Investors Recruited For Team

NYCBL Decision Expected Shortly


By JIM KEVLIN

PLAY BALL? The decision is due by Friday. Check www.hometownoneonta.biz

The Bald Eagles?  The Riverbeds? The Engines?  The Trees?  (After all, there are a lot of trees around here.)
Those were some of the names for Oneonta’s prospective New York Collegiate Baseball League team that were being tossed around by Brad Zee’s fifth graders at Riverside Elementary the other morning.
Mayor Richard P. Miller, Jr., who had asked local schools to come up with team names, had a list of 80 by Monday morning, Feb. 8, many on railroad themes, he said.
But before a name can be chosen, a team must be gotten, and loose ends were still being tied up at mid-week.  The mayor was still optimistic that a deal could be put together by Friday, Feb. 12, the league’s deadline.
Clearly, there’s no lack of interest in a team to replace the Oneonta Tigers, who were swooped away by larger-market Norwich, Conn., two weeks ago.
Fifty people, some prospective investors, attended a meeting at Stella Luna Thursday, Feb. 4, called by Miller to discussed the future of baseball at Damaschke Field.
Bob Hanft, former chairman of the Hartwick College trustees who recently moved to Otsego County, agreed to try to pull together a team of investors from within and outside the group.
Miller expressed the hope that two or three dozen investors – “it’s more of a charitable contribution than an investment,” he cautioned – would come up with $5,000 apiece to put the team in place.
He estimated it would cost $100,000 – give or take $20,000 – to field a team this summer, but said the Tigers had grossed substantially more than that last summer and the effort would be solvent.
Cooperstown will also be fielding a NYCBL team this summer – the Hawkeyes – and the mayor expressed optimism that a cross-county rivalry (the teams would meet six times) would generate interest.