The Northern League of Baseball has shrunk to just six teams with today’s announcement that Calgary and Edmonton have left the league.
The Alberta franchises were asked to post $500,000 performance bonds at a league meeting last week and they elected to pass on the request.
The Alberta clubs will now look for other options for the 2008 season.
Winnipeg, Fargo, Kansas City and three Chicago-area clubs are all that remain in the Northern League.
After three seasons of limping along like a wounded animal, the Northern League’s Alberta experiment finally keeled over dead.
The time of death is a little blurry. the Vipers issued a press release around 3 p.m. saying they and their provincial parters the Edmonton Cracker-Cats were leaving the Northern League due to irreconcilable differences.
NL commissioner Clark Griffith made it official sometime around 6 p.m. telling the Free Press the league and its Alberta clubs had seperated.
Griffith said the NL will go forth as a six-team league for 2008 and a schedule will be released in the coming weeks.
See Saturday’s Free Press, online and print editions, for more details and reaction.
■ gary.lawless@freepress.mb.ca
A look back at the Alberta experiment:
❚ The Northern League expanded into Alberta in 2005 announcing the Calgary Vipers and Edmonton Cracker-Cats.
❚ Neither club has had success at the gate with Edmonton averaging 1,792 per game last season and Calgary at 1,551.
❚ The clubs agreed to a $50,000-per-season travel subsidy upon joining the league and almost immediately began to gripe about this payment.
❚ Relations between the Alberta owners and the six other league directors frayed and this summer it became apparent a showdown was slated for the post-season.
Calgary and Edmonton arrived at the league meetings in Minneapolis a week ago demanding concessions on scheduling and the abolishment of the travel subsidy.
Commissioner Clark Griffith countered with a demand for a $500,000 performance bond from each club before including them in the 2008 schedule.
❚ Over the last week the Northern League softened on a number of issues save the letters of credit. The league was willing to waive the subsidy, proposed a schedule that would see the clubs play each other 24 times and also offered to take over the franchises returning the $1 million Orlich paid for expansion and the $800,000 Gidney was charged.
❚ The bonds were a sticking point and Orlich and Gidney elected to walk. They’re expected to meet with executives from the Golden Baseball League on Monday in Calgary.
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