Sports
Martinez Mackerel: City Council To Discuss Bringing Back Baseball
The team would play on Waterfront Park's Field 3, which was home to the Martinez Clippers for the 2018 Pacific Association season.
MARTINEZ, CA — The Martinez City Council on Wednesday is set to discuss an agreement to bring a new professional baseball team to that city, a year after the Martinez Clippers dissolved. The working name of the team is the Martinez Mackerel — singular, sort of like the Stanford Cardinal.
The aim at this point is to have a non-binding letter of intent to develop a professional baseball license agreement for the City Council to vote on at its Dec. 18 meeting. The end game is to have the team playing at Waterfront Park in time for the start of the 2020 season, which begins in late May.
The Mackerel would be in the Pecos League of Professional Baseball Clubs, an independent professional baseball league headquartered in Houston.
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In 2019, the league fielded 12 teams in cities in California, New Mexico, Arizona, southern Colorado, Kansas and West Texas.
In June, a Pecos League official told Martinez city staff he is interested in starting a new team in Martinez. The city's Baseball Ad Hoc Subcommittee met Oct. 9 and Nov. 7 to evaluate that possibility.
Find out what's happening in Martinezfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
At the Nov. 7 meeting, the subcommittee asked city staff to draw up the letter of intent, which will be discussed by the Council Wednesday. That draft letter does not contain a specific time frame for any prospective agreement.
The Mackerel would play on Waterfront Park's Field 3, which for the 2018 Pacific Association season was home to the Martinez Clippers. But that team dissolved after the end of the season, when the Clippers' operating agreement was terminated by the city due to non-payment of license fees by the team's owners, Jeff and Paulette Carpoff.
The couple had operated a Benicia-based company, DC Solar, which the FBI had raided after the end of the 2018 baseball season as part of an investigation into what was described as a "Ponzi scheme."
Wednesday's Martinez City Council meeting begins at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 525 Henrietta St.
RELATED COVERAGE:
- City Terminates Martinez Clippers License Agreement
- No Martinez Clippers Baseball This Year; City To Revisit Topic
— Bay City News Service