Tom King

The owner’s voice was gone. The general manager was in joyful, well, call it disbelief.

The manager had to walk away for a few moments and cry. The assistant GM was beaming.

That was the reaction of the Nashua Silver Knights management team when the Futures Collegiate League club they’re in charge of stunned Vermont and a crowd of nearly 3,000 fans last Friday night in the FCBL championship game at Burlington’s Centennial Field.

Title No. 6, the second under the Creedon ownership.

But this was so much different. Back in 2020, Creedon was celebrating the fact that the FCBL made it through a COVID-shortened season. The Knights beat Worcester, his other team, and he couldn’t get as excited, out of respect to the Bravehearts. He couldn’t lose, right?

You might want to say that he truly, truly became the Silver Knights owner last weekend. In the emotional sense – not that he didn’t care before. But this was his Nashua team vs. former Pride owner Chris English’s team.

Creedon wasn’t playing himself.

“I’ve got to tell you, it still feels like a dream,” Creedon said the game and the celebration. “It feels surreal. You’ve got to beat the best to be the best. That Vermont team is just a class organization, top to bottom, every facet of the organization.

“They gave us their best, we matched their best. That was a boxing match. We’d land punches, they’d land punches.”

Creedon knew what he had just seen, what he and about 70 Nashua fans that he and the front office brought over on a bus saw.

A classic.

“This was a special kind of game,” he said. “A game you hope for, you wish for. … We traveled with over 60 fans from Nashua. It was really something special. … This was a great punctuation to the end of the summer.”

The Silver Knights had one heckuva summer on and off the field. They drew just over 1,500 a game – the stats on the league web site don’t include the “exhibition” on Education Day that drew over 3,000 kids. The title will no doubt launch them into an off-season of great sales.

In any big presentation, just bring or email them the stream from last Friday’s game.

What made it even more special was back in mid-June thoughts of a night like this seemed impossible. Knights GM Cam Cook admitted he was afraid for his job after a 4-13 start, and a listless game at the end of June that maybe had the manager thinking the same thing.

But Cook and Kyle Jackson did what former VP and manager B.J. Neverett would do – improvise.

Jackson figured out the pulse of this team, and Cook, like when he grabbed former Nichols teammate Kyle Bouchard off the street in 2020 to be Finals MVP, made some late signings. The management team Creedon put together came through. Two titles in three years.

Of course the credit goes to the players, who came through in the clutch and relied on their competitive nature to win a title after losing Game 1 by a 12-0 count. Alex Meesig’s pitching performance in Game 2 in relief. Noah Wachter keeping his team in the game in Game 3, and Will Andrews somehow pitching one more inning, and somehow getting Vermont’s two best hitters out with the bases loaded to end it. And we’ve been saying for the last two months Kyle Wolff, he of the title-winning homer, was the best player on the team.

“This team,” Cook said, “is one of the most fun teams I think we ever had.”

It was a different team. Jackson really enjoyed managing them, calling them “misfits” in the end because they just didn’t fit the norm.

But those rings Creedon & Co. will order up for Opening Night of 2023 will fit just fine.

Again, the owner owns two teams. But last weekend, the Silver Knights really and truly became his.

Glad you bought the club, John?

“It’s all good,” he said with a grin.

Tom King can be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on twitter @Telegraph _TomK.