Jeff Jarrett talked during the latest “My World” podcast about his involvement with the minor league baseball team Springfield Sliders.
It was recently announced that Jarrett had become an owner of the team.
“Jamie Toole, my partner, is the CEO of Capital City Baseball, which is the organization that I’m now a part of. A little backstory, 2018, December, Las Vegas, were the winter meetings for baseball. I go back, I don’t know, off and on twenty-something years, maybe longer than that. I’ve done wrestling shows at minor league baseball stadiums. I’ve thrown out the first pitch. Anyway, I’ve got a lot of contacts here in town, Nashville, and all across the country. One of my good buds is a team owner.
In the 2018 winter meetings, Jamie was coming out of the tradeshow area, and he said, ‘Hey, you’re Jeff Jarrett.’ I said, ‘How are you doing sir?’ We struck up a conversation as opposed to, ‘Hi, nice to meet you’ 10 or 15 second conversation. We had a 10 or 15-minute conversation and we struck up our friendship right there. We remained in contact. Jamie’s latest gig in baseball was a G.M. down in Florida. He had an opportunity in minor league baseball. There is no such thing as MILB as an organization. The Major League took it over, so they went from about 180 teams down to about 120 teams, and they’re probably going to keep restricting. As a part of this process, there’s a lot of markets that are open and restructuring. Jamie got the opportunity through the pandemic to take ownership of this club in Springfield, the capital of Illinois. There’s a team called Savannah Bananas. There’s a team called Macon Bacon that are minor league teams.
I tell you, it really is professional wrestling meets baseball because it’s great baseball on the field, but what they do in between innings, before games, and after games, I’ll just say it has an enormous part of entertainment. Jamie reached out. We started having conversations and he said, ‘Hey man, I want you to be a part of this organization. You’re a third generation promoter. You promote sports entertainment. We’re not asking you to figure out what players to get, balls and strikes, ground outs or any of that, but for you to bring entertainment.’ We went through the process. It’s an opportunity I could not pass up. It’s 30-35 home games, but they have the stadium 365 days a year, so we’re going to be bringing concerts, festivals, and maybe a podcast at the plate. Maybe some Nitro Circus, just different kinds of events up there. We’re going to do all kinds of things when the home team is on the road, but during the games, which is the most important, we’re going to be filling that stadium and having a lot of fun. The current name is the Sliders, but we’re in the process of renaming the team. We’re going to get into the community and find out (what to name it). Capital City Baseball is the transition, but that’s the name of the organization. We’re hoping to have the rebrand complete by February.”
