So long BayBears; hello Shucker Cousins?
A month after the Mobile BayBears played their last game at Hank Aaron Stadium — before being reinvented as the Rocket City Trash Pandas in Huntsville next season — a part owner with the Biloxi Shuckers minor league team is promising a new baseball team for Mobile by 2021.
Timothy Bennett, president of Overtime Sports in Biloxi, has approached the City of Mobile about bringing in a new team.
“We lost a team in Mobile, but we still have a stadium that’s attached to one of the greatest names in all of baseball,” Bennett is quoted in Lagniappe, a weekly newspaper in Mobile. “How fortunate are we that Hank Aaron grew up in Mobile? There has to be a professional minor league team there in order for the stadium to stay and the best way to make sure we do not lose Hank Aaron Stadium is to fulfill that obligation.”
Bennett already has rights to bring in a new team as early as 2021, Lagniappe reports. Though Bennett hasn’t filled in details, the paper adds, he says he is building an ownership group including athletes, some of them from Alabama.
Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson, speaking to Fox10 TV through aide George Talbot, says: “We have met with the ownership group and the initial conversations have been positive. We look forward to seeing more details about their proposal.”
Bennett is one of a handful of minority owners in professional baseball, according to Biloxi’s Sun-Herald, instrumental in bringing the Brewers minor league team to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Ironically, the Biloxi Shuckers were formerly the Huntsville Stars.
