The Spire City Ghost Hounds,
Frederick’s new professional baseball team

Steve Morano
MSMU Class of 2024

(8/2023) In 1989, the Fredrick Keys were founded as the High-A minor league affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles. It was the first time professional baseball had graced the city in nearly sixty years since the folding of the Frederick Warriors in 1930. The Warriors were a part of the Blue Ridge league, a precursor to what would become Minor League Baseball. Ever since the Keys have been around, many league titles have come home to Nymeo Field at Harry Grove Stadium, but with the onset of the pandemic in 2020, many minor league teams were unaffiliated with their parent major league clubs, including the Keys. But the people of Frederick and the surrounding areas would not have to wait for more than half a century for professional ball to return. Three years after the Keys were let go by the Orioles, the Spire City Ghost Hounds were founded as the newest member of the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball.

Just to be clear, the Keys never went away; in fact, they have been thriving. After becoming unaffiliated, they joined the MLB Draft League, a summer collegiate league were college players and amateurs from across the world look to hone their skills and improve their draft stock for Major League teams. This year alone, ten of their players were either drafted or signed as free agents by Major League clubs. The Ghost Hounds are a completely different team, almost independent of the Keys, with a different colorway and gameday production. There is one notable thing that the two teams share: a front office and a gameday staff, headed by General Manager, Andrew Klein.

But for the first three months of the season, the Ghost Hounds were unnamed, playing under the assumed name of the "Frederick ALPB Team", with their logo being a question mark and their uniforms clad in black, yellow and red question marks to resemble the colors of the Maryland state flag. But an essentially no-name team is hard to market, especially when you have a team such as the Keys, a team that is older and much more ingrained in the community sharing a stadium.

"We had to create a temporary brand identity to go with the Maryland flag colors to play off the popularity of the flag, but it was very challenging to market it since we didn’t have a team name or logo knowing we would be changing it to something very soon," said Branden McGee, Head of Marketing for the Ghost Hounds, and the Keys.

Obviously, there was a more of a reason for the later onset of the Ghost Hounds’ branding besides building the hype for a new team name and branding. "Part of the reason that route was taken was because we didn’t want to rush it and come out with something that we wouldn’t be proud of for a long term. So rather than doing something quicker, we decided to take our time, put some different things in motion and then, when we were ready for the real unveiling of the name and the logos, have it out there and make sure that it’s something we can all be proud of for years to come," Klein said.

When reveal night finally came around, the production team and marketing team’s plans were all set to celebrate a new era of professional baseball in Frederick. But the original

reveal night of June 23rd was postponed due to inclement weather, pushing the reveal night back to June 24th. This set into motion a whole new means of debuting the new team, as a doubleheader was played to make up for the cancelled game on the 23rd. During the first game, the team played still as the Frederick ALPB team branding, clad in their question mark jerseys and all. Then during the half hour break between games, the team made their way up to their club house and changed into their new white, black and teal uniforms. They then made their way down to the right field gate and waited. On the video board, a reveal video played where a mysterious figure with a lantern walked through Mount Olivet Cemetery, which is across the street from the stadium. The logo was revealed, and CO2 cannons went off from the right field gate. The players walked in wearing their new uniforms, led by their mascot, Freddie. The Spire City Ghost Hounds were born.

But how has the product on the field been? How has the baseball side of the Ghost Hounds been doing? Currently, the Ghost Hounds sit fourth in the ALPB South division and have a record of 31-44, but have been on a hot streak, winning their last five games in a row. Part of these early struggles have been down to problems out of control of the management.

"The first three weeks of the season, unfortunately we were missing seven players due to delayed visas, we had seven major leaguers not in the lineup who are some of the better players in this league. It was a struggle, we knew it was going be a really tough first month of the season," manager Mark Minicozzi said. And there is a lot of former major league talent on the team: Starlin Castro, a former Chicago Cubs and New York Yankees player is on the team, as well as Jimmy Paredes, a member of the Baltimore Orioles team that won the American League East in 2014, and Raudy Read, who won the World Series in 2019 with the Washington Nationals are also in the lineup.

But there is also a great deal of players who have never seen a game in the majors who are having standout season at the independent level. Leobaldo Cabrera, a former Minnesota Twins minor leaguer and brother of the Yankees outfielder, Oswaldo Cabrera, leads the team with 25 homeruns and 60 RBI. Former Boston Red Sox minor leaguer, Kole Cottam leads the team in the OPS department with a line of 1.044. These are only some of the standouts. "We have one of the most explosive offenses in the league; you continue to see that when you look up at the scoreboard—almost every one of our guys in the line up has double digit homeruns." Minicozzi added.

All in all, the Spire City Ghost Hounds are a fun team to watch, with a great team identity and a great future. The fact that they share a stadium and a staff with the Keys does not detract from the game day experience at all as the experience of going to a Keys game and a Ghost Hounds game are one in the same. The ALPB season runs through the beginning of September and with the start of the second half of the season set to begin, the Ghost Hounds are hot. Frederick’s next era of professional baseball is well underway, and its name is the Spire City Ghost Hounds.