The making of a dynasty
by FRANK JOLLEY, guest columnist, July 31, 2024
Move over New York Yankees of the 1950s, Boston Celtics of the 1960s, New England Patriots of the 2000s and any other established sports dynasty.
Make room for the Leesburg Lightning!
Leesburg secured its place in history with a 3-2 win Sunday against DeLand in the Florida Collegiate Summer League championship series. The win clinched the best-of-3 series and earned the team its fifth Whiting Cup -- named for Sara Whiting, founder of the FCSL and presented annually to the league champion.
It was the Leesburg's second title in as many years, a feat accomplished only one other time -- by the Winter Park Diamond Dawgs in 2013 and 2014 -- since the FCSL debuted in 2004.
Not sure that rises to dynastic levels?
Let's take a harder look at Leesburg's resume.
The Lightning have won three of the last four FCSL championships and have reached the title series for the last five seasons.
No other FCSL franchise -- current or former -- has ever managed a similar run of excellence.
Still not convinced?
OK, well ...
Since making their debut in 2007 in front of -- what else -- a raucous, capacity crowd at Pat Thomas Stadium-Buddy Lowe Field, the Lightning have played for the league championship on 11 occasions. In other words, in 61% of its 18 seasons, Leesburg has earned a shot at a title.
Over that same span, Winter Park has played for the Whiting Cup nine times followed by Sanford with six chances at glory.
To be fair, Winter Park and Leesburg have won an equal number of FCSL titles since 2007 and Sanford has tallied four. Also, the River Rats (2004) and Diamond Dawgs (2006) won championships during the FCSL's first three years of existence -- BEFORE the Lightning was born -- so technically Winter Park has six, all-time, and Sanford five.
For those who like to occasionally tweak -- and who doesn't -- how's this ... since the Lightning won championships in two of their first three seasons, if Leesburg been part of the FCSL since 2004, chances are it would've won at least two more titles for a total of seven.
So based on modern math or the algorithms -- whatever that is -- or just plain ol' common sense, Sanford or Winter Park would have at least one fewer championship -- four or five, respectively. However, since Lightning fans are a compassionate bunch, the Dawgs and Rats can hold on to the current number of championships they are credited with in the annals.
That was fun.
A trip to fantasyland is always fun.
Back to reality.
While Winter Park has matched Leesburg's trophy haul during the "Lightning Era" -- 2007 to present -- and Sanford is visible in the rear-view mirror, neither can boast of the Lightning's level of sustained excellence.
For starters, Leesburg has finished with a won/loss record of .500 or better in 15 of its 18 seasons. And since that muggy evening on June 7, 2007 -- date of the Lightning's debut against, who else, Winter Park -- Leesburg has compiled a record of 406-286, a .587 winning percentage.
Sanford has carded 12 seasons of .500 or better since 2007 and Winter Park just nine.
Even more impressive, Leesburg has fashioned a 105-54 record -- a .660 winning percentage -- since 2020, the year its current run of five straight appearances in the league championship series began.
Over that same span, Sanford has an 83-59 mark (a .585 winning percentage). Winter Park is just 75-79 (.478), with three losing records and one that leveled at .500.
So what is in the water in Leesburg?
Besides trophy bass ... alligators ... and snakes.
Truth be told, the Lightning's success has nothing to do with the water.
It's about a community that loved its baseball team before it even existed and have shown that love by packing the ballpark in record numbers since Game One.
It's about players who recognize and feel that adoration, and repay it by leaving everything on the field.
It's about a head coach -- Rich Billings -- who just completed his 10th season as field general and is the winningest (233-156 record) in FCSL history. The consummate baseball lifer, Billings learned the game as a youngster on the many diamonds in Leesburg and is now helping the next generation achieve their dreams.
It's about a front office that boasted it would never charge admission for a home game -- and has never reneged on that promise -- while working tirelessly to turn nights at the ballpark into a baseball Xanadu.
It's about residents -- host families -- opening their homes to strangers -- Lightning players and interns -- providing the ultimate home away from home, complete with hot meals and a sense of family. By the time the season ends, residents and strangers have almost always become friends and many remain so for life.
It's about a city whose officials welcomed the team from the start and provided it with one of the most historic homes in all of Florida -- Pat Thomas Stadium-Buddy Lowe Field. The first ballpark in the state with lights, "The Pat" has played host to some of the greatest who have ever played the game, including Hank Aaron.
Without question, the Leesburg Lightning is the FCSL's version of the Beatles. And like John, Paul, George and Ringo, the Lightning formed the perfect union and have enjoyed unimaginable success.
The record book -- specifically, the more-than-2,000-page opus compiled by John Meier, Leesburg's statistician nonpareil -- is the Lightning's version of "Rubber Soul," "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "Abbey Road," or any other masterpiece produced by those previously mentioned lads from Liverpool.
Looking back, however, the Lightning's success shouldn't come as a surprise, especially considering Leesburg's baseball tradition.
The city was a baseball hotbed long before the Lightning ever set up shop. Leesburg High School -- led by legendary head coach Buddy Lowe -- won the Class 3A state championship in 1977, and finished as state runner up on two other occasions (1974 and 1985).
Lowe's ties to the area extend back to, at least, 1956 when he played for the Leesburg Braves -- a Florida State League affiliate of the Milwaukee Braves. After his playing and his coaching days had ended -- when he retired as coach, no other coach in Florida has won more games -- Lowe became an ambassador for the game and a conduit for its past and present.
When it was clear that Leesburg would be awarded a franchise in the FCSL, Lowe was asked to join its Board of Directors. The Lightning jumped at the chance to share his knowledge of the game and his encyclopedic memory of baseball history with fans when he and Roger Croft teamed up on the Lightning's radio and internet broadcasts in 2007 and 2008.
The pairing proved every bit as informative and entertaining as the legendary national broadcast team of Vin Scully and Joe Garagiola. Lowe and Croft had an undeniable on-air chemistry and seamlessly wove a combination of homespun humor and stories of Leesburg's baseball lore with each broadcast.
While many believe baseball in Leesburg began with Lowe -- and that might be correct, to a point -- the city's love affair with the game actually began more than a century ago.
The Philadelphia Phillies introduced Leesburg to professional baseball when it turned the town into its spring training home for a three-year span. Between 1922 and 1924, the Phillies worked out the kinks of winter at Cooke Field, a ballpark located on the site now occupied by the Cutrale Citrus plant.
To be clear, the Phillies stay in Leesburg was largely uneventful. The players might even have been accused of loitering, considering the team's regular-season record during its run in town was a pitiful 162-296.
That doesn't mean the Phillies provided no highlights. For instance, on March 14, 1923, Philadelphia hosted the St. Louis Cardinals and Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby, at Cooke Field.
But it seemed more that many of the highlights at Cooke Field during the Phillies stay had little to do baseball.
One, for example, involved famed sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who had a home in Leesburg. According to accounts from the Orange County Regional History Center, Oakley showed up at the ballpark in 1923 to showcase her shooting skills in what became one of her last public appearances.
The history center noted that Oakley, “balanced on one leg and shot at pennies tossed into the air, hitting a dozen without a miss." In addition, when "she blasted five eggs … tossed into the air while she shot left-handed, the Phillies ‘broke into applause.’”
Following the Phillies exit from Leesburg, Cooke Field became home to the Leesburg Spiders, a franchise in the Negro baseball leagues, from 1925 through 1930.
Once the Spiders' run had ended, Cooke Field began to show its age. Made largely of wood, which decayed rapidly in the monsoonal rains and broiling Florida sun, the ballpark needed constant attention and restoration, and eventually fell into disrepair.
Its replacement, a concrete and steel facility built on an island in Venetian Gardens and named, fittingly, the Ballpark at Venetian Gardens, was a Works Progress Administration project and constructed at a cost of $19,000.
The new facility -- which was renamed Pat Thomas Stadium in 1972 and Pat Thomas Stadium-Buddy Lowe Field in 2003 -- hosted it first game on March 21, 1937. From the time it opened until 1968, with the exception of 11 seasons -- 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1954, 1955, 1958, 1959, 1962, 1963 and 1964 -- when there was no team in town, the ballpark played home to myriad minor league teams in the Florida State League.
The ballpark's first resident was the Gondoliers, an independent team not affiliated with any major league franchise. In their 1937 debut season in the FSL, the Gondoliers finished fourth with a 71-67 record.
The Gondoliers recorded the FSL's best regular-season reason in 1938 (87-52). In the postseason, however, Leesburg's hopes for a championship were snuffed out when the Gainesville G-Men, an affiliate of the Cleveland Indians, pulled off an upset in the championship series.
In 1966, the Leesburg Athletics, an affiliate of the then-Kansas City Athletics, fashioned a magical season. With Allen Lewis stealing a mind-boggling 116 bases, the Athletics -- owner's of the second-best record in the regular season -- knocked off St. Petersburg, managed by Sparky Anderson, to win its only FSL title.
Over the years, Leesburg has enjoyed affiliations with a myriad of major league teams, including the Pittsburgh Pirates, Milwaukee Braves, Baltimore Orioles and Kansas City/Oakland Athletics. The Brooklyn Dodgers, with Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges and Roy Campanella, played an exhibition game against the Leesburg Dodgers -- curiously, not a Brooklyn affiliate -- at the "Ballpark" in 1949.
Baseball fans everywhere would do almost anything to be able to brag about a history as rich and steeped in tradition as Leesburg's.
And the Lightning have elevated that history and tradition to the next level.
Families in New York, no doubt, sit around and brag about the successes of the New York Yankees or the Mets. They talk about the exploits of Mickey Mantle or of watching Reggie Jackson become Mr. October after hitting three home runs on three consecutive swings in the 1977 World Series.
Others remember Tom Seaver, Darryl Strawberry and Keith Hernandez. Almost surely, some still wax poetic about Bill Buckner, much to the chagrin of their brethren in Boston (if you know, you know).
Leesburg and Lake County households can do likewise, of course on a somewhat smaller scale. They can harken back to the time they saw the Lightning play their first game or their first championship -- a 6-0 win on Aug. 5, 2007, against the Altamonte Springs Snappers at Tropicana Field.
And their second ... third ... fourth ... and fifth FCSL title.
That's what fans can do when they are part of a dynasty.
Celebrate Lightning Nation!