Alaska baseball begins without Goldpanners

For the first time since fielding a team in 1960, the Goldpanners -- the team that hosts the world-famous Midnight Sun game every summer solstice, the team that put Alaska baseball on the map with its string of championships at the National Baseball Congress World Series in Wichita, Kan., the team that lists almost 200 past and present major leaguers among its alumni -- won't play a full season.

The Goldpanners will not play in the league they founded and they will spend only three weeks of their four-week season in Alaska.

Financially hobbled by shrinking revenue, the loss of free housing for visiting teams and the offseason death of longtime team president and benefactor Bill Stroecker, the Goldpanners downsized their season to 19 home games, six road games in Alaska and five games in Canada.

The league, which fields teams made up of top college players from around the nation and boasts hundreds of past players in the majors, will make do with five teams -- the Anchorage Bucs, Anchorage Glacier Pilots, Peninsula Oilers, Mat-Su Miners and Athletes in Action Fire. Each will play 36 league games as well as a dozen or so non-league games.

"Obviously we'd like to have them playing this year," Bucs general manager Dennis Mattingly said of the Goldpanners. "It makes it difficult to cut down to five teams.

"We can understand their predicament. They just fell on some hard times up there. We all have. Years ago we took a year off when things didn't go our way, and basically things didn't go their way last year."

One of the immediate fallouts of the Goldpanners' decision to sit out the ABL season was the relocation of the AIA team.

The Fire, a team sponsored by the Campus Crusade for Christ International, have called Fairbanks home since joining the league in 2001. This year, they'll be based in Anchorage.

Though they have no home field -- while in Fairbanks, they shared Growden Memorial Park with the Goldpanners -- they will be designated as the home team for 18 games, even though those games will be played on their opponent's field.

"When we heard the news (about the Goldpanners) we immediately got ahold of (general manager) Chris Beck with AIA to see if this would affect both of the teams," said league president Jon Dyson, the general manager of the Pilots. "That opened up the idea of them coming down here. It's going to save them multiple trips down here, probably three trips, and it should save everybody a bunch of money."

Last year, the Pilots spent $15,000 on a single trip to Fairbanks, "which is a big chunk for a nonprofit organization," Dyson said.

"It'll save us all money not having to run to Fairbanks -- you're looking at meal money for six days for 30 guys and the cost of getting there," Mattingly said.

Between the relocation of AIA and the scaled-back operations of the Goldpanners, three of the league's teams -- the Pilots, Miners and Oilers -- don't travel to Fairbanks at all this summer. The Bucs will play a three-game series and the Fire will play a five-game series there.

Pinstripe sightings will be rare outside of Fairbanks. The Goldpanners will make one appearance in Anchorage for a three-game series with the Bucs and one appearance in Kenai for a two-day series with the Oilers, and that's it. No games against the Pilots, no games against the Miners, and by July 5, they're outta here and off to Canada.

"It's pretty simple, really," Goldpanners general manager Don Dennis told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. "We're taking a proactive approach in a pretty tight money market."

Dennis told the News-Miner the Goldpanners run on an annual budget of about $400,000, half of which typically comes from pull-tab sales. But sales have dropped in recent years and Dennis said he expects the team to make less than $100,000 in gaming proceeds this year.

Beyond that, the Goldpanners took a hit when the Olympic Village -- a collection of old Atco trailers that sat outside the third-base fence and long housed visiting teams -- became an untenable option.

"A few years ago they were out of electricity and hot water the first three days we were there," Dyson said.

With the trailers deemed unusable last summer, the Goldpanners had to find money to pay for teams to stay at UAF dormitories, because ABL rules require home teams to provide housing for visiting teams.

A final blow came during the offseason when Stroecker, the president of the team since 1962, died at age 90.

"We lost our safety net when Bill Stroecker passed," Dennis told the News-Miner. "Every time we came out of a season a little short financially, he would manufacture a way to get us to the next season."

Mattingly and Dyson both said their teams are surviving financially, but not easily. Escalating airfares make it more expensive to bring players, coaches and umpires to Alaska, and ABL teams compete with other non-profits for sponsorship money.

"We're not in the Panners' situation by no means. But we're not going to Wichita either," Mattingly said. "We're still hanging in there, but everybody's gotta watch their dollars. You can't throw 'em around like there's no tomorrow."

Ticket sales don't provide a significant percentage of team revenues because attendance in the league has always been somewhat sparse -- a Mulcahy Stadium crowd of 1,000 is a good one and sellouts rarely happen at any of the league's ballparks. When it comes to attracting baseball fans in Alaska, there is stiff competition from fishing and other outdoors opportunities.

"It's a tough time for everybody, but we have every intention of being around for awhile," Dyson said. "I hope people will realize this is great baseball and a great opportunity to see some of these up-and-coming guys that they'll see in the major leagues in a couple years."

Reach Beth Bragg at bbragg@adn.com or 257-4335.