ABL votes to deny Goldpanners option to return to league in 2018

PALMER — Late in the 2015 season, the Mat-Su Miners used a three-game sweep of the Alaska Goldpanners to clinch the Alaska Baseball League National Division title. That was the last time the Miners faced the Fairbanks-based organization and charter member of the historic ABL, and Mat-Su will not be seeing the Panners any time soon.

The Goldpanners, who debuted in 1974, opted to leave the ABL following the 2015 season to play as an independent summer collegiate amateur baseball team. The ABL Board of Directors recently voted not to give the Panners the option to return for the 2018 season.

Mat-Su Miners general manager Pete Christopher said representatives of the league’s five existing teams — the Palmer-based Miners, Chugiak-Eagle River Chinooks, Anchorage Bucs, Anchorage Glacier Pilots and the Kenai-based Peninsula Oilers — voted unanimously to deny the Fairbanks team the option of returning to the league next summer. Christopher cited economics as the primary reason to say no to the Goldpanners.

“It’s too expensive,” Christopher said. “Plus the fact we’re not sure (the Goldpanners) are totally committed to the league. It wasn’t a good fit.”

Christopher said a five-team league isn’t ideal, but what the ABL has done since the Panners’ departure is working. League teams play at least 40 games, early June through July, with a weeklong postseason during the first week of August.

In the current economy, Christopher said, adding the expense of travel to Fairbanks is not feasible for the teams remaining in the league. Currently four of the league’s five teams reside within about an hour of travel.

“That’s nice, but it’s tough on the Oilers,” Christopher said, also noting that the Peninsula team has solid financial support.

Christopher also said, if the ABL adds a sixth team, the league would have to pay for a third crew of umpires, which would add another expense. Currently, with only five teams, there is only need for a maximum of two crews for league games per night of the season.

Economics also played a role in the original decision for the Panners and ABL to part ways prior to the 2016 season. In the past, the ABL had a tighter connection with the National Baseball Congress World Series, held annually in Wichita, Kansas. The World Series had great notoriety in amateur baseball, and teams from across the ABL earned multiple NBC titles over the span of decades. Within the past decade, most ABL programs decided to no longer send teams to Wichita in August, because of the overall expense. Instead, the ABL created its own postseason, with a championship set now called the ABL Top of the World Series.

The Goldpanners wanted to continue to make the trip to Wichita. Once the ABL postseason schedule conflicted with the NBC World Series schedule, leadership within the Fairbanks program opted for independent status.

In other league news, the ABL named Anchorage resident Jim Posey the commissioner of the famed league. For more on Posey and the league’s call to add a commissioner, see an upcoming edition of the Frontiersman.

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com