The Holyoke Giants will be one of only 14 teams in the New England
Collegiate Baseball League.

Dave Reid 2/21/04
HOLYOKE - The owner of the Holyoke Giants, a summer collegiate baseball team
that will play 21 home games at MacKenzie Field here, has begun meeting with
area businesses and potential team sponsors.
"We're coming," Connecticut businessman Calvin A. Moffie said Friday, during
the most recent of his numerous recent excursions here.
The Giants is only one of 14 teams in the New England Collegiate Baseball
League, a highly touted wooden-bat summer league that draws scouts from
Major League Baseball.
Last fall, Moffie and his family bought the former Middletown (Conn.) Giants
and, after scouring the region, decided to move the team to Holyoke.
Last week, Moffie said, he met with officials from the Tri-County Baseball
League, and with representatives from the Holyoke Gas & Electric Department
and the Paper City Brewery trying to build support.
"There's been a tremendous amount of cooperation with everyone we've met,"
he said.
Also last week, Moffie and Carolyn L. Porter, director of the Parks and
Recreation Department - which oversees activity at all city fields and parks
- walked MacKenzie Field with a local landscape architect whom Moffie hopes
will help design field and park improvements.
"There's a sizable amount of work that needs to be done," he said.
Porter said last week she is close to finalizing a formal contract with
Moffie for his team's use of MacKenzie Field.
That contract will spell out which improvements to the field - including new
dugouts, spectator areas, the pitcher's mound and infield - will be paid for
by the city and which by the team, or by both, Porter said.
Moffie said he will buy a new batting cage for the field and wants to
improve viewing areas, perhaps creating a landscaped area near home plate
for picnics or tailgating.
Local businesspeople and youth sports organizers, he said, have been
extremely responsive to the team's arrival and its schedule of 21 home games
from June 11-July 30.
"It's been unbelievable the amount of e-mails and phone calls," Moffie said.
"The amount of interest in the league has been tremendous."
Moffie hopes that interest picks up steam through the spring with a local
advertising and marketing effort headed by Ben Sosne and Patrick J.
Moynihan, both of Northampton. Moynihan is a native of Holyoke and Sosne of
Stockbridge.
Meanwhile, Moffie said he has hired a manager, Joel Southern, the assistant
baseball coach at Western New England College in Springfield. And most of
his team roster has been set, though a few openings remain, he said.
Last fall, former Boston Red Sox general manager Daniel Duquette joined the
fray, buying another Connecticut team, moving it to Hinsdale and dubbing it
the Berkshire Dukes.
Other league teams play out of Keene, N.H., Montpelier, Vt., Newport, R.I.,
Danbury, Conn., Lowell and North Adams. All the teams play 42 games, half of
them at home.
Moffie is the Giants' co-owner and general manager, and his brother Clinton
is team president.
Moffie said he is excited about the vision of drawing young and old baseball
fans to MacKenzie Field this summer for a good time and some great baseball.
"What we hope to have is 21 summer community events, and it just happens to
be about baseball," he said.