Lynn Sailors

Eastern League (1980-1983)

Background

At the end of the 1979 season, West Haven Yankees owners Lloyd Kern and Robert Zeig needed a new Major League affiliation for their Eastern League franchise.  The Bronx Bombers decided to relocate their double-A affiliate to Nashville of the Southern League after eight summers in nearby West Haven.

In September, Kern and Zeig inked a new affiliation deal with the Seattle Mariners. They announced plans to re-brand their  ball club as the “West Haven Sailors” for the 1980 season.  Then they reconsidered.  Not the Mariners part.  The West Haven part.  In late 1979, Kern and Zeig packed up and moved to Fraser Field in Lynn, Massachusetts.

Built in 1940 as Works Progress Administration project during the New Deal, Fraser had seen only limited service as a minor league ballpark, hosting the Lynn Red Sox and Lynn Tigers of the New England League from 1946 to 1949.  In the spring of 1980 the hardscrabble industrial city of just under 100,000 on Massachusetts’ North Shore greeted its first pro ball club in over three decades.

Seattle Mariners Affiliation

The Sailors lasted three seasons as Mariners affiliate in Lynn.  During the club’s first two seasons under field manager Bobby Floyd in 1980 and 1981, the Sailors finished with the 6th best record in the eight-team circuit.  But development, not winning, is the priority in a Major League farm system.  More than a dozen Sailors that passed through Lynn in the early 1980’s eventually saw time with the big club in Seattle, including key contributors such as Jim Presley, Matt Young, Dave Valle, Mike Moore and Mario Diaz.

Future Mariners stars Alvin Davis, Harold Reynolds and Spike Owen, the club’s prized first round draft pick, arrived in Lynn in the spring of 1982.  This proved to be the Sailors’ best – and final – season. The club posted an 82-57 record en route to a championship series tilt with the West Haven A’s.  (In the minor league fashion of the day, West Haven had immediately picked up a new investor and Major League affiliation after the Sailors departed in 1979).  The A’s swept the Sailors three games to zero in the 1982 Eastern League finals.

Meanwhile, the franchise had changed hands.  In the fall of 1981, Lloyd Kern sold the team to Michael Agganis. The new owner was the nephew of the revered former Boston Red Sox first baseman and Lynn native Harry Agganis who died of a pulmonary embolism at the age of 26 in 1955.

Demise & Aftermath

After the 1982 season, the Mariners departed. Agganis snagged an affiliation with the Pittsburgh Pirates and changed the name of the team to the Lynn Pirates. But his relationship with City of Lynn officials continued to deteriorate. He spent much of the 1983 season negotiating to move the team to Vermont, a move made official in September 1983.

Affiliated minor league baseball never returned to Lynn, Massachusetts. A 1990 revision of the Professional Baseball Agreement (PBA) which governs the partnership between Major League Baseball and the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (i.e. “the minors”), raised the minimum standards for playing facilities substantially.  The new standards effectively slammed the door on dozens of communities around the country like Lynn. Cities with dilapidated, Depression-era ballparks and little political will to build new ones with the modern amenities now in demand.

These marginalized communities were effectively shut out of the minor league boom of the late 80’s and 1990’s. But there were enough under utilized ballparks sitting empty that a series of so-called “independent” leagues sprang up to fill the void.  Professional baseball returned to Lynn in 1996 with Jonathan Fleisig’s independent Massachusetts Mad Dogs club.  The club lasted four years but by the Mad Dogs final season in 1999, Fraser Field had deteriorated to the point that it was condemned by the City of Lynn.  Four years later, investment banker Nick Lopardo poured $3 million of his own money into Fraser in return for a $1/year lease for his independent North Shore Spirit team.  The Spirit played five years at Fraser from 2003-2007 before Lopardo withdrew his support and folded the money-losing club.

The former Lynn Sailors/Pirates franchise continues to play in the Eastern League today.  The ball club is now based in Ohio and known as the Akron RubberDucks.

Trivia

The North Shore Navigators summer collegiate baseball team wore Lynn Sailors throwback unis for every Friday night home game during the 2019 season.

Voices

“West Haven would not upgrade the lighting system at the park on a timely basis or improve our clubhouse facilities. Lynn was willing to put in a new lighting system and do some upgrades at the ballpark. Unfortunately, there were no other alternatives at the time.“

– Lloyd Kern, Owner 1980-1981 (2011 FWiL Interview)

“We advertised in several publications and <Agganis> and Rico Petrocelli were the only legitimate buyers. The sale price was less than six figures, slightly below the market at that time.”

– Lloyd Kern

Lynn Sailors Shop

Downloads

2011 FWiL interview with Sailors owner Lloyd Kern

Links

Eastern League Media Guides

Eastern League Programs