From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Green_Hot_Rods
The Bowling Green Hot Rods are a Minor League Baseball team of the South Atlantic League and the High-A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays. They are located in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and play their home games at Bowling Green Ballpark, which opened in 2009. The team is named for the city's connections to the automotive and racing industries such as the National Corvette Museum, Holley Carburetor, Beech Bend Raceway, and the Bowling Green Assembly Plant.
Founded in 2009, they were members of the Class A South Atlantic League in their inaugural season and played in the Class A Midwest League from 2010 to 2020. They were elevated to the High-A classification and placed in the High-A East in 2021, but this was renamed the South Atlantic League in 2022.
The Hot Rods began life as the Wilmington Waves, one of two South Atlantic League expansion teams for the 2001 season. However, the Waves' stay at Brooks Field in Wilmington, North Carolina, lasted but a single season. They became the South Georgia Waves when the team was moved to the Paul Eames Sports Complex in Albany, Georgia, for the 2002 season. The team retained the moniker name when it again moved to Golden Park in Columbus, Georgia, just before the 2003 campaign. One year later, in 2004, the franchise changed names and became the Columbus Catfish.
In April 2008, ownership moved the team to Bowling Green effective for the 2009 season under the new nickname "Hot Rods." Their first manager as the Hot Rods was Matt Quatraro.[3]
In 2010, the Hot Rods and the Lake County Captains moved from the South Atlantic League to the Midwest League,[4] a plan meant to alleviate travel expenses associated with routine road trips as well as player movement within the teams' respective organizations.
In December 2013, Art Solomon, owner of the Hot Rods for five years, sold the team to Manhattan Capital Sports headed by Stuart Katzoff.[5] The Hot Rods have been widely recognized for their promotional efforts. In 2009, the team's "What Could've Been Night" was named Promotion of the Year by MiLB.com.[6] In 2010, Hot Rods Assistant General Manager Greg Coleman was honored as Marketer of the Year by the Professional Marketing Association.
In September 2018, the team was sold to Jack Blackstock who had previously been a minority investor in the team.[7]
That year, the Hot Rods won 90 games and captured their first ever Midwest League title, under then manager Craig Albernaz.
Along with Major League Baseball's reorganization of the minors after the 2020 season, the Hot Rods were invited to remain a Tampa Bay affiliate but be elevated to High-A in 2021 as members of the High-A East.[8] [9] They won the Southern Division title by ending the season with a first-place 82–36 record.[10] They then won the High-A East championship by defeating the Greensboro Grasshoppers, 3–2, in a best-of-five series.[11] Jeff Smith won the league's Manager of the Year Award.[12] In 2022, the High-A East became known as the South Atlantic League, the name historically used by the regional circuit prior to the 2021 reorganization.[13]