It’s a late August afternoon in Portland, Maine, and the crispness in the air makes it clear that, up here, summer is fading fast. But the sobriety of autumn hasn’t hit yet: it’s Elvis Night tonight and out front of Hadlock Field — the home stadium of the Sea Dogs, the city’s treasured Minor League Baseball team — the people, simply, are going nuts.
An Elvis Presley impersonator backed by a ramshackle live band smashes through “Hound Dog” while the Sea Dogs’ mascot Slugger, in a bedazzled white pantsuit and big black sunglasses, busts out karate kicks. The band’s guitarist — a sixty-something man bald except for the very back of his head, where the hair flows bountifully — flings his instrument over his back to shred a solo.
The banners behind the band advertise Horch Roofing’s “seamless gutter leak repair” services. Mustached security guards mimic the Elvis impersonator’s moves. Grinning, Elvis swings into a lovely rendering of the trademark hip shake, then shouts, “Man, they still work!” Squealing in delight, the fans mob Slugger and Elvis for selfies.
Major League Baseball is the highest level of the sport, where players get paid millions to join the Yankees and the Red Sox. Minor League Baseball is an interconnected series of lower leagues where guys who hope to one day make it to the majors scrape together a living playing in towns like Wichita and Amarillo for teams with names like the Wind Surge and the Sod Poodles. Tickets are cheap; babies and grandparents are everywhere.
The Portland Sea Dogs are quintessential Minor League Baseball. They’re also part of a newer American tradition: a private equity roll-up. In 2022, the team was acquired by Diamond Baseball Holdings (DBH), a subsidiary of Silver…
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Auteur: Amos Barshad
