Looking in obvious places

Here are where ex-Rattlers are in the Seattle and Milwaukee minor league systems.

This is more difficult than it would appear. Tacoma's online roster is not completely, um, completed.

The best I can tell is that Caesar Jimenez, Greg Halman, and Michael Saunders are there.

West Tennessee is would be best described as who on the team is not an ex-Rattler.

Only two of the 12 position players never played for Wisconsin. Half of the 12 pitchers are ex-Rattlers.

High Desert...I don't know...According to the roster, Ryan Feierabend is there...Marwin Vega is there...Here is the release, you can figure it out.

Clinton has Danny Carroll and Kalian Sams.

Also from the Mariner side of things (Welcome back to the internet, Mariners Minors!) comes this piece of bad news from one of the exhibition games in Albuquerque last weekend.

James McOwen, famous for last year’s hit streak, separated his right shoulder yesterday in an exhibition game after he ran into a wall. Funny thing about that, he’s already done it twice before. So, in essence, a player rewarded by the organization for his hard work by being brought along with the big club has gone and injured himself in a way that will likely put him out for the entire season. Ouch.

Ouch indeed.

Over on the Brewers side of the ledger:

No ex-Rattlers in Nashville...yet.

Huntsville has Jim Henderson, Alex Periard, Taylor Green, and Brett Lawrie.

Brevard County w/ a lot of former Rattlers: Mike Fiers, Ruben Flores ('06), Evan Frederickson, Corey Frerichs, Daniel Meadows, Dan Merklinger, Wily Peralta, Brandon Ritchie, Cody Scarpetta, Nick Tyson, Martin Maldonado, Brock Kjeldgaard, Juan Sanchez, Erik Komatsu, Erik Miller.

Scraps

Want a Football Coin? See the Huntsville Stars.

It may seem like a strange match, but the Huntsville Stars are offering Alabama - and Texas - fans a chance to buy an official coin of the Bowl Championship Series National Championship Game.

Buck Rogers, the general manager of the local minor league baseball team, is admittedly "not even a college football fan," but he didn't want to see local football fans miss out on this opportunity.

A short history of sports in Dubuque, Iowa

Gartner's plan represented the most realistic plan for the Midwest League to return to Dubuque since the Packers left dilapidated Petrakis Park following the 1976 season. Burlington Bees general manager Chuck Brockett called Gartner's plan "probably a once-in-a-lifetime deal."

New stadium for Nashville?

Mayor Karl Dean said his administration is talking with the Sounds' ownership, which recently finished its first season in control of the Triple-A baseball team. The preliminary talks have focused on the old Nashville Thermal Transfer Plant site, where the previous owners had a deal with the city that fell apart in the spring of 2007, before Dean was elected.

Dean, a big baseball fan and Massachusetts native whose heart lies with the Boston Red Sox, said he's eager to build a new ballpark.

"I think it's a huge opportunity for downtown," he said Friday.

"We make a commitment and we keep it."

That's from Frank Ward, on of the the new owners of the Nashville Sounds. Here is the story.

With 53 days left until opening day for Greer Stadium, construction crews are refurbishing and replacing seats, painting and working on accessibility issues, all part of a $1.5 million renovation to get the ballpark ready.

"We make a commitment and we keep it," said Frank Ward, one of the owners of the Nashville Sounds, the Milwaukee Brewers' triple-A minor league team.

The new owners — New York-based MFP Baseball — agreed to invest in improvements this year. Those include fixing bathrooms and others areas to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The building permit for work at the Chestnut Street stadium was issued earlier this month. On Friday, work crews stopped for Belmont University's practice. Roy Turner sat in the stands watching his son play in an intrasquad game under overcast skies. The paint on the facade is chipping, the ballpark signs are worn, and the 30-year-old stadium looks older than it is.

"It's definitely in need of repair," Turner said. "It's good that they are doing this. It's such a nice place to watch a ballgame."

The rest of the story

Ever wonder how a real estate guy from New York became interested in a then bought the Triple-A Affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers?

The Nashville City Paper reveals that part of the story as the sale of the Sounds as part of their top business stories in Music City during 2008.

Frank Ward and his partners at MFP Realty entered the Sounds picture after Mayor Karl Dean made it clear he was not interested in a new stadium for the club while Chicago-based Al Gordon was in charge. Visiting his daughter attending Vanderbilt, Ward became intrigued by Nashville as a whole and by the Sounds’ situation in particular. In late October, MFP announced it would buy the team. Six weeks later, the company agreed to terms with Dean on a new lease for Greer Stadium — and a clear track to the future.

The detail about visiting his daughter at Vanderbilt is actually in the original story. I just forgot...and I wanted to poorly imitate Paul Harvey today.

The Lease

Judging from the tone of this article, this Nashville Sounds news is good news...and a good start.

The proposed new owners of the Nashville Sounds already have done what Al Gordon and his charges could not — worked out a Greer Stadium lease extension with Mayor Karl Dean.

The five-year amended lease agreement hammered out by Dean and the proposed new ownership group MFP Real Estate was unanimously approved by Metro Council at a special meeting on Tuesday. The agreement passed without any debate, just as it passed three Council committees in the same manner.

Now the question is, how long until Dean and MFP start talking about a new ballpark?

The mayor has set up a scenario where, if MFP follows through on its commitments, the discussion could begin shortly thereafter.

“We’ve got a ways to go in the sense they still have to get approval from Major League, from the Pacific League, become the actual owners of the team,” Dean said. “[The new owners must also] do the work on the stadium that they said they were going to do, which I am confident they will do, restore the trust of the fans… and then that’s probably the right time to begin the discussions.

“I mean, I’m open to that. I think in the long run that’s probably something we need to do.”

Nashville is the Triple-A affiliate of the Brewers.

A pure kind of hate

How does that line from Ben-Hur go? Your eyes are full of hate, forty-one. That's good. Hate keeps a man alive. It gives him strength.*

Nashville Blotter has a reaction to this story about the new five-year lease for the Nashville Sounds to stay at and improve Geer Stadium. For some reason the words of Quintus Arias echoed to me.

Welcome Nashville Sounds to Greer Stadium for the next five years...

That's assuming your sale closes and the new owners take over...

If it's still the old owners, then get the hell out. You're trespassing...

That brings a tear to my eye.

*-Not the point of the movie or the book. I know.

I should hope so...

The title of this post is in reference to the headlines below.

Owners expect lasting presence

The Nashville Sounds are the city's oldest professional sports franchise, and the fans deserve the credit for loyally standing by their team through its 30-plus year history.

As the new owners of the team — pending league approval — my partners and I want to publicly state our commitment to building a lasting relationship with you.

I plan to be at the ballpark on a regular basis, to get to know as many of you as I can, and try to make the Sounds home stadium a place where fans feel comfortable and welcome. My partners, Steve Posner and Masahiro Honzawa, are similarly committed to the fans.

None of the three of us is from Nashville. Posner and I are from New York, and Masahiro originally hails from Japan. But my visits to Nashville, which began a couple of years ago when my daughter enrolled at Vanderbilt, have left me — and my partners — impressed with the friendliness of Nashvillians, the excitement of this city, and the bright future it no doubt has.

Read the rest of the letter from the new owner of the Triple-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers.

What sale of the Sounds means

Right now? That they are staying put.

Steve Posner remembers idolizing the minor-league baseball players he watched when he was a boy growing up in Buffalo, N.Y. Then he sold hot dogs and soft drinks at Shea and Yankee stadiums as a teenager in New York City.

Some 40 years later, Posner and two associates are poised to own the Nashville Sounds — and planning to give fans here a better experience at run-down Greer Stadium before setting their sights on a new ballpark. They said they had no intention of leaving Nashville.

"Until we convince the people of Nashville that we're serious and we want them back, we have to focus on Greer," Frank Ward, one of Posner's partners, said Thursday.

...

With approval from baseball authorities still 60 to 120 days away and a new season set to start in April, the prospective buyers said they will start negotiating soon with Metro Nashville to extend the Sounds' Greer Stadium lease, which expires Dec. 31.

Mayor Karl Dean, who lost faith in Gordon when the Sounds failed to complete a downtown stadium deal with the city last year, met with Honzawa, Posner and Ward on Thursday and came away feeling positive, he said in a statement.

"I was excited to hear that they have plans to invest in our city and our baseball team, and I'm pleased that they are willing to improve Greer Stadium and make it a facility that Sounds fans can enjoy," the mayor said. "I look forward to a long partnership with this group and to having baseball in Nashville next year."

The Sounds are the Triple A affiliates of the Milwaukee Brewers.

News from Nashville

There has been some tension between the current owners of the Nashville Sounds, the PCL Affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers, and the city of Nashville. But, that tension appears to be easing due to this:

Sounds suitors revealed

Big Apple group with prime real estate holdings said to be prepping for meeting with Mayor this week

Two Japanese brothers, fronted by two New York businessmen, are the suitors for the Nashville Sounds, according to NashvillePost.com sources.

Masahiro and Yukihiro Honzawa, along with New Yorkers Frank Ward and Steve Posner, make up the group looking to buy the Sounds. Ward apparently is employed full-time by the brothers, who operate the real estate group Hiro North American Properties.

Ward and Posner would put up between 5 and 10 percent of the money needed to purchase the team from current owner Al Gordon.

An update to the story mentions that Yukihiro Hanzawa died in August, but there was an announcement scheduled for this morning.

Follow the link in the excerpt below to find out about the tension:

The Sounds’ lease at Greer Stadium expires at the end of the year. Lease extension negotiations with Mayor Dean’s office reached an impasse last week.

But...I can't find anything on a very brief look for the announcement.