.
Norwich was the smallest market with a Double-A team, the newspaper said, but the Single-A Tigers would fit the city’s scale nicely.
Robinson called any decision to move the Tigers now “a slap at the community after all it did to make (the new owners) so welcome.”
For his part, the mayor called the economic impact minimal.  He said he will ensure the city receives the $7,500 rent it has coming for this season, but beyond that “I don’t think it’s a big blow.”
Hartwick College had benefited from renting its rooms for players, and a local bus lines may have gotten some charter business, but that’s about it, he said.