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For Greater Bangor residents, it’s time to play ball — again.
The newly acquired Bangor Lumberjacks, a minor league team out of New York, will play their home opener May 30 at the University of Maine’s Mahaney Diamond. They are the first minor league team to play out of Bangor since the Blue Ox were transplanted in 1997.
In January of 2003, news first came of the Lumberjack’s departure from Adirondack, N.Y., when Bangor native Charles “Chip” Hutchins purchased the team.
Tickets for the home opener went on sale this past weekend at the Lumberjacks’ headquarters, located at the former Foot Locker location in the Bangor Mall.
“Our office and mall store opened up [Saturday] and this is the first time since 9 [a.m.] I have had a chance to sit down, so I think that is an indication of how much support we have gotten so far,” Lumberjacks’ General Manager Curt Jacey said.
Adirondack, N.Y,. is also the home of the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings’ AHL affiliate, the Adirondack Red Wings.
“I think it was a take it or leave it type of mentality in Adirondack and AHL’s Red Wings, it was a hockey town. There has been more excitement here, and you never saw that there,” Jacey said.
Jacey is familiar with the minor league baseball scene. In 1995, he became the director of marketing for the Evansville Otters in the Frontier League, and a year later became the chief operating officer for Old Time Sports, which owned both the Otters and Lumberjacks.
As an agreement for letting the Lumberjacks use Mahaney field, a new sound system will be added, as well as temporary box seats located down the first and third baseline, which will bring the seating capacity of the field close to 3,000 people.
The Lumberjacks will compete in the eight team Northeast League that will consist of Allentown, Brockton, Berkshire, North Shore, Quebec, Elmira and New Jersey.
Their first game of the season will be against the Allentown Ambassadors on May 22. The team will play a 92-game schedule over the course of a five month span.
Since the league’s existence in 1995, the Lumberjacks made the playoffs four times, including last season, and they won the league championship in 1995 and 2000.
“I think everybody will be curious about this season,” manager Kash Beauchamp said. “The other night I went to a Maine hockey game and take the Bangor-Brewer basketball game as well, it shows that this is a sports-minded community and its our job to make sure it is enjoyable for the fans and we want them to have, a staunch following for the team.
“I am going go work my hardest to get players that represent the Bangor area well, and I’d rather take better character instead of great talent who have personal issues it takes a certain type of player to play for me and if you can’t respect the community then that’s not what I want,” Beauchamp said.
Beauchamp was the first pick of the January 1982 draft by the Toronto Blue Jays, where he was selected over Twins’ Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett.
When asked about the possibility of an exhibition series between the two franchises, Beauchamp said that “an MLB organization has everything to lose and nothing to gain.” He compared it to UMaine playing Husson. If UMaine won, it would be no surprise, but if Hussom somehow won, it wouldn’t look good. He said the leage could play with them, and that if it were a seven-game series it would be good, but the disadvantages are that it puts the players at risk and creates issues with insurance.
“We want to make this [team] permanent, and I guarantee with the product we will have, the fans will not tell the different between us and the Sea Dogs,” Beauchamp said.
Bangor Daily News