FINDLAY, Ohio — Baseball fans in Hancock County will have a new team to root for in the summer of 2025 as the Flag City Sluggers have been accepted into the Great Lakes Summer Collegiate League.
The Sluggers will join in as the league's eighth franchise, competing against teams throughout Michigan and Ohio.
Roughly seven months ago, this vision of bringing baseball to Findlay came from team founder Joe Fenimore, who called it "a backyard idea." This spring, however, truly got the ball rolling after they officially bought into the GLSCL.
Work then began on a team name and logo, which was unveiled on June 5. It features "Slider" the blue slug swinging a bat and surrounded by red, white and blue colors. On top of the logo reveal, the Sluggers team store is now available for fans to purchase merchandise.
"It's surreal, feels like yesterday we just started working on it," director of social media Angela LaRosa said. "Took a couple of weeks to get our website out and now it's really moving."
A group of four student interns have spearheaded this process: general manager Joe Kroeger, assistant manager Charles Anderson, marketing intern Jacob Klein and social media intern Ethan Franks.
There are still logistics to finalize, though, like finding a field to play on. Expectations currently point to the Marathon Diamonds, located north of Findlay near I-75, which the University of Findlay baseball team calls home.
There are also sponsorships and housing of players to consider, not to mention game-day operations.
Yet, with a year to determine various details, the Findlay community is already buzzing around the reality that college baseball players will soon converge to Flag City, USA.
The full roster, including the head coach and players, will be determined at a later date before next season. Until then, merchandise sales and donations are helping fund the debut of the Flag City Sluggers.