Minor League Baseball: Beep! Beep! St. George RoadRunners are back and running

ST. GEORGE — Road trips north and south of the border? An 18-year-old female knuckleball pitcher from Japan? Something called the Na Koa Ikaika Maui?

It's just another year in the Golden Baseball League.

"The GBL is always exciting," said Rick Berry, general manger for the St. George RoadRunners. "You never know what you're going to get."

St. George dropped a thrilling 15-14 game to the Orange County Flyers on Friday night at Dixie State's Bruce Hurst Field. It was the opening night for the RoadRunners' fourth season — a season very much in doubt when the team's previous owners announced that the team was folding in December.

But that's when a group spearheaded by Will Joyce stepped in.

"We think (St. George) is a great area for professional baseball," Joyce said.

Joyce first heard of the RoadRunners when his son Michael signed with the team in 2007. Injuries forced Michael's career to be cut short (he only lasted six weeks with the team), but the family's passion for baseball hasn't been.

Joyce, a part-time scout for the San Diego Padres, had been looking to buy a team for a few years, and St. George was a good fit.

"It's not that far from Southern California, where we live," he said. "There's a lot of intangibles, a lot of positives (about the team)."

And a lot of challenges.

By the time the paperwork came through for buying the team on Feb. 19, the RoadRunners' staff had two and a half months to do the work that normally takes five or six months.

Despite the time crunch, the team opened play in the 10-team GBL, with 1,762 fans watching (about 700 short of a sellout).

"I'm pleased with the response from the community," said Joyce, who said they are shooting for a season average around 1,300.

Those fans will watch a team made of a mix of young players and veterans of Double-A, Triple-A and even former major leaguers. (The Flyers signed Byung-Hyun Kim in May.)

Independent of Major League Baseball and its farm system, Golden League Baseball teams are free sign any free agents, mostly players looking to prove themselves and get to "The Show."