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I proposed deletion for this article, when I meant to propose a merge and redirect. This team barely existed, it is doubtful it has any lingering following, and I move that this article (and the separate articles for each location where this franchise played) should be merged into the article for the current location of the franchise, the Great Lakes Loons. --Muboshgu (talk) 02:33, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As I said in the AFD discussion, I oppose a merge into Great Lakes Loons who play in Midland, a city that is quite far away from Battle Creek. On the other hand, I would support a merge of this article and Battle Creek Yankees into Southwest Michigan Devil Rays, since they are the same franchise (though different affiliatios) and all played in Battle Creek. BRMo (talk) 04:07, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
At the least, the articles for teams that played in the same cities should be merged. But I don't see the distinction between the Great Lakes Loons and Battle Creek Yankees just because they played in different cities. Why is the difference between playing in Midland and playing in Battle Creek relevant? --Muboshgu (talk) 20:15, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I believe all the relevant material from those other articles is already included in Great Lakes Loons. Just make them into re-directs. Spanneraol (talk) 20:46, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I reiterate that I'm opposed to a merge. When minor league teams move, there's really very little relationship between the old team and city and the new one. They played in different cities, had different fans, media coverage, names, and logos, almost always had different team owners, and usually had different major league affiliations, meaning that none of the players or coaching staff moved with the franchise. (Even when the affiliation stayed the same, turnover in the low minors is so great they only a handful of players would have played in both cities.) Minor league baseball is local in nature. Very few minor league teams devote any space on their websites to history of the franchise before their current city. Really, the only thing that is retained across cities when a franchise moves is the "franchise" itself--that is, a legal right to play in the league. That hardly seems like enough reason to combine all these teams in one article. Merging these articles, if the information from the existing articles is retained (which it should be) would only make the Great Lakes Loons article overly large and difficult to read for most readers, who may not care that much about the pre-Midland history of the team. I'm working to improve all of these articles, and there's plenty of information available to make good stand-alone articles on each of the teams. BRMo (talk) 23:21, 5 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
