Courtesy photo by John Comeau Former Nashua Silver Knights co-founder and VP Jon Goode celebrates one of the Nashua Silver Knights early FCBL titles.

NASHUA – Ever wonder how the Nashua Silver Knights and the Futures Collegiate Baseball League came to be?

As the FCBL celebrates 10 years on Friday with its inaugural Hall of Fame inductions, here’s how things came about:

Back one day during the fall of 2009, Jon Goode was sitting back in his office at Lelacheur Park in Lowell, Mass., trying to come up with new revenue streams for the Lowell Spinners, the Boston Red Sox short-season Class A affiliate.

And he saw that Holman Stadium would be empty of a major tenant for the foreseeable future, the independent professional American Defenders of New Hampshire being booted out by city officials for being tardy on rent.

He went right into then Spinners team president/GM Tim Bawmann’s office and had an idea he hoped would fly instead of having concerts, etc.that Spinners owner Drew Weber was suggesting.

“I said, ‘Tim, I knew is hot on these other non-tradtional revenue events, but we know how to run baseball teams, that’s our expertise,'” Goode said. “Concerts are not. Holman is going dark, it’s only about 20 minutes away. Why don’t we try to do a collegiate baseball team at Holman?”

And thus the idea begin to form the Nashua Silver Knights, which helped lead to the formation of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League in December of 2010.

It’s the reason Goode, Bawmann, and Weber will be among 13 that The FCBL will induct on Friday into its newly formed Hall of Fame. For the Knights that also includes former Nashua first baseman Chris Shaw.

But the former Spinners trio joing others, including former FCBL Commissioner Chris Hall as “the Founding Fathers.”

The ceremony will be held following the first ever FCBL Golf Tournament that day at Cyprian Keyes Golf Club in Boylston, Mass. at 6:30 p.m.

When Bawmann heard Goode’s suggestion, Goode said, “His eyes lit up and he said, ‘That’s a real good idea.'”

Goode said the first thought was to buy the Lowell team in the New England Collegiate Baseball League, but that deal fell through and the owners, the family of the late former Nashua Hawks manager Harry Ayotte, moved it up to Old Orchard, Maine.

What was next? Goode and Bawmann, with Weber’s blessing, set out to try to get an NECBL expansion team if they could. Goode tried in vain to contact then-NECBL Commissioner Mario Tiani, but his calls were never returned.

“I must have left about 15 messages,” Goode said.

Then Hall, then best known as the former general manager of the Nashua Pride, told Hall that the owners of the independent league Brockton Rox were trying to get a team into the NECBL as well. They had a couple of locations – Martha’s Vineyard and Torrington, Conn. But the Rox trio of Chris Carminucci, Darren Harrison-Pannis and Van Schley weren’t getting their calls to the NECBL returned, either.

Also expressing interest was a New Hampshire seacoast businessman named Dave Hoyt.

What to do? The group then contacted the New York Collegiate Baseball League, hoping to add four teams to it, including Nashua.

But in a big meeting in the fall of 2010 at Brockton’s Campanelli Stadium, NYCBL officials told the group it would cost $10,000 per team.

That triggered the defining moment, words from Bawmann after he asked the NYCBL official to leave the room, as Goode recalled.

“As soon as he left the room, Tim said, “Bleep this guy! Ten thousand dollars at team? The four of us, that’s $40,000. The four of us, seriously … if you guys are going to do $40,000, let’s put that into our own league, and start our own league up.”

And thus the FCBL was born, with an announcement that fall.

“We were confident in each other,” Goode, who now owns a sports memorabilia business in Nashua. “We had hired Chris (Hall), and that’s when he became the commissioner.

“We were nervous about doing (just) four teams, but we had faith in Chris and each other. … That’s how it all came about.”

The whole group is being inducted. Weber is now living in Arizona after first selling the Spinners a few years ago and then the Silver Knights in 2019 to Worcester’s John Creedon, Jr.

Bawmann is expected to fly in for the event from Fort Wayne, Ind., where he is the president of the Indiana Pacers’ G League affiliate, the Mad Ants.

“Thanks for the wonderful recognition,” Bawmann posted recently on social media. “We started the league because others didn’t want us in the NECBL and for kids in New England to have a place to play each summer. Proud to be part of this from the beginning.”

Neither Torrington nor Martha’s Vineyard are in the FCBL today. The Sharks are ironically now in the NECBL while Torrington dissolved. Also, Hoyt’s Seacoast Mavericks have not competed in the FCBL in the last couple seasons.

For Goode, the idea was simple: if the Spinners group didn’t try to get into Holman, someone else would.

“Nashua was so close, the synergy,and someone would have moved into that stadium,” Goode said. “So we can either control it ourselves and protect the Spinners, or someone else would come in and we’d be in competition. … We knew a team would be going in there, so why not us?”

And thus the Silver Knights have beome arguably the most successful franchise to play at Holman, with five FCBL titles in the league’s 10 seasons, including the first two.

“I really believed in the model. It’s the minor league business model, with the colleges providing the players.”

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Also being inducted are the late Adam Keenan and Bill Terlecky. Keenan was a player on the first ever Mavericks team who died suddenly days before the start of the league’s inaugural 2011 season due to an undiagnosed rare heart condition. His legacy has lived on with league sponsored Sportsmanship and Scholarship Awards.

Terlecky was the North Shore Navigators general manager from 2012-19, completing a 41-year career in baseball before losing his long battle with cancer last October. He was a popular league figure and was said to have mentored many in the Futures League.

Three former FCBL players who have since appeared in the Major Leagues round out the inductees – former Torrington pitcher Tylor Bashlor, Shaw, and former Worcester Braveheart Aaron Civale.

Shaw, who was one of the first to enter the league under the incoming freshman rule, is a member of the San Francisco Giants organization and has seen some time in the majors as an outfielder. The Lexington, Mass. native was a power hitting first baseman who helped the Knights to their second of five FCBL titles in 2012.

Bashlor has spent parts of the last three seasons in the majors, his first appearance a couple of years ago with the New York Mets. Civale pitches for Worceser in 2014 and made his MLB debut with Cleveland a year ago.

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