He sat in the front row, smiling and acknowledging all the praise that was appropriately thrown his way as the sun beat down on LeLacheur Park on Wednesday morning.

Drew Weber was home.

He’d been to Lowell, Mass. after the team he owned since 1997 until selling it in 2019, the Lowell Spinners, were contracted after MLB vaporized the New York-Penn League in 2020. But the original owner of the Nashua Silver Knights hadn’t set foot in LeLacheur since then.

“It brought back hundreds and hundreds of memories,” Weber said. “Some of the crazy players who played here. I remember walking out with my wife (the late Joann Weber) with Theo Epstein (then just named Sox GM) and he had just made his first deal. It was for Jeremy Giambi. And my wife said, ‘Theo, that’s fabulous.’ And we said ‘That’s Jeremy, not Jason’ and she said ‘What’s the difference?'”

Weber had to be there on Wednesday when the FCBL and UMass-Lowell signed their agreement to bring a Futures League franchise to LeLacheur. It’s the first franchise for the park that opened in 1998 since the beloved Spinners’ last year, 2019. Had to. It wouldn’t have been the same without him.

What did it mean to have Weber there?

“Everything,” said the man he sold the Silver Knights to, John Creedon, Jr., who was the FCBL’s point man in securing LeLacheur. “When we first circled the date, my first phone call was to Drew. I said, ‘Drew, what are you doing the morning of July 30?’ He had doctors appointments, he had visits with friends booked, and he said ‘John, how important is it that I’m there?’ I said ‘Drew, it’s everything, it’s everything.’ He upended his schedule, got on a plane and flew up here.”

Weber is an icon when it comes to franchise baseball north of Boston. He mused how people thanked him for bringing minor league baseball to Lowell when he didn’t; he bought the team from its original owner, the late Clyde Smoll, after one year in Lowell. He did bring minor league baseball (the Fisher Cats) to Manchester, but hardly anyone really remembers or ever thanked him. “You guys figure that one out,” he said.

And less we forget, Drew Weber helped create the Futures League by putting a franchise at Holman Stadium, at the urging of his top Spinners people, Tim Bawmann and Jon Goode. The league needed a legitimate facility to showcase itself and Holman was it. “I said no, no, no, then yes, yes yes,” Weber said with a grin. “They (Bawmann and Goode) had both been with me a long time, they were passionate about it. So I’ve got to go with the guys who brought you.”

Thus Weber gave Nashua a gift, and he left the Silver Knights in great hands with the Creedon family.

Current Silver Knights owner John Creedon, Jr. and former Knights and Lowell Spinners owner Drew Weber were front and center Wednesday at LeLacheur Park. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

But for all the things he’s done, Weber will be forever known as the owner of the Lowell Spinners, the short-season Single A Red Sox affiliate that captured not just a city but a region. He hired creative people and let them do their thing in the marketing, promotional world while the Red Sox supplied the players, and the result was sellout after sellout with promotions that made national news.

“I see people who weren’t here today,” Weber said as he looked up at the seats. “People who were very, very, very meaningful to my wife and I. I’ll never forget this city for it, and so glad baseball will be here.”

Weber said he always thought someday he’d be back. “I had to be,” he said, noting he has four grandchildren who missed out on the Spinners but may have a chance to see a Lowell game.

The contraction, Weber said, “was painful to me. I was angry. There was nothing anyone could do about it.

“This (owning the Spinners) was the best decision I’ve ever made. Nineteen years and change here. A big part of my life. A big part of my wife’s life, obviously. I’m tearing up …”

You now see why he had to be at LeLacheur Park on Wednesday.

Welcome home, Drew Weber.

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