No Pro-Baseball Team Takers Yet
With a deadline looming, Can-Am League Commissioner Miles Wolff said there has been no deal made with a local ownership group to form a new professional baseball team in Worcester, but he said the league still wants one here.
"We're looking at all of our options," Wolff said. "We would hope if there was no way it would happen this year that we could make it happen next year."
Since the Worcester Tornadoes unraveled and were stripped of their league affiliation this summer under the ownership of Todd Breighner, who owed money to multiple creditors, the league has been talking to at least two potential ownership groups to form a new Can-Am team here.
One of those was headed by local businessman Henry Camosse Jr., but Camosse said he won't be able to submit an application to form a team for the 2013 season.
"It was a very short time frame to get an awful lot of pieces in place," said Camosse, owner of Camosse Masonry Supply Inc. of Worcester.
Daniel DiGiacomo, a businessman from Baltimore who described himself as a former lender to the Worcester Tornadoes, said today that he’s been attending league meetings and is actively pursuing a team. With just a few weeks before a plan must be established to form a team for the 2013 season, DiGiacomo said he’s about “85 percent” certain his team will form.
“I can say I’ve been in town in the last few weeks meeting with all the major sponsors and as many vendors as I can,” DiGiacomo said. He noted that he had no legal affiliation with the Worcester Tornadoes.
DiGiacomo would not say who he is working with on the potential investment.
Camosse said he will be prepared to submit an application for 2014 if a team hasn't formed before then. In the meantime, Wolff said the league is still in talks with Bob Weldon, an Oxford resident who has proposed forming a team called the Worcester Phoenix. And there is another ownership group the league is talking to, but Wolff, the commissioner declined to identify its members.
Weldon could not be reached for comment Wednesday morning.
At a league meeting earlier this month, Wolff said members expressed interest in keeping a presence in Worcester, so although a deal has not been reached, professional baseball is still viable here.
"We believe Worcester's a very good market. We think it can be very successful if we've got the right owner," Wolff said.
Image credit: freedigitalphotos.net
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