EVERETT — Because professional baseball in Everett has been a big hit for more than three decades, one might assume the ballclub was always destined to arrive and thrive.
But that’s not how it was.
The fact is, if Bob and Margaret Bavasi had not tired of their fledgling legal careers back in the early 1980s, and if a struggling franchise in Walla Walla had not come up for sale about the same time, and if the Bavasis’ search for a new home had not led them circuitously to Everett, and if a bunch of city leaders had not pooled their efforts with uncommon unity, none of this would have happened.
But it did, and the marriage of Everett and minor-league baseball turned out to be a good one right from the start.
Three decades and one year since the inaugural 1984 season — they were the Everett Giants back then, becoming the AquaSox in 1995 — the team enjoys a beautiful ballpark, a large and loyal fan base, and a successful affiliation with the nearby Seattle Mariners. They are pluses that suggest an equally bright future and for that, Bob Bavasi said, “I’m delighted.”
Baseball in Everett “has done what we hoped it would do,” he added. “It’s stood the test of time.”
Seventeen years after they sold the team, the Bavasis maintain a primary residence in Everett, though they also own a home in San Diego. They have stayed busy with other pursuits, some still related to baseball.
As Bob Bavasi explained, “I don’t have an actual job, but I hate to say that I’m retired because I’ve always got stuff to do.”
Although neither of the Bavasis has been to an AquaSox game in years, they are gratified to see the community still embracing the ballclub they brought to town.
“I think everybody’s found out what we found out (in the beginning), and that’s that this is really a great baseball town,” Bob Bavasi said. “There are great people here and they treat (the game and the team) with respect. That’s what I think I like the most, and everybody that’s come after us has felt the same way about this town.”
The Bavasis met as law students at the University of San Diego in the late 1970s. Margaret was preparing a paper on labor arbitration in professional sports, and an acquaintance suggested she meet a fellow student with a sports background. An extensive background, at it turned out, since Bob Bavasi had worked in the front office of the San Diego Padres where his father, longtime major league executive Buzzy Bavasi, was president and part owner.
Not only did Bob and Margaret end up meeting, they hit it off and were soon engaged and then married. They practiced law for a few years — Bob was a trial attorney in civil litigation and personal injury, while Margaret specialized in labor law — but both had a yearning to do something different.
“We weren’t happy practicing law,” Margaret Bavasi said. “Bob was OK with it, but I was not. Our hours were so long, and I could see that it’d be a stressful and kind of un-fun way to live and bring up a family. I just wanted to do something else.”
For the Bavasis, that something else turned out to be owning a minor-league baseball team. They bought the Walla Walla Blue Mountain Bears late in 1983 and relocated the team to Everett for the 1984 season. And, yes, there were some hiccups along the way. Like the time Margaret Bavasi was berated by fans for going into the stands to retrieve foul balls which were, by the Bavasis’ thinking, a significant expense for a team on a shoestring budget. Fortunately, a sponsor stepped up to help pay for baseballs, saving Margaret from further indignities.
Of greater concern was the team’s financial status, particularly in those early seasons. “We didn’t lose any money that (first) year,” Margaret Bavasi said, “And I remember we said, ‘Let’s give this another year.’ The second year we didn’t lose any money either, so we thought, ‘Well, maybe we should give it another year.’”
But that was the year Margaret became pregnant with their first child — it would turn out to be daughter Haley — and at that point “I thought, ‘This is home,’” she said. “We had our front-office staff in place, it felt right, we were having fun, and I was willing to say, ‘Let’s just ride this for as long as it works.’”
“I was always worried about going bankrupt,” Bob Bavasi said, “and I didn’t stop worrying until maybe the seventh year. That’s when I thought, ‘OK, we’re probably not going to go bankrupt.’ But for seven years I always woke up with a nervous stomach. Because once the season starts, there’s nothing you can do. It’s like driving a runaway truck. It all (depends on) stuff you do in advance, and then once it starts, you just have to hold on.”
By the late 1990s the team was entrenched in the community, and the Bavasis started to think about selling.
“We’d been doing it for 15 years,” Margaret Bavasi said, “and we (wondered) if perhaps there was something else we should be looking at. We’d had such a fun time starting this, and I thought maybe there’d be something else we could start and enjoy. It was still good, still enjoyable, and I don’t think there was any major imperative to sell other than a feeling that it might be time.”
In 1998 the AquaSox moved into a newly renovated stadium, and a month after the season ended the Bavasis sold the club to Mark Sperandio. Bob Bavasi stayed on for one more year as a consultant to Sperandio and then he stepped away, too.
The team has since sold two more times, first to Peter Carfagna and family in 2004, and then to a California ownership group led by Tom Volpe in 2008.
In their years after Everett baseball, the Bavasis continued raising their family, which by now included another daughter, Emily. Today Haley is a married lawyer living in San Francisco, and Emily is a nurse at Everett’s Providence Regional Medical Center.
Bob Bavasi returned to the game in 2001 when he became involved with a team in Marysville, Calif. He helped initiate the Horizon Air Summer Series, a league for teams of collegiate players, though he ended his involvement a few years ago.
In recent years he has also taken tour groups to Japan to experience, among other things, Japanese baseball at stadiums around the country.
As they look back on their Giants/AquaSox years, the Bavasis recall a lot of great friends and a lot of great memories. Though they were “just kids” looking to do something different with their lives, Bob Bavasi said, it turned out to be a remarkable experience for both of them.
“We had a blast,” Margaret Bavasi said. “And I thought working together was the best part.”
Her husband agrees. “We often say to each other, ‘We are so lucky.’ And we actually say that a lot. I think we’ve just been really lucky in the course of all this.”
Owning a minor-league baseball team in Everett “was a great way to make a living, it was fun and the people were great,” he said. “And it’s also been a great place to live. So we did, we really lucked out.”
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