Navigators shine Lynn diamond for debut

Collegiate league hopes to settle in

Philip Rosenfield is president and owner of the North Shore Navigators, who open their season Saturday in Lynn. (YOON S. BYUN/GLOBE STAFF)

LYNN - They've ordered dozens of baseballs, cases of soda, and boxes of sunflower seeds. The blue and white jerseys hang neatly in the clubhouse. The field is sparkling, with a new scoreboard and concession stands.

However, Philip Rosenfield, owner and general manager of the North Shore Navigators, and his staff aren't done. They still have to install patio furniture for the first-base-side grandstands, set up the pitching machine in the batting cage, pave the parking lot - and find a way to cover the bright North Shore Spirit logo woven into the artificial turf behind home plate, remnants of the defunct former tenants of Fraser Field.

"I'll be happy when we can finally sit back and watch baseball," says the Swampscott-born Rosenfield, who moved the franchise from Holyoke, where the team was called the Giants.

On Saturday night at 7, the Navigators will kick off their 2008 season in the New England Collegiate Baseball League, facing the defending champion Vermont Mountaineers.

Their debut marks a new era in Lynn's hardball history.

Professional baseball has left the city, perhaps never to return. The Lynn Red Sox, the Lynn Pirates, the Lynn Sailors, and Massachusetts Mad Dogs are long gone, never drawing well enough to sustain operations.

Last year, the Can-Am League Spirit folded after five seasons. Owner Nick Lopardo poured nearly $10 million into the club, including some $5 million in renovations for Fraser Field, but the same storyline - spotty attendance and a sinking bottom line - forced his hand.

The Navigators are different. The players are unpaid collegians - like much of the operations staff - who will stay with local families over the eight-week schedule. It hasn't produced the elite talent of its famed cousin, the Cape Cod League, the summer stomping grounds for dozens of future big-leaguers. The wood-bat New England league, founded in 1993, produced Minnesota closer Joe Nathan (then a Giants infield prospect) and Los Angeles outfielder Andre Ethier, but catching a foul ball will be much more likely than catching a rising superstar.

So to compete for summer attention - and more expensive versions of the game played in Boston, Pawtucket, and Nashua - Rosenfield plans to provide good, cheap fun.

There will be fireworks after certain games. There will be batting cages, with a pitching machine, for kids. There will be hot dogs and beer, promotions and giveaways, exhibitions pitting the Navigators against the US Olympic training team and the Dominican Republic national team.

The Navigators return just six players from last season's league semifinalist. The new additions include first baseman Kent Graham of Longmeadow, who recently won a NCAA Division 3 championship at Trinity, and 6-foot-5, 270-pound fireballer Wayde Kitchens, from Chapman University (Orange, Calif.), for whom the team had to order a custom-sized jersey. Former Malden Catholic hurler Mike DiCato of Winthrop is pitching.

Clark University head coach Jason Falcon will manage the team on the field.

Rosenfield won't meddle much in the on-field activity, leaving that to head coach Jason Falcon, also the skipper at Clark University. But he said he enjoys putting on a show. "The theater of baseball - that's the part that I like."

The team won't be a cash cow. Average attendance for the Giants was 548 in 2004, their first year in Holyoke, and Rosenfield said anything north of that would be a success.

"Forever," he said, when asked how long he'd like the team to remain at Fraser. "We're in a good place here. It's a fine ballpark, one of the best in the state."

Truth be told, the waters around here have sunk many larger ships. It's Rosenfield's hope that a smaller vessel will sail a longer distance.

Matt Porter can be reached at heymattporter@gmail.com.