The North Shore Navigators are a wooden-bat, collegiate summer baseball team based in

Lynn, Massachusetts Lynn is the eighth-largest municipality in Massachusetts and the largest city in Essex County. Situated on the Atlantic Ocean, north of the Boston city line at Suffolk Downs, Lynn is part of Greater Boston's urban inner core. Settled by E ...

, playing in the

New England Collegiate Baseball League The New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL) is a 13-team collegiate summer baseball wooden bat league founded in 1993 and sanctioned by the NCAA and Major League Baseball. Each NECBL team plays an eight-week, 44-game schedule during June ...

(NECBL). The team plays home games at

Fraser Field Fraser Field is a baseball park in Lynn, Massachusetts that has played host to many minor-league baseball teams over the years. The North Shore Navigators of the New England Collegiate Baseball League call Fraser Field home. In the springtime, ...

in Lynn. The team is owned by Old School Sports Group, LLC. The Navigators are the successor to the Giants of the

, a charter team in Middletown, Connecticut that moved to Holyoke, Massachusetts. The franchise relocated to Lynn for the 2008 season. They switched to the

Futures Collegiate Baseball League The Futures Collegiate Baseball League (FCBL) is an eight-team collegiate summer baseball league. It has four franchises in Massachusetts, two in Connecticut, and one each in New Hampshire and Vermont. Format The Futures League is a wood-bat ...

(FCBL) for the 2012 season and returned to the NECBL for the 2021 season.

Team history

NECBL charter franchise

The Navigators began as the Middletown Giants, one of five charter franchises of the NECBL, playing at Palmer Field in Middletown, Connecticut. They finished the NECBL's inaugural 1994 regular season with the second-best record in the league, though the team did not qualify for the championship series. After a last-place showing in

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The Great Hanshin earthquake str ...

, the Giants qualified for postseason play in 1996, but lost to the now-defunct Central Mass. Collegians. In

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...

, the Giants tied for third place with a 19-21 record, qualifying the team for postseason play for the second straight year. After sweeping the Rhode Island Reds in a best-of-three series, the Giants went on to defeat the

Torrington Twisters The New Bedford Bay Sox were a baseball team that played in the New England Collegiate Baseball League, a collegiate summer baseball league operating in the New England region of the United States. The team was located in New Bedford, Massachuset ...

for the Championship. Middletown's game-one victory (8-7 in 13 innings) was one of the longest playoff games in NECBL history. After being shut-out 4-0 at home, the Giants defeated Torrington 8-5 in a decisive Game 3.

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...

again saw the Giants finish in third place. After sweeping the

Danbury Westerners The Danbury Westerners are a collegiate summer baseball team based in Danbury, Connecticut. The team, a member of the New England Collegiate Baseball League, plays their home games at Rogers Park. The team played its inaugural season in 1995. Th ...

in the postseason, Middletown defeated Torrington three games to one in a best-of-five rematch of the

series, marking the franchise's second straight league championship. In

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...

, the Giants finished at 27-15, a half a game behind the first place Keene Swampbats. They defeated the Rhode Island Reds two games to one, and defeated the Danbury Westerners three games to one for their third consecutive championship, the first and only time an NECBL team has won the championship three years in a row.

Post-championship years

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...

, the Giants finished the regular season in fourth place at 22-30 and lost the semi-finals to Keene. In 2001, the Giants again finished in fourth place at 16-24 in the new American Division as the NECBL expanded to 10 teams. The Giants averaged of only 107 fans per game in 2001. In 2002, the NECBL moved the Giants to the Southern Division, in a short-lived three division alignment. The Giants were runner-up to the

Newport Gulls The Newport Gulls are a wooden-bat, collegiate summer baseball team based in Newport, Rhode Island. The Newport Gulls Baseball Club is a member of both the New England Collegiate Baseball League and the NECBL's Coastal Division. Since 2001, the Gu ...

. The team lost two straight games to Danbury in the first round of the playoffs. In 2003, the Giants averaged only half as many fans at home games as at away games. In the playoffs, they were swept by the Torrington Twisters in the first round. Both these games were at Torrington, so the final Giants game at Palmer Field took place on July 21, 2003, where the Giants lost, 4-2, to the Newport Gulls, in front of 326 fans. Middletown Giants players who went on to

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

include

Rajai Davis Rajai Davis (; born October 19, 1980) is an American former professional baseball outfielder. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Pittsburgh Pirates, San Francisco Giants, Oakland Athletics, Toronto Blue Jays, Detroit Tigers, Clevel ...

, Chad Paronto, Mike Smith, Doug Clark, and

Earl Snyder Earl Clifford Snyder (born May 6, 1976) is a former Major League Baseball player who played in the Major Leagues for the Cleveland Indians and Boston Red Sox. In his short time in the majors, Snyder played first base, third base, and designated h ...

The Move to Holyoke

The Giants left Connecticut for Holyoke, MA in 2004, where they played their games at MacKenzie Stadium. The team saw success there in terms of attendance, averaging 548 fans a game, with a season total of 11,514. With a 17-25 record, though, the Giants failed to make the playoffs. In 2005, the team fared better in the standings, at 23-19, and while attendance dropped off somewhat, the team saw its first playoff berth in Holyoke. 1,100 fans came out for Game 1 of the first round against the Vermont Mountaineers, though the Giants fell, 9-0, and went on to lost Game 2 in Vermont. Despite a losing season in 2006, the Giants again saw a playoff berth, though they were once again swept by the Mountaineers in the first round. 2007 saw one of the most successful seasons for the Giants in nearly a decade, as they finished at 26-16, amidst a battle for first place in the NECBL North. The first round of the playoffs had Holyoke paired up with the Lowell All-Americans, and in the longest three game series in NECBL history, the Giants came out on top. After winning Game 1 in 11 innings on a walk-off walk, the

Lowell All-Americans The Old Orchard Beach Raging Tide was a collegiate summer baseball team based in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. It was a member of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League (FCBL), a wood-bat league with a 56-game regular season comprising 10 teams from ...

won Game 2 on a walk-off single, in the bottom of the 15th inning. The series returned to Holyoke for Game 3, where, in 10 innings, a walk-off sacrifice fly sent the Giants to the Northern Division Championship Series. Having finished the regular season in first place, the Giants had home field advantage for Game 1 against the Vermont Mountaineers, though lost 7-3. Game 2 seemed like it would be yet another extra inning contest for the Giants, but a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th by Vermont ended Holyoke's season.

North Shore Navigators

By December 2007, word had spread that the Giants would move to Lynn and play at Fraser Field under the name North Shore Navigators. Owner Phil Rosenfield announced the move in ''The Republican.'' Fraser Field had been home to the

North Shore Spirit The North Shore Spirit was a minor-league baseball team based in Lynn, Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007. The Spirit played in the Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball (the "Can-Am League," also known as the Northeast League), an ...

of the

Canadian-American Association of Professional Baseball The Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball, commonly known as the Can-Am League, was a professional, independent baseball league with teams in the Northeast United States and Eastern Canada, founded in 2005 as a reorganization of ...

, which ceased operation at the end of 2007 after five years. Rosenfield expressed regrets for leaving Holyoke and praised his staff. However, the

Concord Concord may refer to: Meaning "agreement" * Pact or treaty, frequently between nations (indicating a condition of harmony) * Harmony, in music * Agreement (linguistics), a change in the form of a word depending on grammatical features of other ...

Quarry Dogs immediately took the Giants' place in Holyoke as the Holyoke Blue Sox (now known as the Valley Blue Sox). The move to Lynn was the first move by the NECBL into

Greater Boston Greater Boston is the metropolitan region of New England encompassing the municipality of Boston (the capital of the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the most populous city in New England) and its surrounding areas. The region forms the northern a ...

area, having previously come no closer than Lowell. It also marked the abandonment of the original name of the last of the five charter NECBL teams. The Navigators finished their first season in Lynn in second place in the NECBL Northern Division, at 26-16, two games behind eventual 2008 champion

Sanford Mainers The Sanford Mainers are a collegiate summer baseball team based in Sanford, Maine. The team, a member of the New England Collegiate Baseball League The New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL) is a 13-team collegiate summer baseball woo ...

. The Navigators' 2.52 team ERA and .973 team fielding percentage were the best in the league. In the postseason, the Navigators were upset by the Keene Swampbats, who swept North Shore 11-7 in Lynn, then 1-0 in Keene. Home games were televised in several communities by LYNNCAM TV. In 2009, the Navigators finished third in the East Division at 20-21. In a first-round matchup with the second-seeded

, the Navigators split the first two games. In the decisive third game, the Navigators lost, 5-3. In 2010, the Navigators finished second in the East Division at 25-17. They beat the Sanford Mainers, two games to one, to advance the East Finals against defending champion

. They dropped the first game in Newport, but they came back with a home victory to force a deciding third game, which North Shore pulled out on the road. The Navigators moved on to face the

in the Championship Series. Both teams won a game at their home fields to set up a winner-take-all third game at Fraser Field in Lynn. The Navigators won a back-and-forth contest 5-4 to secure the team's 4th NECBL crown, the first as the Navigators.

League switches

Before the 2012 season, Tim Haley sold the Navigators to Pat Salvi's Salvi Sports New England, LLC, and the Navigators switched from the NECBL to the

, as part of the FCBL's expansion from 4 to 9 teams. The team was sold to the January family of

Swampscott Swampscott () is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, located up the coast from Boston in an area known as the North Shore. The population was 15,111 as of the 2020 United States Census. A former summer resort on Massachusetts Ba ...

before the 2020 season, which was mostly played without fans or income because of the city and state's response to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

. The Navigators returned to the NECBL for the 2021 season.

Postseason appearances

NECBL

* From 1995 - 2000, the top four NECBL teams played each other in a league semi-final.
** In 2021, every team entered the playoffs; those in 3rd through 7th place played a one-game "play-in", which North Shore won at Montpelier. A rain-shortened Game 2 against a decimated Upper Valley team was eventually ruled final and the Navigators were declared Division Champions.

FCBL

: * Added in the 2013 season.

References

External links

* Official website of th
North Shore NavigatorsOfficial Blog
of the North Shore Navigators {{Massachusetts Sports 1994 establishments in Connecticut Amateur baseball teams in Massachusetts Baseball teams established in 1994 Futures Collegiate Baseball League teams Middletown Giants New England Collegiate Baseball League teams Sports in Lynn, Massachusetts