It will be the Frady Bunch in the Harbour City. And they won’t be Frady Cats.
A coach doesn’t win 557 college baseball games, most at the NCAA Div. 1 level, without knowing his way around a diamond. Nor do you take a nation such as Germany – with limited tradition in bat-and-ball sports, either cricket or baseball – to No. 17 in the world in the latter unless you know what you’re doing.
Greg Frady’s latest project is to build a West Coast League team from scratch as the first head coach of the Nanaimo NightOwls.
The addition of the WCL’s 13th franchise, beginning play next year, will create an Island derby as the NightOwls are expected to become the biggest rival for the Victoria HarbourCats.
The job of constructing the new team falls to Frady, who coached the Georgia State University Panthers for 13 seasons from 2007 to 2019 and the German national team for 11 years. He guided Georgia State to four Sun Belt conference tournament appearances and a conference championship and NCAA regional tournament appearance in 2009.
Germany, meanwhile, had a bit of background in baseball due to the American military presence after WW II but interest in the sport was only sporadic among the public.
“Germany had been relegated to the European B pool in 2003 and the program was in total disarray and I had a hard time picking 24 players for the national team,” said Frady.
He rebuilt the German national team between 2004 and 2015 and took it into the world top-20.
“If we got beaten up by Cuba one night, we would be ready for South Korea the next day. It is short-term memory.”
One of Frady’s German national team players, Max Kepler, now plays in MLB for the Minnesota Twins.
“I have a reputation as a program builder,” said Frady, a 57-year-old resident of Florida.
“Max [Kepler] did not have a great baseball environment but went onto the Twins.”
The NightOwls will play in city-owned Serauxmen Stadium, which was opened in 1976 by the late baseball great Mickey Mantle, and which recently underwent $1.1-million in upgrades.
“Everything is brand new, from the scoreboard to the lights, everything is a first,” said Frady.
“A completely new franchise has no pre-existing problems to fix or residue to clean up. I will draw on my experiences as I build the team. Hopefully, the players will learn things in Nanaimo to take back with them to their college teams and parlay that into pro careers.”
Five WCL alumni were selected in June’s pandemic-abbreviated five-round MLB draft. Former WCL players have been drafted in the first round in each of the past four years. Ninety alumni or then-current WCL players were selected in the 2019 MLB draft and 73 in 2018.
The NightOwls’ alternate jersey will feature a Nanaimo Bar, the world-famous confection invented in the city. The Harbour City club will enter the WCL in the 2021 season, joining the HarbourCats and Kelowna Falcons as the Canadian franchises in the league. The other 11 clubs are in Washington state and Oregon.
The WCL is a collegiate league featuring players in summer ball from top NCAA Div. 1 conferences, such as the Pac-12.
The HarbourCats had played in the WCL for seven seasons before the 2020 season was cancelled due to COVID-19.
“2020 has been a nightmare,” said Frady.
“2021 will be a better year because it can only get better.”
But Frady knows he needs to be ready in the unlikely event the Canada-U.S. border is still closed next summer and Nanaimo, Victoria and Kelowna have to play a “country-locked schedule.” The NightOwls will need a larger array of Canadian players in that case, he noted.
“We don’t yet even know what the 2021 NCAA schedule will look like and if it may extend into summer a bit [limiting the number of players available for the WCL],” Frady added.
“I have my hand on the pulse of the baseball community [across the continent] and will make sure we are not caught by surprise.”
The Nanaimo team is owned by the same company that owns the Harbour-Cats, which includes brothers Jim Swanson and Ken Swanson, Victoria businessman John Wilson and Richard Harder of Vancouver. Dual ownership of teams by a single person or company is allowed in the WCL. The Yakima Valley Pippins and Walla Walla Sweets are both majority owned by John Stanton, majority owner of the MLB Seattle Mariners.
“We expect an intense rivalry against Victoria,” said Frady.
“We will be competitive and very well prepared fundamentally and be a very respectful team with a professional attitude.”