Roswell Aliens

[spider]

What ever happened to the Roswell Aliens baseball team? did they ever play a game? I was told that the league never happened. That's a shame it was a coool name for a baseball team.

[HeadFirst]

First I ever heard of it. What league?

Cool name, though. But oftentimes someone thinks up a name, assigns this "team" to a quasi-fictitious league, maybe even creates a small website, and posts to a message board such as this, and suddenly the team is given some sense of reality when in fact it never really existed and was never going to exist.

I have a cool name for a team in the western panhandle of West Virginia: The Wheeling Dealers. Thought it up myself. But it will probably never exist.

[oldfatguy]

I think they were part of Bob Lipp's vision - the Southwestern or something like that. Never got off the ground. Maybe they were going to be part of the expansion of the Arizona/Mexico league that went 20 games or so before crashing.

[Dan K]

The Aliens were supposed to be part of the Southwestern League that planned to start play in 2004 or 2005 after its predecessor, the Arizona-Mexico League lasted only a few weeks of its inaugural 2003 season. The league organizer, Bob Lipp, then decided to look into Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas markets and the league was to be called the Longhorn League.

A recent visit to the old Southwestern League web site had information on the Borderland Baseball League (www.borderbaseball.com), which is a semi-pro league that will own and operate all teams and start play in 2006. The league hopes to have six teams in total and its first four are Bisbee-Douglas, San Luis (AZ) Gila Monsters, Borderland Dust Devils (Socorro, TX), and Nogales (AZ) Outlaws. Maybe the Aliens will return?

[skippy]

A visit to www.warrenballpark.com where Lipp had supposedly placed a team in Bisbee Arizona, states that Lipp has a job in pro baseball now and the team will no longer exist.

Hopefully, Lipp is done trotting around the Southwest making false promises, etc.

That's several teams/towns in his "leagues" that were taken in by his silliness.

[Dan K]

I think he was also trying a revival of the Piedmont League. Was he also involved in trying to form the Sunset League, a fall baseball league based in Mexico?

[oldfatguy]

He was trying to get baseball going wherever he could, not a bad goal to have. I haven't seen anything on his efforts in a while. Hopefully he hasn't given up - gotta admire anyone who wants to keep indy baseball going.

[skippy]

After reading about his exploits in the Arizona-Mexico league, it is obvious that he has absolutely, 100% no idea what he was/is doing. Also, he might want to try actually setting these things up before announcing their existence.

While trying to do something is admirable, not learning from your previous mistakes is not.

[oldfatguy]

Well, yeah... but I was trying to be nice. :-)

I wonder who gave him a job?

[skippy]

I think he is the new president of Canadian-Mexican Baseball League, or perhaps the new independent Rhode Island League.

[HeadFirst]

The Rhode Island League?

You're kidding.

I'm presuming this isn't a professional-level venture -- wood-bat collegiate?

By the way, all I know is what I read in the papers, but my readings would lead me to concur with Skippy's assessment of Bob Lipp. He seemed to come into these towns, promise them professional baseball (which would probably be an economic infeasibility given some of the tiny market sizes involved), and not have the financial backing to keep it going for more than a month. I mean, I'd like to create a nifty independent pro baseball league just by looking at a map and picking out cities represented by the bigger dots. But that doesn't mean that such a thing will ever come to existence. Not that it is ignoble to try -- I wouldn't be happier if Lipp could make such a league succeed. But he does seem to be, at least based upon past results, a bit ill-skilled to bring together a viable league, and ill-financed to put up with virtually inevitable losses.

Find bigger dots, for one thing.

[kahunakats]

Bob Lipp has explained that he has left the Border Baseball League (formerly the Southwest League, Sunset League, Arizona-Mexico League, Longhorn League, Piedmont League) to take a professional baseball job in HAWAII. Anyone know of any plans for baseball in Hawaii?

[oldfatguy]

I'm looking at a map of Hawaii, trying to find dots. :-)

[spider]

Well let's start an independent baseball league. We can start with four teams and see what happens. I get the Roswell Aliens and will be the first team in the league. We can start play next year.

We can charge ourseleves $25,000 franchise fee for the first year so that we can generate enough capital to run the league.

Any takers, we need to keep the cities close so that we can be a bus league.
What do you think?

[goodtobemarc]

The GBL is looking at putting two teams in Hawaii next season.

[nksports]

The Aliens were supposed to be part of the Southwestern League that planned to start play in 2004 or 2005 after its predecessor, the Arizona-Mexico League lasted only a few weeks of its inaugural 2003 season. The league organizer, Bob Lipp, then decided to look into Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas markets and the league was to be called the Longhorn League.

A recent visit to the old Southwestern League web site had information on the Borderland Baseball League (www.borderbaseball.com), which is a semi-pro league that will own and operate all teams and start play in 2006. The league hopes to have six teams in total and its first four are Bisbee-Douglas, San Luis (AZ) Gila Monsters, Borderland Dust Devils (Socorro, TX), and Nogales (AZ) Outlaws. Maybe the Aliens will return?

A proposed team for Dodge City in that league, after it all fell apart, became the Dodge City Desparados of the Walter Johnson League (amateur summer college league affiliated with the National Baseball Congress.)

[goodtobemarc]

I have everyday dealings with Bob Lipp. We are a group in Las Cruces looking to bring pro ball here.

The initial plan was to have Dodge City part of an indy league along with Amarillo, etc.
Part of the plan that Lipp incorporates into putting a team together is......half of the sponsorship money needed the first year must come from the local community. Being an independent league the budget was in the 6-figure range. Everyone in Dodge pushed for NBC baseball so NBC it was! The 30-50K budget was easily attainable.
The pro team did not "fall apart" He went into town to put together a team. The people of Dodge City spoke. He gave them what they wanted. He named the team, his children designed to logo, he got an office in the mall and went to work!
Due to his grandmother becoming very ill, the two coaches offered Lipp a buyout. He accepted.
However, he did continue to post news on the website and the team photo on the site is also his work.
Dodge City went 3-2 in the NBC World Series! Just making the WS was a first-time feat for a new team.

As far as you guys picking him apart for the ArizonaMexico League. Let it be known that he was the owner of two of the four teams, Cananea and Tecate. Abe Erdman was the operating owner. Their two teams wanted to continue in 2003. They even offered to take over Nogales but Bisbee-Douglas told the board that they had run out of money. Bisbee-Douglas, when asked to pay the June 2003 dues, told the board it would not be paid. The board voted 4-0 to stop play.

We received an email from John Guy (kahunakats) several months ago, he posted an earlier message on this board.........
The email told us that Bob Lipp was thrown out of the league office by the police due to him not paying rent. Bob provided a statement from the landlord saying rent was on time, the office was left clean and she gave him a recomendation! I have the email if anyone would like it forwarded.
Guy is also quoted in the Douglas paper saying he ran off with $55,000.00 of league money. The league was provided with monthly accounting and statements from each and everyone of the league tells that story. Lipp, himself, had to deposit $400.00 of his own money to bring the account current.

Bisbee-Douglas left a trail of bad checks throughout southern Arizona, and their Incorporation was revoked by the State of Arizona due to non-filings of reports and taxes! To this day no one has ever seen the book of the team. Lipp has asked publicly three times for the books to no avail.

We have an interest in Mr. Lipp. We believe in what his is trying to accomplish.

[oldfatguy]

Interesting stuff... a bit of revisionist history, perhaps, but I'm sure there's some truth in there, on both sides. He said, she said, blah blah blah.

Either way, people make mistakes - teams and leagues fail and succeed for a lot of reasons. When they fail, nobody gets paid - that's how a business failure works, when you can't pay your bills. When a sports team or league fails, it tends to be a little more high-profile than if a dry cleaners fails, though the bitterness from ex-employees is about the same.

I remember reading an article somewhere, back in the AZ-Mex League days, about Mr. Guy in Bisbee - he made no attempt to be humble about his abilities, comparing himself to Bill Veeck, etc. I think it had something to do with the Ted Williams popsicle night - classless, to be sure, but garnered attention. Even so, it seemed a bit early in Mr. Guy's career for him to align himself next to the King of baseball promotion.

Anyway... it'd be a good thing to get indy ball anywhere that can support it. Indy ball done right is an art.

I do babble, thank you for reading.

[kahunakats]

In answer to the original question, here is the account from the ROSWELL newspaper:

The league was supposed to begin play this summer with teams in Roswell, Alamogordo, Las Cruces and Juarez, Mexico. However, stadium and economic issues in every city but Roswell forced the postponement of the inaugural season until 2005.

Gill was told by Karabatsos and Lipp that he would have to find another job over the summer to supplement his income before coming back to the team in September.

With the original intention of returning to the Aliens, Gill ended up meeting Keith Hallal, Norwich’s GM, in Phoenix for a few hours. The following day Gill was ready to move to Connecticut.

“(Hallal) called me the next day and offered me the job, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll take it,’” Gill said. “I understand baseball, it’s a pretty big move up to get in the Eastern League.”

It was essentially guaranteed Gill’s days with the Aliens were over after he angered Lipp and Karabatsos by returning the money he had collected for tickets and advertisements before leaving Roswell.

With the future of the league very much up in the air, Gill returned all the checks the Aliens had received from local businesses and ticket buyers with the intention of rebilling in October when the league was more stable.

“I’m not going to collect all this money and let the league take off with it,” Gill said. “... I’m an up-and-up person.”

He’s also up and away. Just as are the plans for the league to forge on apparently.

I have no idea why the Bisbee-Douglas Copper Kings keep coming into the discussion since they have nothing to do with the Roswell Aliens. Our books, by the way, are our own private property and need not be shown to Bob Lipp or anyone else. We had a tax ID number as a legitimate Arizona corporation and paid our taxes, social security, unemployment compensation, sales taxes and worker's compensation through the date of our dissolving as a working corporation. The league, it turned out, had none of these things because the President of the league failed to incorporate the league, gain federal or state tax ID numbers or file taxes with either the federal or the state authorities.

John Guy

[shoeless1920]

The GBL is looking at putting two teams in Hawaii next season.

Major League Baseball used to operate a four-team off-season minor league called the Hawaii Winter League which played from the first of October till shortly before Thanksgiving (why they used the word "winter" for a fall league is beyond me unless they were emphasizing the off-season essence). With two teams on Oahu, one on Hawaii and one on Maui, transportation very soon became cost-prohibitive despite all travel being intrastate and they finally opted to move everything closer to home on the mainland and make it a bus league before ultimately disolving it altogether. During this time their Arizona Fall League was also in operation and they finally got rid of that second league. If the GBL intends to have two teams in Hawaii and the rest of them on the mainland, they're going to be looking at some ferocious transportation expenses. It may turn out to be no worse than the Northern League currently experiences with Calgary and Edmonton being too far for the other teams to bus to/from but it'll still cost a bundle. It's my understanding that financially the GBL didn't meet its expectations in its inaugural season so it's intriguing that they would seriously consider spreading themselves out so geographically thin as to include Hawaii for its sophomore season.

[goodtobemarc]

A call to several State of Arizona offices revealed some good info about the old Bisbee baseball team.

The corporation was dissolved by the State of Arizona for non-filings of corporation tax returns and annual report.

A warning was given to mailed to the corporation office and there was no compliance.

Here is the link directly from the State of Arizona website.

http://starpas.cc.state.az.us/cgi-bin/wspd_cgi.sh/WService=wsbroker1/names-detail.p?name-id=10491816&type=CORPORATION

Another call to the state revealed that state with-holding tax returns are due and unfiled.

Our investment group has written statements from the officials from each of the other teams in the ArizonaMexico League, along with one from the sales manager from the Bisbee team that also was in attendance at the Bisbee meeting. Canarea and Tecate were current and paid up with their bills. Nogales was rescued by one of the Bisbee shareholders, about one month, long enough to find new owners.

When Bisbee called the special meeting in Bisbee, it was for one reason, and one reason only. It was announced that the Bisbee team had began to bounce checks and that there was no money for the Bisbee team to continue.

Bob Lipp and his partner, Abe Erdman from Kansas, offered to take over Nogales for an extended eight-days (two 4-game series) and that would buy time for Bisbee to either sell another stock offering or sell more sponsorships to keep running.

The speaker for Bisbee said that the team was done and that there was no more money. The sales manager reported that he had found a buyer for the Bisbee team but had no written intent or confirmation to that fact. When asked when the buyer would come forward, no concrete answer could be given.

It is correct that there were many problems associated with the league from the beginning.

At the December 2003 league meeting Abe Erdman asked for a vote to start the first season in 2004. His concern was that there was not enough time to cut all the red tape associated with the Mexico-USA border, immigration and working visas. The board voted 1-3 to deny that request.

As far a the league not incorporating. Each written statement shows that it was requested each and every month to obtain the money from each team, so that the league could file the necessary papers. Each month it was passed on to the next meeting.

Mr. Guy is quoted in two newspapers that Lipp ran off with league money in an amount of excess of $50,000. But, league expenses were given to each and every team during each meeting. The day the league suspended operations, the league account was brought UP to a zero balance with a $400.00 contribution from Lipp.

Lipp was hired by the league in December of 2003. His last paycheck was never received.

Our concerns were brought about from an email to us several months ago from John Guy. That email told us that the police removed Lipp from the league office for non-payment of rent. A written statement and a phone call to the landlord shows the complete opposite. All rents were paid and the office was left clean with a recommendation. The landlord then told us that she, on behalf of her and the other sponsors in Douglas, had called the Bisbee team office the day after the team went out of business. She wanted to at least get the banners that were on the outfield wall. The landlord had helped the team obtain the sponsorships in Douglas, so when the team just quit it caused undue hardship upon her and she wanted to at least help the other sponsors get the signbanners.

The Bisbee team office was just left and the landlord of the Bisbee team office had to sieze the furniture and computer for non-payment of team rent!

To sum it up......................Bisbee was the reason why the AZMX suspended operations that June day in 2003!

Let's review what happened in Bisbee:
Checks started bouncing.
The team calls an emergency league meeting in Bisbee.
The team did not pay the June dues when requested.
The office was just left.
Rent was in arrears.
Books were not kep and the proper paperwork was not filed to the state.
The team INC. was closed by the state for non-compliance.
The GM (John Guy) to top it off, continues to tell lies.

Maybe John Guy, you will think twice before you begin to talk your untruths!

[skippy]

The point of all this........


Don't try and run a baseball team if you don't have experience.

When the emperor has no clothes, what type of followers will he attract.

See ABA basketball for what happens when these types of leagues actually get off the ground.

[goodtobemarc]

Mr. Guy represented to the league, (as I have copies of his written emails to the league), that he has years of experience in the professional sports field.

He stated that he was the sales manager of the Phoenix Eclipse. However, after the Bisbee team closure, reports came in that Guy did indeed work for the Eclipse but only as a ticket taker.

Can anyone confirm what was his exact role with the Eclipse?


On this webpage, Guy represents himself as sales manager:

http://www.auctioncorp.com/auctions/index.php?a=uview&user=116&&PHPSESSID=3b728b9d3e4cf0adbf848c1246fafb41

On this webpage he represents himself as GM of the Bisbee team:

http://www.baseball-fever.com/member.php?userid=6280

Wouldn't he put down that he was sales manager of a pro baseketball team intstead of GM of a baseball team that only existed for 16 games?

[rams80]

Not when the pro basketball team was a dead ABA team.

[kahunakats]

Mr. Lipp:

At least have the guts to sign your own posts instead of hiding behind a pseudoname claiming to be from Las Cruces, New Mexico. Anyone with intelligence can figure out that someone from Las Cruces who has never met me and has no interest in a baseball venture would never spend so much time creating posts claiming to have all this written documentation about the Bisbee-Douglas Copper Kings-a team which folded two years ago. Let it go-Bisbee and the former owners are not interested in having anything to do with you or your purported ventures. I make no secret as to who I am when I post messages to other readers-at least have the courage to do the same.

John Guy

[oldfatguy]

"Did too"

"Did not"

"Did too"

"Did not"

"Did too, I have proof."

"Why dwell on the past?"

Are these two married?

[wilburboy]

He said/She said

I'm just following along for the drama. Beats the heck out of Desperate Housewives.

I actually had an interest in seeing if Mr. Lipp could pull off an independent league right after the AZ-MX folded. He seemed to be pulling together a lot of interest in the SWL in 2004 but that seemed to evaporate pretty quickly. I don't know what he had planned in teaming with a DJ from NYC to resurrect the Piedmont League, but that never seemed to get past the naming stage. I tried to follow him on his travels through Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas looking for homes for his teams, but it seemed like a lot of press was generated with little action. I had wondered if Lipp was actually going to pull something together or whether it would all fizzle until the Dodge City team came along. I have to admit I was surprised at the success of the NBC team.
So, if "goodtobemarc" really does represent a group in Las Cruces trying to get an independent team established (Dust Devils? or how about the Peppas?), how does he feel about Mr. Lipp's current ventures in SoCal/Az on the Baja League? Seems like he is spreading himself a little thin to be trying to establish more than one league at once. :shock:

[goodtobemarc]

We are a group of people in Las Cruces and are aware of the new league.

I asked if we could be part of the Fall league but with play scheduled for November and December that leaves us out here. It can dip into the 40s at night in this area.

Marc