Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball

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This article is about the modern Can-Am League. For the original Can-Am League, which operated between 1936 and 1951, see Canadian-American League.
Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball
Canadian-American Association.png
CanAm League logo
Sport Baseball
Founded 2004
No. of teams 6
Country(ies)  United States
 Canada
Most recent champion(s) Quebec Capitales
Most championships New Jersey Jackals (4)
Official website www.canamleague.com

The Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball, based in Durham, North Carolina, is a professional, independent baseball league located in the Northeastern United States and the Canadian province of Quebec. It operates in cities not served by Major or Minor League Baseball teams and is not affiliated with either. The level of play is comparable to that in Class AA leagues.

The Association is usually referred to as the Can-Am League. This was also the name of the Canadian-American League, which operated between 1936 and 1951.

Contents

[edit] Policies and practices

[edit] Policies

The Can-Am League is a relatively short-season, low-budget league. Several league policies serve to prevent dominance by owners who can out-spend their opposition:

A league salary cap is a maximum amount that can be spent on the entire player roster. Teams may apportion it among players as they see fit. Certain players are given coaching duties, by which to earn additional pay. The typical Can-Am player does not earn enough to live on even during the season, and teams solicit "host families." A host family provides room and board for the player it accepts.

Rosters are limited to 22 players once the regular season begins. An additional two players can be on the disabled list (which is referred to on some published rosters as the disabled/inactive list, and is sometimes used to ensure that a player under contract that a team does not wish to use is unavailable to opponents).

League roster rules give each player an LS (Length of Service) rating, based on the number of full years the player has played professionally: Rookie, LS-1 through LS-5, and Veteran. Teams can carry at most four veterans and must carry at least five rookies. Some published rosters state the LS rating of each player.

Source: Can-Am League Roster Rules

[edit] Scheduling

The Can-Am League has played regular seasons of between 92 and 96 games. In years when one of the teams is a league-operated traveling team, the franchises play an increased number of home games to keep the total length of the regular season constant. All games a franchise plays against the traveling team are played at the franchise's ballpark. However, half of those games are designated "home games" for the traveling team, which takes the field first and bats last as though the game were played at the traveling team's "home."

From 2007-2009, the schedule has not been perfectly balanced, either in the number of times a team will play each of its opponents, nor in the division of home and away games for a given team.

Opponents play a series of from three to five games on consecutive days. There are no doubleheaders in the original schedule, but doubleheaders are played after weather cancels or suspends a game. Occasionally, for the nearby franchises in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the original schedule does not put all the games of a series at the same ballpark. For example, the teams may travel to the visitor's ballpark for the middle game of a series.

[edit] Teams

[edit] Current teams

Team Founded City Stadium Capacity
American Defenders of New Hampshire 1998 * Nashua, New Hampshire Holman Stadium 4,375
Brockton Rox 2002 Brockton, Massachusetts Campanelli Stadium 4,750
New Jersey Jackals 1998 Little Falls, New Jersey Yogi Berra Stadium 3,748
Quebec Capitales 1999 Quebec City, Quebec Stade Municipal 4,800
Sussex Skyhawks 2006 Augusta, New Jersey Skylands Park 4,300
Worcester Tornadoes 2005 Worcester, Massachusetts Hanover Insurance Park at Fitton Field 3,000

* Entered the Can-Am League later.

Former Can-Am League Franchises

[edit] Standings

[edit] 2009 Final Standings (full-season)

Team W L Win % GB
Brockton Rox 56 37 .602 0
♣New Jersey Jackals 55 39 .585 1.5
♦Quebec Capitales 53 41 .564 3.5
Worcester Tornadoes 43 50 .462 13
Sussex Skyhawks 38 56 .404 18.5
American Defenders of New Hampshire 36 58 .383 20.5

♣ Won first half of season
♦ Won second half of season
¶ Won wildcard playoff berth

Source: Can-Am League Standings

[edit] History

The Canadian-American Association was created when the Northeast League was renamed in 2005. The Northeast League was formed in 1995; it merged with the Northern League in 1998, but the two leagues separated after the 2002 season. During that merger, the two leagues competed in an All-Star Game, and held a championship series in some years, but there was no inter-league play in the regular season.

[edit] New charter in 2005

The Allentown Ambassadors had folded days before the 2004 season began, forcing the Northeast League to field a traveling team called the Aces. For the 2005 season, the Northeast League accepted the Worcester Tornadoes as a new eighth team. However, three weeks before the start of the 2005 season, the Bangor (Maine) Lumberjacks folded, forcing the team to create another traveling team, this time called The Grays.

The league has operated a traveling team whenever necessary to provide an even number of teams. However, doing so forces the other franchises to host more home games to provide a season of the same length. To obviate such disruptive last-minute schedule changes in the future, the Northeast League adopted a new charter, giving the league new powers to ensure that its franchises are solvent, and renamed itself the Canadian-American Association.

[edit] Subsequent changes

For 2006, the Can-Am League added two teams. The new Sussex Skyhawks replaced the Elmira Pioneers, which moved into the amateur New York Collegiate Baseball League; and the Nashua Pride joined the league from the Atlantic League. There were now eight teams without a traveling team.

The current playoff format was adopted in 2006. Playoff spots go to the winner of the first half, the winner of the second half, and the two remaining teams with the best winning percentage (for the full season). If the same team wins both halves, the three other teams with the best winning percentages enter the playoffs. Previously, the league had North and South Divisions; the playoff teams were the winners of each division in each half-season, with wild-card teams (based on record) added if necessary to equal four.

For 2007, the Atlantic City Surf joined from the Atlantic League, and the league re-established The Grays, after a year of dormancy, as a tenth team. At the end of that season, both the New Haven County Cutters and the North Shore Spirit suspended operations, reducing the league to eight teams. Many New Haven player contracts were sold to Nashua, while many Spirit players were placed on waivers.

For 2008, Ottawa, which had lost its franchise in the International League, joined the Can-Am League as the Rapidz, an eighth franchise, displacing the Grays.

[edit] Future plans

After the 2008 season, Rapids management declared bankruptcy. The league declared its intention to operate the Ottawa franchise in 2009. The league changed the team's name back to Rapids, a spelling used during the team's founding (Rapides in French).[1] Later, however, the Commissioner stated the need for a "fresh start" and opened a contest to select a new name for the team.[2] The winning name was "Voyageurs", as seen above.

Still later, the Atlantic City franchise was terminated, as a sale fell through. On March 30, 2009, the league announced that it would shrink to six teams rather than having two league-operated teams.[3]

The Nashua Pride franchise was sold and will be known in 2009 as the American Defenders of New Hampshire because of the military tie-ins of its new ownership group. During the 2009 season the Defenders were locked out of Holman Stadium and forced to played their last home games on the road bringing doubt to the future of baseball in Nashua, NH.

Despite the reduction of teams to six the playoff system will remain the same. The 2009 Can-Am League playoffs are scheduled to begin on September 9, 2009 with game one between the first half champion (in this case, the New Jersey Jackals) and the #4 qualifier, with the #3 qualifier hosting the #2 qualifier. As in past years, the playoff series will consist of the first two games played at the lower seed with the higher seed hosting the third game and the fourth and fifth should those be necessary and all games will be played on consecutive days with a scheduled off day on September 14. The Can-Am League Championship Series is slated to begin on September 15, 2009, with game one at the lowest remaining seed, with the latest possible series end date to be September 19, 2009. [4]

[edit] Champions

Champions of the Northeast League, 1995-98

Champions of the Northern League

Champions of the Northeast League, 2003-

Champions of the Can-Am League

[edit] References

  1. ^ Campbell, Don (November 14, 2008). "Ottawa's Can-Am 'run' not over yet". The Ottawa Citizen. http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/sports/story.html?id=53e64b99-9061-49e8-8f04-be70c333ff45. Retrieved November 14, 2008. 
  2. ^ "Can-Am team in need of name". The Ottawa Citizen. November 14, 2008. http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/sports/story.html?id=53e64b99-9061-49e8-8f04-be70c333ff45. Retrieved January 28, 2008. 
  3. ^ "Can-Am to Go with Six Clubs in 2009". Can-Am League. 2009-03-30. http://www.canamleague.com/cgi-bin/dist/news.cgi?id=1238444712. Retrieved 2009-04-19. 
  4. ^ http://canamleague.com/schedule/playoffs.php

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_American_Association_of_Professional_Baseball"
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