Minor league baseball is making a home for itself in Bluffton.
Bluffton Today reports that the newly formed South Coast League has established operations on 29 Plantation Park Drive.
SCL will be an independent league unaffiliated with Major League Baseball. Several other independent leagues already exist, so the move is far from unprecedented.
The new league is headed up by CEO, Jamie Toole. Toole is a Columbia, SC native. He recently resigned his job as Vice President and General Manager of Virginia’s Salem Avalanche, part of the single-A Carolina League, to assume full time responsibilities with the SCL.
The league will be privately financed by a group of backers that prefer to stay silent “for now,” Toole told Tim Wood of Bluffton Today. The SCL will own and operate all teams to start, with the hopes of eventually securing local ownership in each market.
Bluffton is on the short list of potential target areas for a franchise.
Toole said the league plans to have working agreements and facility leases in place for each franchise by next spring. The 120-game schedule is slated to kick off in May 2007.