The Northern League is in trouble. Big trouble. Trouble like that's your spouse banging on the hotel room door and the person beside you in the bed is younger and better looking. You know, call your lawyer and banker at the same time kind of trouble. The worst.
But don't take it from us. There's a better source available. Perhaps the best situated opinion in the league and it belongs to Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks manager Doug Simunic.
Colourful and opinionated, Fargo manager Doug Simunic let it all hang out prior to Thursday night's exhibition game vs. the Goldeyes at Canwest Park.
The RedHawks were in Winnipeg Thursday night for a pre-season game with the Goldeyes and took a 2-1 win before a handful of bundled up folks at Canwest Park. But the preamble was plenty warm as Simunic got his blood and rhetoric up to a dangerous temperature.
"The Northern League can't go on with six teams. Absolutely not. From my standpoint, for Doug Simunic, I'll have to go look somewhere else," said the RedHawks skipper after telling a reporter to find something to scribble on and then chuckling when a tape recorder came out of a pocket.
"My big thing is this. Why don't we talk about change and how we can make things different. The first thing I would do is open up dialogue with the teams that left us. Finding a way to play 18 to 24 games of interleague play. But the problem is we don't have any lines of communication with them. Why? Animosity. We're waiting for them to close shop and they're waiting for us to close shop. Who needs who more?"
It's one thing for a newspaper blowhard to rail about the inadequacies of a league that has shrunk from 12 teams to six in just three seasons but another altogether for it to come from a man that has made his living in this loop since it came back to life in 1993. Along the road, Simunic has won more games and more championships than any other manager in this league and spoke his mind on almost any subject with nary a filter.
This is a voice that matters and should be heard.
Goldeyes starter Brandon Kintzler and the rest of the Fish staff limited the RedHawks to two runs.
"Having Sam (Katz) be mayor and not as involved in the day-to-day operations of the league is a tremendous factor in what we're talking about. Let me put it to you this way. Back in the day when I worked for Sam Katz, when there was an issue that I didn't like or he didn't like or we didn't like, it was nothing for Sam to be on the phone with the then-commissioner and getting something resolved or having it put on the table for the next time they had a meeting," said Simunic, pushing himself up onto a concrete shelf and settling into his monologue. "This is the problem that we have in the Northern League today and that's that we don't have anyone who can pick up the phone and call an owner from the American Association and create some dialogue and talk about what we can do to be better in the future. That's all gone because of arrogance, hatred for one another and because someone despises someone else. They're (owners) letting it run rampant among themselves and it's almost as if they're waiting one another out."
Simunic managed the Goldeyes for two seasons, winning a Northern League title for Winnipeg in 1994.
He parted ways with the club in acrimonious fashion and has taken his shots at the organization over the years. But there's no question he believes the Goldeyes are key to the future of the six remaining teams that make up the Northern League.
"Sam is the only guy that I think the Northern League has right now that I would trust to send to the table to broker this thing and get it done. Sam Katz could do it," says Simunic.
The American Association began play in 2006 after four clubs left the Northern League due to squabbling in the boardroom. Three seasons after the split and the AA appears to be winning the war with 10 clubs while the NL has fallen to just six teams. Simunic believes a peace must be brokered for both leagues to find a prosperous future.
"I don't think it will take all of their owners sitting at a table with all of our owners. That's going to create nothing but a cluster of people arguing and that won't solve anything," professed Simunic. "I think you need to take two level heads from our side and two level heads from their side. If there are four level heads, get them to sit down and hash things out knowing that the rest of the owners from both sides are going to go along with what they come up with."
Simunic says his feelings are shared on the field in both leagues. It's upstairs where things get nasty.
"I think this should matter to Sam Katz to fill these seats up. It should matter to (Fargo owner) Bruce Thom to put a good product on the field," said Simunic. "There are owners who don't care who wears their uniforms so long as there is a product on the field. If there is a disparity in the product on the field, sooner or later the fans will see it. The Northern League used to call itself the pre-eminent independent league. It's fourth at best.
"The Northern League is redundant now. I play Winnipeg 26 times. It doesn't get any more redundant than that. There are some people that aren't qualified to make these decisions. Certain of the six (owners) aren't capable of this. It's a crying shame. Money-making has taken precedence over what the baseball people want to do. Like I've been told before, if you take all the baseball people from both leagues, they want to play each other. The owners come into conflict in a boardroom. Not in the stands. Because I never see them in the stands."
gary.lawless@freepress.mb.ca
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