Just 1 Minor Detail Left Before Baseball Ventures to Ventura

Minor league baseball apparently is set to return to Southern California next season for the first time since the Santa Barbara Dodgers folded 18 years ago.

The Ventura County Community College District Governing Board voted Tuesday night to allow a California League franchise owned by three Ventura County businessmen to play its home games at Ventura College.

Former major league players Ken McMullen and Jim Colborn and their business partner, retired funeral director Jim Biby, must now win approval from the league’s other nine owners to move the Class-A franchise from Lodi.

They expect the move to be approved at a meeting of the league owners Friday night in San Jose.

“I don’t see any particular problem,” said California League President Joe Gagliardi, who toured the Ventura College facilities two weeks ago. “I like the facility, but the decision is up to the board.”

Still to be determined is where McMullen and his partners will get their players.

They have been talking for several weeks to the Toronto Blue Jays about entering into a player-development contract with the American League team. Two weeks ago, the Blue Jays sent Wayne Morgan, their Western region scouting director, to inspect the Ventura College facilities.

“He was very impressed,” Gordon Ashe, administrator of player personnel for the Blue Jays, said by phone Monday from Toronto.

Ashe, however, said the Blue Jays are apprehensive about entering into a working agreement with a West Coast franchise. Under terms of a working agreement, a major league team farms players, managers and coaches to a minor league affiliate. Salaries and meals are paid for by the big league team. The minor league owner markets the team and provides a place to play.

Ashe said the Blue Jays are considering other franchises for the one-year contract.

“We’re basically an Eastern club--most of our minor league clubs are also in the East--so that would be our first preference,” Ashe said. “We have no other clubs in the West, so it makes it that much more expensive for travel for our coaches and players.

“But we have to weigh what’s available in the East against the opportunity in Ventura.”

Ashe said the Blue Jays hope to make a decision before major league baseball’s winter meetings Dec. 6-13 in San Diego.

If McMullen’s group does not land a player-development contract with a big league club, it may have to form a co-op, in which it would get players from several teams, or sign players on its own. McMullen, Colborn and Biby would serve as manager and coaches.

Even with the lack of a working agreement still hanging over its head, the group was in good spirits Tuesday night. McMullen and his partners have been looking for a place to play since they paid $125,000 in March to buy the franchise from Stockton businesswoman Michele Sprague.

“I think, finally, we’ve got something to build off of,” Biby said. “It’s been a lot of time and a lot of wheel spinning. I think this is going to give us an opportunity to prove to people that this project is good for the community.”

Said a smiling Colborn: “We still have a few steps to go, but this is as far as we’ve been so far.”

The board voted 4-0, with president Ruth Oren abstaining, to approve development of a contract between Ventura College and McMullen’s group. The board will consider approval of the contract next month.

The contract will call for McMullen’s group, which hopes to have a permanent stadium built at Freedom Park in Camarillo in time for the 1987 season, to play one season at Ventura College.