Futures League Expands to Lowell
- Paul Baker
- 20 hours ago
- 2 min read
College baseball stadiums and summer wood-bat collegiate baseball teams. You would think they would be a match made in heaven. After all, their seasons don’t overlap, their rosters consist of players from the same pool (and in some cases, they ARE the same players), and there is significant overlap between staffers and fanbases. Having a summer collegiate league team play in a college’s home park could help keep it from being empty during the dog days of summer, providing an extra 20-30 days of use and income. Yet very few college ballparks pull double duty during the summer months.
On July 30, one more college ballpark joined the ranks of summer college ballparks when the Futures Collegiate Baseball League announced that they would be adding a seventh team to the circuit. The as yet unnamed team will play at Edward A. LeLacheur Park, home of the UMass Lowell Riverhawks and the former home of MiLB’s Lowell Spinners, beginning with the 2026 season.
Leaders from the Futures League and UMass Lowell were surrounded by local and state officials, baseball players and mascots for the official announcement, held on the infield at LeLacheur Park.
“We are thrilled to welcome a Futures League team to Lowell that supports the dreams of aspiring professional athletes, provides great baseball for fans to watch and enriches life in Lowell and the Merrimack Valley,” said UMass Lowell Chancellor Julie Chen. “We’re eager to work with an ownership group that sees its future backing a team in the Mill City.”
The relationship between the Futures League, UMass Lowell and the city of Lowell is strong. Drew Weber, the owner of the Lowell Spinners, was a co-founder of the Futures League. Many players from UMass Lowell have played in the Futures League, which mandates that a percentage of players on each team have New England ties.
“The Futures League is keeping the spirit alive from the days of Drew Weber’s beloved Lowell Spinners and continuing the legacy,” Futures League Commissioner Joe Paolucci said. “College baseball is booming like never before, and its fan base just keeps expanding. This is baseball done right—affordable, thrilling, family-friendly, and full of energy, just the way Lowell residents love it.”
LeLacheur Park hosted the Spinners, the short-season New York-Penn League single-A affiliate of the nearby Boston Red Sox, from 1998 – 2019. They, along with the rest of the teams in the NY Penn League, were victims of the Great Minor League Contraction of 2020, when 43 MiLB teams were eliminated. Since then, the other two the New England teams from the NY Penn League, the Vermont Lake Monsters and the Norwich Sea Unicorns, have joined the Futures League.
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