seven eight one eight nine one six two one if you want to hire him or any of these people they have all kinds of good things that they can do for you well my guest tonight is the owner of the doubling fisher cats new hampshire doubling fisher cats but he also if you want an advance it's only twelve dollars so their phone number six on three six four one two thousand and five so let's get to our guest he owns real estate properties try to get to that minor league teams right correct ok do you want to tell us about the fisher cats how did you end up with the fisher cats most people don't have three modeling teams your reports that so well tell us how you ended up with three minor league teams i  a baseball junkie since i was a young kid and i lived in connecticut halfway between fenway park and yankee stadium so i started going at age six to major league baseball games and about ten years ago i belong to a men's group in boston and we had as a guest speaker people who were in the business of selling baseball teams and i couldn't afford anything more than a minor league team so i ended up doing a lot of research new hampshire is a great place for all kinds of sports and the hockey team was doing really well and i talked to a lot of people in the business community the media the non profits and so forth and was persuaded it be a great place to own a team so the fisher cats are they doing ok i mean are you happy and i've been up there at split place a very interesting it's a beautiful field and there's a hotel right in left field so tell people maybe about some of the people maybe it went through there or even about that dinner that you well first of all we have sent sixty six players to the major leagues who've played for the fisher cats ok anybody we would recognize there are probably half of the toronto blue jays team from adam lynn playing first base incredibly competitive it is it's great fun and we we have about four hundred thousand fans who come out here so once the snow finally melts and let's hope it does that soon how many people would hold the actual stadium well and what we have a far works this is a real good turn into yeah i know and you know it's you know it's fun we have seating capacity for seventy two hundred we have had as many as eighty five hundred particularly when we get a major league player from the red sox or the blue jays who comes and does rehab with us and we have all kinds of fun things we have you know like the days of the week we have wacky wednesdays so we charge kids a percentage of what their weight is so we do that it we do that on wednesdays and thursdays we have thirsty thursday to get a beer for a buck and we have a lot of colleges around there who take great advantage of that a dollar for beer fans yeah like i did see that's right but only when i'm up there not during the week so you know we have all kinds of fun things and we try to minor league baseball is all about affordable family entertainment our batboy is a golden retriever dog so when when our players are at bat the visiting team doesn't allow it so tell us about that fisher cuts dinner when i bought the team i went around in paid respect to people in the media to political leaders and so forth and they told me that there was a long history in new hampshire of of a baseball dinner that the former editor of the sports page was the main organizer but after he retired they stopped doing it and he used to have people there like ted williams johnny pesky dominic dimaggio and so forth so i thought well that would be great we'll have this dinner but all the money goes to charity so the money goes for two major charities one is every year we give out twelve college scholarships both in massachusetts and in new hampshire they have to be graduating seniors from high school and they have to qualify on three different bases one is good students secondly good athletes and third involved somehow in civic affairs whether they acted in their church or they help out in the boys and girls club or anything that's really civic minded and the other money so some of the money going to scholarships and all the rest of the money goes to the children's hospital up at dartmouth who are some of the players that you have for that did  bay has been there angelo dundee angelo dundee has been there some of the former bruins some of the former patriots players sometimes active players  every year we have about twenty five professional athletes both retired players as well as active players say to their parent that you have quite the dedication in community involvement in charitable work what can you tell me about some of the sixty one minor league teams in the country we were voted the minor league team that does the most for the community so we've done all kinds of things if i can answer your question more directly when a police officer was shot and killed  police chief from manchester called me said art there's not a church large enough to host a memorial so we did that that's what we we we supported about it your stadium you know we did it at our stadium and we call to make it clear and we called all the vendors and we said you can't charge free water free soda free hot dogs we had over six thousand people who came so that goes and you know for the moment for the memorial service but we  are probably about two hundred fifty different charities every year that we we help out one way or another so they are there church groups there boy scouts and girl scouts cub scouts brownies  you know i thought it was terrific because i think it's very important if you're lucky in life to give back and so we are very very involved in the community and as you mentioned that's the highest award you can get in all of baseball in terms of community involvement so i'm quite proud of that as proud as i am of our winning the eastern league two of the nine years in which i've owned the team  your do you think the red sox you know win the world series you know this yeah of course of course but they have to grow the beards back because i saw a recently some interviews where they're playing down in florida and it looks like only nap so until i knew better i was a yankee fan but no i've been a red sox fan and i've been living in the boston area probably now for about eighteen years it's very hard not to love the red sox think i'm from new york originally and what part of new york are you from no i was really from connecticut from connecticut from new haven so we were new haven was split between yankee fans and red sox fans yeah my father was a yankee fan you know i haven't you achieved that you'd like to well every year i try to introduce something new as i said before when i talk about the fisher cats or any of the minor league teams it's affordable family entertainment all three words are important henry started off saying the highest price is fourteen dollars with the lowest price is six dollars so we try to keep it very affordable baseball is the national pastime ok and we want to make sure that everybody can come people ask me sometimes how many times your red sox fan how many red sox games to go to i said frankly my wife only lets me refinance the house once every other year you know it's expensive and it's expensive so so to keep it affordable to keep introducing more and more entertainment we have three great mascots you know oftentimes in minor league baseball because you don't control the players and the major league team that were affiliated with can call the players up one time so we really promote the mascot so you often see our mascots directing traffic after school leading parades on the holidays kids will leave out of the car and say hey fungo was one of our mascot see on saturday or we have late innings we have a mascot called the rally llama but we only save him for the eighth and ninth and he cool so what about season tickets i notice you have so i got your email today to receive came up today it's got your phone number he's got a good location in new hampshire so it's a real good idea six zero three six four one two thousand and five the new hampshire fisher cats or you can send him a check to works i mean when i speak my wife about it only if i'm willing to get divorced oh ok so you know i think three teams is the limit this is the limit but you know it's great it's great fun and the staff there is is outstanding and on a daily basis they they really run the team i mean i get involved in all the big decisions the key staff the budgets some marketing ideas meeting with some of the major sponsors and so forth but the staff is just outstanding we have a lot of great great young people between owning three teams how did you have time to write your book marketing in the minors and what inspired you to do that you are a great researcher about what happens on the playing field and you know what happens on the basketball court or the baseball diamond or the football gridiron they are very very few books written about what happens behind the scenes what are the challenges that owners have to face you know how do you generate the kind of entertainment where people will keep coming back how do you build the teams brand which is important for anything not just sports so that was one reason and the second reason is i have eight grandchildren now last and they're all too young to really understand what goes on and with the three teams they're bound to inherit at least one of the teams and it was my way to tell them about what it's like you know to own and manage a professional sports team i wanted thank you to write the book it took about a year took about a year and when you wrote the book how much work did you do like each week to do the little bit of its own time or did you write a lot of i try to do a chapter a month that that was my time because i'm busy i try to be reasonably disciplined so i had to do some research and it was fun it was did make the all star team in little league as a shortstop but i'm not only couldn't hit a curve ball i couldn't hit a slow pitch that well so it ended at age twelve and so my ownership clearly build and buy apartment buildings mostly in the mid atlantic area washington d c baltimore new york metropolitan area both in new jersey and new york and also in the boston area but i have a son who's running it increasingly so he keeps me around i think out of the kindness now his name jim now that's my other son who owns a restaurant in brookline knows my son josh josh josh who's the president the company now yeah yeah yeah so basically you buy a building rehab it and then collect the rents yeah well sometimes we build it from ground up sometimes they sometimes we buy the land  had who is a new hampshire resident and then he was our shortstop last year and just a terrific terrific guy great ball player and a really terrific human being very involved in the community so it was exciting and i'm sure he's got a great future ahead of so little personal appearances might they do or how does that work other to the dinner that i you know go well they mostly for charitable causes we we try to  visit the hospitals and we we go to a lot of different in the ballplayers got a lot of different hospitals sometimes they go to elementary schools we have a reading challenge where kids read for books outside of what's assigned they get two free tickets to a fisher cats game we send them to senior citizen homes it's mostly for charity it's mostly prepared we you know none of that is commercial it when it's all it's all help nonprofit the hall of fame and every year they come out with black cards and i had the ballplayers sign them and i would send the plaque cards to a ball player and then they would return it to my house with with an autograph on it so that's probably the most expensive cards that i have and i'm back in the late seventy's i collected rookie cards for about three or four dollars a piece and then i waited about eight or nine years and then sold the baseball cards for three four hundred couple years ago and they didn't have any baseball cards or they had his autograph paintings and stuff and pictures and so disappointed at that but it's still a pretty big it's a pretty big market for you know for memorabilia ok well listen at the fisher cat of well i have mixed feelings about it quite frankly he was a great ballplayer and i don't know enough about what they keep cheating so i don't really have the facts on it you know a great ball player terrific cussler probably the most hits anyone has ever had so i really don't know i don't know enough frankly to have a final judgment fortunate enough to vote and what what advice would you have for someone aspiring to baseball team from little leagues to minor leagues to even major leagues what would the most important thing you would say well i think you know you don't own as you know you don't own little league teams  but to own a professional team i think you have to do the same kind of due diligence the same kind of research you would do on any investment you would make so we we look at the  population we look for examples of their supporting sports teams we look at the transportation routes how easy is it to get to the ballpark we look at the parking availability if it's a existing team we obviously look at their financial history and we try to talk to people in the community you know it's great and people from a cross section of the community because baseball appeals to everybody you know one  of the things i always tell people is try to get three generations to go to the same movie doesn't happen to three generations to listen to the same music certainly difficult in my family but three generations at a baseball game happens all the time about one of the best hitters of all times i also respect the fact that he interrupted his career too as a patriot you know to go to war and  i had immense respect for his doing that because it did it did affect his career but one of the greatest pure hitters of all time  it's difficult owning a business and i don't want to as well it's really hard but i don't all the trials and tribulations that you went through what which one was most difficult that put you in the position that you are today i've had a lot of trials and tribulations that show you the scars sometimes you know i think everyone's different and can't have and i don't think there is a secret formula didn't have to work if i didn't get paid even so i think in life if you're lucky if you get up in the morning and it's something that you really want to do you have so i've been really fortunate you seem that way as you know as well well it's almost the first day that i went to a game actually well i didn't officially own it till the end of the season i did take over in the middle of the season and the very first game i went to was i had gone before but the first time when it was announced i was going to be the owner it was during the summer and i was there with camp season and we had about seven thousand kids at the ballpark from  from all over north central massachusetts and new hampshire in the camps have the kids wear different colored t shirts so they can identify who their campers were and i remember one of the reporters saying to me art why did you buy the team and i looked out and i said there are seven thousand reasons out there because they're smiling and they're having a ball and that's what it's all about ok well we're down to the  my guest i really appreciate your coming down in orange so i'm into you've been great as you are going to have you know we're going to go to dinner i wish you had a i sit here and be up there twice a year but you know when i first went up there i didn't understand and i'll bet you a lot of these fans don't understand it's an opportunity to make famous people once a year so get in touch with the new hampshire fisher cats their phone number six zero three six one two thousand and five they have a date take it's they have season tickets and