The Golden Baseball League, based in San Ramon, California, was an independent baseball league. It later merged with the Northern League and the United Baseball League to form the North American League in the western United States, western Canada and Mexico.
The GBL was not affiliated with Major League Baseball or the organized Minor League Baseball system, but has featured players with MLB experience (Rickey Henderson, Jose Canseco, Alex Arias, Bud Smith, Desi Wilson, Jose Lima, Hideki Irabu, Junior Spivey, Mark Prior). It was formed in 2004 and began play on May 26, 2005. The GBL had a drug-testing policy that has the same standards as the Olympics, becoming the first baseball league to do so in North America.
Officials in the baseball industry have stated the GBL level of play to be at the Double-A level. Over 100 players had been sold to MLB organizations since it began play, with six players already making it to a major league uniform – Adam Pettyjohn, Scott Richmond, Chris Jakubauskas, Sergio Romo, Bobby Cramer, and Daniel Nava.
The GBL's presenting partner was Safeway Inc. Other investors in the GBL included Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak, former National Football League players Mike Sherrard and Christian Okoye, and executives from Cisco Systems, Taleo and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
The Golden Baseball League combined with United League Baseball and the Northern League into a new North American League for the 2011 season to form the first nationwide independent professional baseball league.
Read more about Golden Baseball League: History, Drug Testing, Current Franchises, Television
Famous quotes containing the words golden, baseball and/or league:
“Ah, Sun-flower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller’s journey is done:
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“How, in one short century, has this ersatz sport so strangled the consciousness of the country in the grip of its flabby tentacles that the mention of women’s baseball gets no reaction other than blank amazement?”
—Darlene Mehrer, As quoted in Women in Baseball. Ch. 6, by Gai Ingham Berlage (1994)
“Stereotypes fall in the face of humanity. You toodle along, thinking that all gay men wear leather after dark and should never, ever be permitted around a Little League field. And then one day your best friend from college, the one your kids adore, comes out to you.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)