![\"baseballlongbeach](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/baseballlongbeach.jpg\")
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Armada rehash be damned. Long Beach\u2019s ill-fated pro baseball history will begin an entirely new chapter next summer when a freshly pressed independent league and another hometown team rolls in to town.<\/p>\n
Today, O.C.-based parent company Godfather Media, Inc. unveiled the name and logo for the American West Baseball League\u2019s (AWBL) DC Sports and Entertainment-owned Long Beach team that will begin games in summer of 2013.<\/p>\n
The Long Beach Splash<\/strong>\u2014as the new team is called\u2014does not yet have a home stadium, a manager or even players, but it does have an adorable logo that (with the same color scheme and animal mascot) looks suspiciously similar to the Miami Dolphins\u2019 iconic badge.<\/p>\n Nevermind that the last dolphin to be seen inside the breakwater was probably very lost and confused, the Splash seems to be the only hope Long Beach has in filling its independent pro baseball void since the five year-old Armada ceased play in 2009<\/a> amid drama over rights to Blair Field.<\/p>\n Though rumors abounded<\/a> last year that the Golden-Baseball-League-turned-North-American-League team would return to Long Beach for its 2012 season, there is no evidence of the franchise\u2019s current existence anywhere on NAL\u2019s website.<\/p>\n The American West Baseball League<\/a> was founded in March 2012 when Godfather Entertainment CEO Michael Cummings took two team purchases he made\u2014the Yuma Scorpions and a controlling share of the struggling Orange County Flyers\u2014and formed an entirely new league. Last month, Cummings announced that his company had made more acquisitions and that the inaugural AWBL season will include five founding members: Fullerton, Long Beach, San Diego and Yuma and Mesa, Arizona.<\/p>\n No word yet on whether or not Long Beach State will be giving up its Blair Field rights to allow another baseball team to play there during the summer off-season. But if the school is serious about raising private funds to complete the complex\u2019s estimated $20 million renovation (plans for which were unveiled last year<\/a>), it would be wise to at least accept a meeting with Cumming and his heavily backed independent league.<\/p>\n In the meantime, you can keep up with the Long Beach Splash on its Facebook page <\/a>or follow the AWBL’s Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Armada rehash be damned. Long Beach\u2019s ill-fated pro baseball history will begin an entirely new chapter next summer when a freshly pressed independent league and another hometown team rolls in to town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":16732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"splashvsdolphins\"](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/splashvsdolphins.jpg\")
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