The proposed American West Baseball League (AWBL) has had some interesting developments in the past few days. First, commissioner Sean Smock has attempted to bring the league’s fourth team to the Bisbee-Douglas, Arizona. Here is a recap from the local newspaper in the area about the meeting and the constraints that any new pro team would be facing at the particular stadium:
The originally-intended footprint for the new league was to include Orange County (California), Fullerton (California), North County (San Diego, CA), and Yuma (Arizona). This could have been a geographically-feasible circuit as the travel costs would be mitigated. The current footprint is now:
- Fullerton Flyers
- Nogales (AZ) Desert Ghosts
- Las Cruces Sun Rays
- 4th team (Bisbee?)
The article cited above mentions that there was the Arizona-Mexico League which lasted roughly 3 weeks before folding in 2003. The footprint there included:
- Bisbee-Douglas Copper Kings
- Cananea Mineros
- Nogales Charros
- Tecate Cerveceros
- (alternate team was the Juarez Halcones)
There also was an intended Southwestern League in 2004 which was supposed to revive the 2003 Arizona-Mexico League teams which had potential plus add in some New Mexico teams including Las Cruces (intended to be the Las Cruces Dust Devils). Many of those cities ultimately joined the Pecos League in 2011: Las Crucues (started in 2010 in the Continental Baseball League), Roswell, Alamogordo + a few intended Pecos League teams in Clovis and Odessa Texas.
We will see if the new operators can overcome history in an area of the country where the nighttime heat and economics are not ideal for starting a new outdoor pro sports venture.
In addition to the Bisbee announcement, the AWBL’s parent company (Embark Holdings) announced that that Michael Cummings has stepped away from the company:
Today’s Embark website does not list the AWBL as a subsidiary (http://embarkholdings.com/subsidiaries_muscle.php); but the AWBL was listed as a subsidiary back on September 7, 2012 (archived by the Internet Wayback Machine):
Cummings is no longer on the AWBL website’s page listing its officers (http://www.americanwestbl.com/awbl-office/); but the September 10 Wayback archive had Cummings at the top of the officer’s page:
As more updates come in on all of this, including any announcement of the 4th AWBL team and an announced schedule, all will be posted on this site. At that time, the team websites and other pages (including the social media pages) will be posted on the reference pages of this website.
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