Under the terms of an agreement signed Monday, the Jamestown Jammers (summer collegiate; Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League) are committing to Diethrick Park through at least the 2025 season.
The Jammers are on hiatus for the 2019 season, but are planning to resume play in 2020 under new local ownership, as was anticipated under plans announced last fall by now former owner ROC Ventures. The plan for ROC Ventures was to donate the club and its assets to a nonprofit group that would, in turn, seek new local investors to keep the team in Jamestown. Jamestown Community Baseball LLC has since taken over the Jammers, and is committing to keeping the team at Diethrick Park through at least the 2025 season.
On Monday, Russell E. Diethrick Jr.–president of the JCB board of directors–signed a lease transfer agreement that effectively establishes the Jammers’ new ownership entity as the ballpark’s tenant. An extension of the agreement will keep the team at Diethrick Park through at least the 2025 season, a commitment that the Jammers could ultimately opt to extended through the 2030 campaign. More from the Post-Journal:
“There have been major league players playing in this dirt, there have been Hall of Famers playing in this dirt,” said Diethrick, the president of the new ownership group. “Having this field in this community has just been a blessing.”
The signing does two things, Teresi said. The first allows JCB LLC to assume the lease for Diethrick Park from the previous tenant, which was Jamestown Baseball LLC, a division of Roc Enterprises of Milwaukee. Secondly, [Jamestown mayor Sam] Teresi and Diethrick signed an extension of that lease through the 2025 playing season.
“What that lease provides at their call is another five-year extension on top of that lease,” Teresi said. “At a minimum, the Jammers are good here for six seasons through the 2025 playing season and, at their election, if they choose to extend that lease, they’ll be here playing through the 2030 playing season.”
The summer-collegiate Jammers have played at Russell E. Diethrick Jr. Park since 2015, when they took the place of an affiliated Short Season A New York-Penn League squad of the same name after it relocated to West Virginia. The team was initially part of the Prospect League, but shifted to the PGCBL in 2016.