WORCESTER—Little things can foreshadow big events, and the timeline of the Worcester Red Sox’s eventual arrival here is an example of that.
When the Pawtucket Red Sox first began to run into trouble with their ballpark proposal from Rhode Island in September of 2015, this reporter made a late Friday afternoon phone call to the team’s principal owner, Larry Lucchino. He wasn’t in. A message was left.
Lucchino called back at breakfast the next day and the WooSox have just finished a third successful season at Polar Park.
Now, with Lucchino 78 years old, the team is for sale. Phone calls to team officials and ownership partners are only occasionally returned, which usually means that something is brewing. A phone call on Monday afternoon was returned almost immediately, though, and it was from Diamond Baseball Holdings, the rapidly expanding conglomerate of minor league teams.
It owns 26 of them and has been in business since just 2021.
The original question was if Diamond Baseball might be interested in potentially buying the Worcester Red Sox. The answer, from a company representative, was a simple “No comment.”
Those two words can mean a hundred things but they are not a “no.”
It is impossible to imagine that Diamond Baseball is not, or has not been, in the conversation given that it has bought 26 teams in three years. In 2023 alone, the company has purchased 11 teams. That list includes Triple-A Albuquerque, St. Paul and Norfolk as well as the Single-A Salem Red Sox.
In all, Diamond Baseball owns eight of the 30 teams in Triple-A baseball. That includes three regular WooSox opponents — Gwinnett, Norfolk and Scranton-Wilkes-Barre.
The company is headed by executive chairman Pat Battle and CEO Peter Freund. It is based in New York.
Freund is probably the name most familiar to fans.
According to his Linkedin profile, Freund is a part-owner of the New York Yankees and worked in the office of the Commissioner of Baseball during the time Major League Baseball assumed operation of the minor leagues and is a member of MLB’s Professional Development League Business Affairs Committee.
Freund owned minor league teams prior to the founding of Diamond Baseball and is involved in ownership of pro soccer teams both in the United States and Great Britain.
During its three-year history, Diamond Baseball has typically bought teams but retained local involvement when possible. Its history has been keeping staff in place, as well. Albuquerque and Norfolk were both bought from owner Ken Young, who was retained as an advisor in both cases.
There has been no indication that Diamond Baseball will purchase all or part of the Worcester Red Sox. Given its history and the perceived value of the Worcester franchise, the company would logically be part of the WooSox sale process unless Lucchino — who as primary owner makes the decisions — does not want to go in that direction.
Which direction he winds up going in remains one of the compelling questions in New England pro sports.
Bill Ballou covered the Red Sox for the Worcester Telegram from 1997 through 2018. He has covered pro hockey in Worcester since 1994 and currently does a weekly column for the Worcester Red Sox. Ballou can be reached at vetgoalie@aol.com
