Maine Guides

International League (1984-1987)

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For a time, during the summer of 1984, the Maine Guides seemed to be everyone’s favorite Minor League Baseball team. The team played in the small vacation town of Old Orchard Beach, in a brand new ballpark carved out of the woods (and swarmed by mosquitos in the evenings). The team almost – should’ve really – won the International League championship that summer. The turnstiles rung. Even Sports Illustrated was all-in on the Guides. The Guides were gone by 1988 but Mainers of a certain age still carry fond memories of this cult classic ball club.

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Background

Bringing professional baseball back to Maine was the singular vision of Jordan Kobritz, a restless 30-something lawyer from Bangor. The state’s last professional club, the Portland Pilots of the New England League, recorded their final out way back in 1949. In 1982, Kobritz spent much of the year travelling the country networking the minor league industry and searching for an investment opportunity. The recovering attorney’s trek culminated at the 1982 Baseball Winter Meetings, where he purchased the Class AAA Charleston Charlies of the International League for $650,000.

Kobritz also needed a place to play. He ran into a brick wall with the city of Portland. But then the town manager of Old Orchard Beach asked him to tour a parcel of town-owned land in the tiny vacation hamlet 15 miles south of Portland. Kobritz applied to Finance Authority of Maine (FAM) for a $2.2 million loan to build a 6,000-set stadium in the woods of Old Orchard Beach. FAM initially rejected the proposal due to Kobritz’s lack of collateral. But city officials in Old Orchard Beach offered to backstop the bid. If Kobritz defaulted on his bond payments, the city would take over the team and cover the payments. The backhoes broke ground on the stadium, known simply as “The Ballpark”, in 1983.

1984: Media Darlings

The Guides debuted in April 1984. The team remained a Cleveland Indians farm club, as it had been during its final years in Charleston, West Virginia. The summer of 1984 was a charmed one for the Guides in many respects. Local and national media were entralled by the notion of triple-A baseball played at the meeting of the woods and the ocean in a tiny village of 6,500 year-round residents. The Guides earned glowing write-ups in Sports Illustrated, The Boston Globe and elsewhere. OOB’s population swelled ten-fold in the summer months with vacationers and the visitors propelled the Guides’ attendance to fourth best in the International League at 183,289.

The 1984 Guides were excellent under field manager Doc Edwards. They advanced to the Governor’s Cup championship series against the Boston Red Sox’ top farm club from Pawtucket. After winning the first two games of the best-of-five series in Rhode Island, the Guides returned home needing just one win in three tries at home. They couldn’t get it. The Pawsox took three straight at The Ballpark on September 11-12-13, 1984 to claim the championship. The Guides managed just four runs total in the three home losses.

Financial & Legal Troubles

The Guides story started to sour in 1985. Attendance dropped by nearly 50,000 fans during the Guides’ second season. Jordan Kobritz, who controlled not only the team but The Ballpark itself, often found himself at odds with the local community over efforts to book rock concerts at the stadium. With bond re-payments looming, the heavily-leveraged Guides were not bringing in enough income.

The 1986 Guides finished last in the 8-team IL with a 58-82 record. Attendance was also worst in the league at 105,578, off 43% from just two years earlier.

In August 1986, Kobritz sold the team to Northeastern Baseball, Inc. a group that planned to move the club to the Scranton, Pennsylvania area in 1988 to become the top farm club of the Philadelphia Phillies. As part of the deal, or so Kobritz believed, he would receive an exclusive option to buy Northeastern Baseball’s existing Class AA Waterbury Indians team in the Eastern League and move it to Old Orchard Beach. The deal would give Kobritz a badly needed infusion of cash while keeping baseball at The Ballpark in 1987. Then things went sideways.

The Eastern League denied Kobritz’s application to purchase and relocate Waterbury. Meanwhile, International League  banned Kobritz from league meetings and approved the sale of the Guides to Northeastern Baseball. Kobritz filed a breach of contract lawsuit in October 1986 to re-gain control of the Guides. The team spent the winter of 1986-87 in limbo, uncertain of where it would play in 1987. Kobritz won the early rounds in court and took back control of the team temporarily. For 1987, the Maine Guides would remain at The Ballpark, now as the top farm club of the Philadelphia Phillies.

The End

The tide turned on the Guides founder in a series of rulings in late 1987 and early 1988 that stripped his control of the franchise and the minor league territorial rights for Maine and awarded them to Northeastern Baseball.  Kobritz took his appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but lost his final battle in February 1988. Due to construction delays in Pennsylvania, Northeastern Baseball was forced to operated the team in Old Orchard Beach for one final summer in 1988. They changed the name of the team to the Maine Phillies in January 1988, bringing the Guides era to an end.

The team finally moved to Pennsylvania in the spring of 1989. The former Guides franchise plays on today, after a series of subsequent re-brands and affiliation changes, as the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders.

Trivia

Bangor native Gary Thorne was a practicing attorney, occasional local sports broadcaster and a minority partner in the Guides original ownership group. After calling Guides games on the radio in 1984, he was hired by the New York Mets in 1985 and has gone on to a 30-year career broadcasting for ABC, ESPN, and as the long-time TV play-by-play man for the Baltimore Orioles.

Maine Guides Shop

Was Baseball Really Invented in Maine? A Warm & Wonderful Look at the History of Professional Baseball in Maine & at Every Mainer Who’s Ever Played
by Will Anderson
Order Now at Amazon

In Memoriam

Catcher Darren Daulton (Guides ’87) died of brain cancer of August 6, 2017 at age 55. Los Angeles Times obituary.

Manager Jim Napier (Guides ’86) passed away on February 11, 2018 at age 79.

Manager Doc Edwards (Guide ’84-’85) died on August 20, 2018 at age 81. Portland Press-Herald obituary.

Links

“It’s The Maine Attraction“, Steve Wulf, Sports Illustrated, July 9, 1984

“Where Have You Gone, Tom Newell?”, Chad Finn, Touching All The Bases, November 19, 2004

“Unlikely Guides Charted a Course in Maine“, Josh Jackson, MiLB.com, February 5, 2018

International League Media Guides

International League Programs

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