The Spirit Lives  |  Continued

opardo didn't get into the sports ownership business with the intention of bringing a baseball team to Lynn. He wasn't looking for a baseball team, and he wasn't necessarily looking at Lynn. His original plans were to own a minor-league hockey team, perhaps an American Hockey League affiliate of a National Hockey League organization. He quickly figured out that owning an affiliated team would not fit into the Nick Lopardo way of doing things.

"We looked at Springfield, Worcester, Lowell," Lopardo says of American Hockey League teams, "and found out really quickly you spend 3, 4, 5, 6 million bucks, maybe 8 million, versus the 300,000 that I bought this ballclub for. There, you buy a team, you own the uniforms. You don't own the concessions, you don't own the parking, you don't have a lease like I have here -- 20 years for a dollar a year. You start doing the math. If I'm going to take a shot, let's take the first shot here."

A chance meeting almost two years ago between Lopardo and Bob Wirz, who at the time was a co-owner of the Waterbury Spirit baseball team in the independent Northern League, led Lopardo to the baseball business. The Spirit weren't doing well, the owners wanted to sell, and they gave Lopardo enough of a deal to make it worth trying.

The team would play in the newly renamed Northeast League, which had originally begun in 1995 as a six-team league based entirely in New York State, merged for several years with the independent Northern League, then split away before this season as an eight-team league, with franchises as far-flung as Quebec and Bangor, and with three teams in Massachusetts: the Brockton Rox, the Berkshire Black Bears, and Lopardo's team. Fully independent -- that is, not affiliated with a major-league organization -- the Northeast League has sent three players to the big leagues -- pitchers Joey Eischen, Joe Grahe, and Joel Bennett -- and has nearly two dozen alumni playing in major-league organizations. The quality of play is equal to mid-tier minor-league baseball.

Lopardo and his partners looked at several sites in eastern New England for their team to call home, including Fall River and Manchester, New Hampshire, as well as Lynn. Lopardo had planned to build a new stadium, but the league could not wait.

The Northern League had given Lopardo until 2005 to start playing. But then the league expanded to include a franchise in Bangor, creating an odd number of teams, which is a schedule maker's nightmare. League officials asked the Spirit to begin play this season, accelerating the team's search for a home and leading it back to Lynn and dilapidated Fraser Field.

Lopardo told city officials last August that he intended to make the upgrades and vowed the money would come from his pocket. The result was a $2 million face lift and a virtual reconstruction of the park, restoring it to a 21st-century version of its former beauty -- with video scoreboard, synthetic turf infield, new press box, seats, dugouts, clubhouses, management offices, concession stands, restrooms, and high-tech infrastructure.

"The capital investment, to me, I consider that a contribution that I really made to some charitable cause that I might have been involved in anyway," says Lopardo, a major supporter of the Salvation Army, local youth programs, and the Landmark School in Beverly, for children with language-based learning disabilities.

His partner Melanson, a 22-year veteran of the State Police, worked as a bodyguard at State Street Global, including two years serving in that role for Lopardo, who didn't like the idea of having a bodyguard. "It went from a work relationship to a friendship," says Melanson, who describes his own stake in the club as a "very, very insignificant, small investment."

When Lopardo first announced his plans, many people -- local officials, league officials, and at least one of his coaches -- were skeptical about the possibility of success where others had failed.

Northeast League commissioner Miles Wolff was one of the skeptics who are in the process of being converted. "Lynn had failed in the league before, and you know the site is sort of sitting in the middle of that city block, so it's not a very visible site, and the parking, it's all those things," says Wolff, explaining his reluctance about the league's return to Lynn.

But after a recent visit to the upgraded Fraser Field, Wolff was pleasantly surprised. "I'm amazed," he says. "Everything is so much better -- the field, the concessions. It's so much more inviting."

Spirit first-base coach Jim Tgettis, a Lynn resident and baseball coach at Lynn Classical High, was also among the converts. "I had heard what others were going to do for Lynn in the past, and all I ever saw them do was take things," Tgettis says. "But when I really saw the sincerity of what we're going to do here, I found myself getting excited again about professional baseball here."

And so Lynn and the North Shore now have a team whose salary cap of $87,500, for the whole roster of 22 players, is less than a third of the major-league minimum for one player, $300,000. Yuri Sanchez, the shortstop, is a graduate of Lynn Tech and a product of the Detroit, Cincinnati, New York Mets, and Cleveland farm systems as well as two other independent teams. The catcher, Frank Charles, was recently released by the Red Sox Triple-A team in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The general manager, Ben Wittkowski, is just 26 years old but has several years' experience in baseball front offices.

The team finds its players through a preseason league tryout camp in Florida and its own preseason tryouts; it also employs a talent scout. In addition, there are 25 full-time employees (including Lopardo's son-in-law Peter Welch) and a pool of 200 part-time employees, not insignificant in a city that has been hard hit by a tough economy.

First baseman Fran Riordan, 27, joined the team after leaving the Richmond (Indiana) Roosters of the Frontier League because of the league's age restrictions. A three-time Frontier League all-star, he was a teammate of Morgan Burkhart's; Burkhart was with the Red Sox organization for two seasons.

"You don't play six or seven years of independent baseball without absolutely loving the game," Riordan says. "There are a lot of obstacles to overcome. Sometimes you live with a host family, which is OK if you're 20 or 21, just getting out of school. Or they put you in one of these horrible little apartments where you share two rooms with four guys.

"But here it's not like that," Riordan continues. "Everything is first class, top of the line. We're treated very well. Nick Lopardo is at the ballpark every day. Every day while you're taking batting practice, you see him helping to clean the stadium, doing anything that needs to be done around the stadium to make it better. He's hands-on in a good way. He's a very positive person."

Lopardo estimates that to break even this season, the team must draw 2,000 to 2,200 fans a night. So far, the Spirit is attracting only about 1,600 fans a game to Fraser, even though behind Kelly's undefeated pitching they won their division in the first half of the season, ensuring them a playoff berth.

Jonathan Fleisig, owner of the Berkshire Black Bears, the Spirit's Northeast League rival, also owned the Massachusetts Mad Dogs when they called Fraser Field home. He calls his time in Lynn bittersweet. "I lost money but made friends and learned a lot," he wrote recently in an e-mail from Russia. "City and people were great. The economy was tough, and I believe that I would have been successful if not for the structure being condemned."

He also believes in Lopardo's chances for success. "Only time will tell," Fleisig wrote. "But Nick is a winner. I wouldn't bet against him."

To those who would doubt his potential for success in Lynn, Lopardo offers a simple challenge: "Walk up the steps, take a look, and then you tell me what's different from the Sailors, the Mad Dogs, and the others that have tried to do it here before."

t is a Sunday afternoon, and it is raining again. Nick Lopardo is standing in the outfield, umbrella in his hand, and he is angry. The Spirit, who had to call off their home opener because of the weather, have their biggest advance sale since that night, more than 2,200 tickets sold, but Lopardo senses that he will have no choice but to call this one off, too. It will be the team's fifth postponement, and it's only mid-June.

"This is killing me," he says. "It's not so much the weather at game time that kills you. It's the damn weather forecasters during the week with their weather forecasts that make people plan to do something else because they think it's going to rain. It's killing me at the gate."

Lopardo, who is sponsoring a four-team women's baseball league at Fraser Field, has visions of building a hockey arena on the Lynnway, right on the water with spectacular views of downtown Boston, and attracting an independent-league team. He also is talking about a women's soccer team.

He was approached once about investing in the Red Sox but passed. "I talked to -- who's the guy who ran the ski thing, Les" -- Les Otten, a limited partner -- "the guy who took a back seat. I talked to Les. He talked about a $35 million share, with 10 people having shares. I'm sitting there. Why would I put $35 million in one place and be one of 10 minority owners? I can't be a one-10th minority owner. I don't work very well when I'm not really involved in making the policy decisions. I've had 35 years around business to know if I'm not running the show, I'm not interested in it."

Andy Seguin is the Spirit's ticket manager. What is it like to work for Lopardo, whose reputation for dressing down employees was legendary on State Street? "I'd work for him anytime, anyplace," he says. "He takes care of me. He takes care of all of us. But he wants perfection in an imperfect world. There are no rainouts in money management."

This story ran in the Boston Globe Magazine on 8/10/2003.
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