Housing at issue, Muskrats baseball team won't return for 2023

LACONIA — The Winnipesaukee Muskrats, the Lakes Region team in the New England Collegiate Baseball League since 2009, are no more, after the team’s operating plan was rejected by the league’s governing board at its annual meeting in November. At issue was the team’s strategy to house players, which differed from the league’s vision of hosting players in the homes of local families.

The team, originally known as the Laconia Muskrats, has long had a struggle with finding housing for its players, elite college athletes who play for an NECBL team during their summer break as a way to attract attention from Major League Baseball scouts.

“The league has a rule that every player has to be housed with a host family,” said Mike Smith, president of the team, which is organized as a nonprofit organization. Scott Everett, known locally for his real estate development projects, is chair of the team. Smith and Everett, along with Peter Erklauer, are the team’s shareholders. The current leadership has been in place since 2018.

Smith said the growing pressure from short-term rentals on local real estate has affected the team's ability to find families willing to offer housing, especially since the players' needs coincide with the height of the summer tourism season.

“What happens in the Lakes Region is that everyone that has a spare room or in-law apartment, they throw it on AirBnB,” Smith said. “The way we’ve dealt with those problems in the past is we’ve used one of Scott’s houses.” He said that Everett, who owns many residential properties in the city, made available a home large enough for players, and for a few coaches, to stay in during the season.

Such exceptions to the league’s rule have been allowed in the past, conceded Sean McGrath, commissioner of the NECBL. But this fall, when the Muskrats presented their operating plan to the league for review, the governing board voted against the housing strategy that McGrath described as a situation similar to an “off-campus college apartment.”

Whenever a team experiences a leadership change — the Muskrats bid farewell to their general manager, Carrie Hough, at the conclusion of the 2022 season — the league takes a hard look at that team’s operational plan, McGrath said. While he didn’t want to share details of the board discussion, he conceded that housing was a significant area of concern.

“When we discussed his transition plan, we asked him to address those concerns, address those questions, and come forward with a new plan or a revised plan, and he wasn’t going to be in a position to meet those requests,” McGrath said. “We were interested in hearing how the organization would continue with new leadership. The board listened and reviewed his proposal, and it wasn’t going to meet the standards that we were looking for.”

Broadly speaking, the board wants to know how a team organization plans to engage with the local community, maintain fiscal solvency, and field a competitive team, according to McGrath.

Smith said he and his partners had “improved the team on every metric,” and gave local fans the chance to watch several players that went on to professional careers, such as Walker Buehler, a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers who was named an All-Star in 2019 and 2021, and helped his team win the World Series in 2020.

“The level [of talent] up there was ridiculous. Our closer was throwing 97 miles per hour,” Smith said. “We love the team, we were getting traction, the thing was really becoming a viable entity.”

There were two metrics, though where the Muskrats were notably behind league norms. The first was attendance, which was at or near the bottom of the league. However, as McGrath noted, NECBL doesn’t take attendance into consideration except as a part of a team’s fiscal solvency. Many teams build their financial plan without a need for ticket sales, relying instead on donations and sponsorships, and the Muskrats were never at risk of insolvency.

That left housing as the other metric where the Muskrats missed the mark. Smith said the problem of housing persisted despite efforts to correct it.

“It is what it is. We went through everything we could think of to get host families. We tried stipends, we tried radio ads, everything. It’s just one of those realities that you run into,” Smith said.

McGrath said the league is always willing to consider new proposals, such as from Smith and his leadership team to try running a team in a new area, or from a different management team who wants to build their own operating plan for Laconia. Even if either scenario were to take place, it’s too late for 2023.

Smith said the motivation for him and his partners was to provide a summer baseball team for the Laconia area, and that he wasn’t inclined to move the team elsewhere.

“Laconia, or the Lakes Region, is an interesting place. Housing is very difficult in the summer, the amount of money people can make with their extra rooms, it isn’t worth it to take players in,” Smith said. “We’ve just been processing things, letting it sit for a bit to let the league reconsider.”

McGrath said the league wanted to, and planned to, have a team in Laconia going forward, but that the board couldn’t approve of a plan that didn’t utilize host families as the primary housing strategy.

“When a transition of leadership takes place, it’s up to us to do our due diligence,” McGrath said. “His plan was not accepted by the board.”

McGrath noted that “thousands of players,” including many who later appeared on Major League rosters, spent time in the Lakes Region because of the Muskrats, and he expressed gratitude for those who made that possible.

“On behalf of the NECBL, we’d like to thank every host family, volunteer, bat boy and bat girl, sponsor that supported this organization over the years. It does take a village to support these nonprofit organizations in the NECBL,” McGrath said.

Smith was similarly grateful, and said that the housing situation notwithstanding, the team enjoyed robust support, particularly from the city. “We couldn’t have asked for more support from Parks and Rec, [Director] Amy [Lovisek] and the whole crew made sure that field was in shape for elite college players. ... It was a tough place to survive as a team, but we’re very thankful to the city for everything that they allowed us to do.”

Mayor Andrew Hosmer said he was “disappointed” to learn that the city would be losing its Muskrats.

“My family and I have hosted these college athletes several times through the years and it was a tremendous experience, we’ve met some fine young people,” Hosmer said. “Watching wooden bat, high-quality baseball during the summer months adds to the appeal of vacationing here in the Lakes Region.”