How It All Began

The History Of The Goldeyes

The present-day Winnipeg Goldeyes are members of the eight-team Northern League, an independent circuit that was resurrected in 1993 by Baseball America founder and one-time Durham Bulls owner Miles Wolff. Having started out with member clubs in one province and three states, the league enters its fourteenth season with teams in two provinces and four states.

Six teams (Duluth-Superior (MN), Rochester (MN), Sioux City (IA), Sioux Falls (SD), Thunder Bay (ON) and St. Paul (MN)) took the field for the league's inaugural season, a number that swelled to eight in 1996 with the granting of franchises to Fargo (ND) and Madison (WI) and then 16 to start the 1999 campaign when the Northern League merged with the eight-team independent Northeast League.

Following the 2002 season, league owners voted to split up what had become an 18-team circuit, as the eight clubs in the Eastern Conference returned to what had been the Northeast League while the 10 Central Conference clubs would maintain the Northern League name.

Winnipeg kept its place in the North Division and was joined by St. Paul, Gary (IN) and Joliet and Schaumburg, two Illinois cities just outside of Chicago. In the South, Fargo-Moorhead was grouped with Sioux Falls, Sioux City, Lincoln (NE) and the Kansas City T-Bones, which relocated to Kansas from Duluth-Superior.

The 10 teams welcomed two new clubs in 2005 with the arrival of the Calgary Vipers and Edmonton Cracker-Cats as league membership grew to a dozen. But that lasted for all of one summer when, less than two weeks after the season ended, Lincoln, St. Paul and Sioux Falls announced they were leaving. Days later, they were joined by Sioux City in starting up the rival American Association.

After the dust settled, the Northern League was left with eight teams, its lowest number since the 1998 season. Winnipeg returned to the West Division and was joined by Calgary,
Edmonton and Fargo-Moorhead while the defending champs from Gary were joined in the
East by Joliet, Kansas City and Schaumburg.

Professional baseball returned to Winnipeg in 1994 when the Northern League welcomed the Goldeyes, filling a void created when the Rochester Aces folded. The city had been home to baseball on-and-off since 1902 and had last hosted it in 1970, when the Whips were the chief affiliate of the Montreal Expos, and were most recently in the Northern League in 1969 as a member of the Kansas City Royals minor league system.

The modern-day Goldeyes were league champs in their inaugural season, drawing more
than 212,000 fans (avg. 5,314 per game) to Winnipeg Stadium, a facility far more suited to football than baseball. It would be the first of 10 straight post-season appearances for
the Fish, a feat unmatched by any other team in the league.

Following five successful years at Winnipeg Stadium, where they averaged more than
4,000 fans per game, the Goldeyes moved into state-of-the art Canwest Park
to start the 1999 season. Located downtown near the confluence of the Red &
Assiniboine Rivers, the 6,140 seat facility was a hit, as almost 300,000 fans packed
the park to see the Goldeyes reach their fourth Northern League final. For the year, the
Goldeyes averaged 6,048 fans per game, representing 98.5 per cent of capacity.

As good as 1999 was, 2000 was
even better. In selling out 34 of 42
home dates, the Goldeyes led the
league in regular season
attendance by drawing 271,513
fans to the ballpark. When added to
their pre-season and playoff totals,
that number again approached
300,000 for the year. As well, their
per-game-average of 6,465 during
the regular season established a
new league record and was the top
average attendance of all 50 teams
in independent baseball.

The 2001 season was a success
in every sense of the word for the
Goldeyes. Not only did they reach
the playoffs for the eighth time in
their eight-year history, they broke
the league average attendance
record they set the previous year and added the league total attendance record to
their collection en route to a berth in the Northern League Championship Series.

During the regular season, of which 35 of 45 home dates were sellouts, the
Goldeyes welcomed a record 292,095 fans to Canwest Park, an
independent baseball-leading average of 6,491 per game. When added to the
fans who came to see Winnipeg's three exhibition and seven playoff games,
attendance on the year grew even larger. And when the most successful all-star
game in league history is factored in, when 5,011 fans turned out for the July 30
skills competition and a ballpark-record crowd of 6,942 came out on July 31 for
the game itself, a total of 362,848 people turned out to see Northern League
baseball at Canwest Park in 2001.

A year later, while in their fourth
season at Canwest Park
and ninth overall in the Northern
League, the Goldeyes continued
to draw fans in record numbers.
The 303,786 who turned out to see
Winnipeg qualify for the playoffs
in 2002 for the ninth straight year
eclipsed the 300,000 mark in
regular season attendance for the
first time in league history.

While setting that record, which saw the club lead the league in attendance for
the third straight year, Winnipeg's average attendance of 6,200 was the
second-highest among all 58 teams in the six independent leagues and was
also higher than 13 of the 30 teams playing AAA baseball.

Along the way, the Goldeyes welcomed the one-millionth fan to a regular
season game at their downtown home, doing so on August 8 when Rory
Newton came to see the defending Central Conference champs take on
the Joliet JackHammers in the first game of a four-game set.

As well, single-game attendance topped 7,000 on no fewer than three
occasions, reaching a new high on September 19 when 7,056 watched the
Goldeyes host New Jersey in game two of the Northern League
Championship Series.

When Canwest Park underwent a facelift following the 2002 season,
it was to be bigger and better when the Goldeyes opened their 10th
Northern League season the following May against the St. Paul Saints.

Well, with the addition of more than 1,200 seats, six skysuites, six
concessions, a mother's lounge, a patio deck, a grass berm and a full-
service restaurant, it was definitely bigger. And, as fans discovered over
the course of the 2003 season, it was definitely better.

Those fans, whose numbers would exceed 300,000 by season's end
once more, had to wait initially to see their team in its new-and-improved
home. But the wait was definitely worth it, as the Goldeyes reached the
playoffs for an unprecedented tenth time in 10 years, advancing to the Northern League Championship Series for the seventh time.

In becoming the inaugural winner of the Northern League's Organization of the Year award, the Goldeyes welcomed a league- best 300,760 fans to Canwest Park during the regular
season, putting them among the leaders in all of minor league baseball. They also averaged a league-record 7,161 per night, becoming the first independent team ever to average more than
7,000 fans per game.

The fact that their Goldeyes missed the playoffs for the first time in franchise history may cause some fans to want to forget the 2004 season, but so much happened that it was still very much a season to remember.

As an organization, the Goldeyes welcomed 323,241 fans to Canwest Park to break their own league record. As well, their average crowd of 7,027 surpassed 7,000 for the second straight year. The only NL franchise to draw more than 300,000 fans a season, the Goldeyes are also the only independent league club to average more than 7,000 fans per game.

As individals, several players had seasons to remember, from all-star appearances to setting personal and franchise bests. And it wasn't just players who had reason to be proud, for general manager Andrew Collier was honoured as the Northern League Executive of the Year for the second time in three years.

He first won the award in 2002, the same year pitchers George Sherrill and Bobby Madritsch were teammates on the Goldeyes. Just two years later, Sherrill and Madritsch became the fourth and fifth former Goldeyes, respectively, to play in the Majors when the pair were called up to the Seattle Mariners in July.

With hopes of returning to the playoffs after a one-year absence, the Goldeyes were all business in 2005, posting their best-ever exhibition record. But upon hitting the road to open the year, they hit the wall, dropping six of seven games. They looked good at times during the year, but never really looked like they did in the pre-season, posting the worst-ever record in franchise history while missing the playoffs for the second year in a row.

Their fans, though, showed that wins and losses meant very little. Winnipeg welcomed 322,758 fans, or 6,867 per game, to lead the league in attendance for the sixth straight year and mark the fourth consecutive year where attendance eclipsed the 300,000 mark, a feat unmatched by any other Northern League team. That total included a crowd of 8,668 on August 29 against Lincoln, shattering the old ballpark record of 7,930 set just 19 days earlier against Calgary.

Along the way, three pitchers left Winnipeg during the season when their contracts were picked up by Major League clubs, the most ever in mid-season in team history. And speaking of Major League clubs, infielder Brian Myrow, who played here from 1999-2001, became the sixth former Fish and first position player to make the Majors when the Los Angeles Dodgers promoted him in September.

Almost lost among these accomplishments was another Canwest Park milestone. Just three years after welcoming the one-millionth fan to a regular season game at their downtown home, the Goldeyes saluted the two-millionth fan to attend a regular season game at the ballpark on August 25 when they hosted the Fargo-Moorhead-RedHawks.