Why Alan Stein hopes Lexington will give its pro baseball team a fresh look

Alan Stein is not traveling through time in a DeLorean. He has, nevertheless, gone “Back to the Future.”

The founder of the Lexington Legends professional baseball franchise has returned this spring to the team, now known as the Lexington Counter Clocks, as a senior adviser to new team owners Nathan and Keri Lyons.

“I guess I am a connective tissue to what we have accomplished in the past and what the new ownership group here wants to accomplish moving forward,” Stein said.

When brought on by the Counter Clocks, Stein, 71 and enjoying retirement after a varied career in professional baseball and other business endeavors, said he was told to come to the team offices “as much or as little as you can.”

“I am here almost every day,” Stein said Wednesday. “It’s a lot of fun. I’m having a blast, actually.”

Starting in 1984, Stein battled relentlessly to bring professional baseball to his hometown. In 2001, after the Lexington businessman had acquired a franchise in the Class A South Atlantic League and opened a privately-financed ballpark off North Broadway, Stein succeeded in his quest. That history in the market is why enlisting Stein is a sharp move by the Lexington team’s new Nashville-based owners and Justin Ferrarella, the team’s president and general manager.

The Lexington franchise is in a weaker position now than it was in 2011, when Stein retired from active roles with the Legends as well as the Triple-A Omaha Storm Chasers.

In the fall of 2020, Major League Baseball reduced the affiliated minor leagues from 160 to 120 teams. One of the cities whose baseball team lost its direct connection to MLB was Lexington, which had been the Class A affiliate of the Kansas City Royals.

Starting Friday night at 6:45 p.m. vs. the visiting York (Pa.) Revolution, Lexington will begin its third season of play in the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball, an independent league.

Though Stein is loathe to directly criticize the previous Lexington team ownership, Stands LLC led by CEO Andy Shea, he leaves little doubt that he believes a city as large (estimated population of 321,793) and prosperous as ours should never have been on the wrong side of MLB contraction.

“Lexington was, obviously, targeted,” Stein said. “There’s no reason in the world, whether it be geography or market size or past success, that Lexington should have been among the 40 clubs who were contracted. But we were, for whatever reasons, that I wouldn’t want to talk about in public.”

When it was announced late last October that the Lexington franchise had been sold, Stein reached out to the new team owners to offer his help. A former Mississippi Rebels baseball player, Nathan Lyons is the founder and CEO of Vintage South Development, which develops, owns and operates commercial and residential properties.

“I did not know Nathan or Keri,” Stein said of the husband-and-wife ownership duo, “but I have friends who do know of them and know of their success in Nashville and speak highly of them.”

Stein said the new owners have already shown they are willing to make the financial investment in upgrading team facilities that will bring the Lexington franchise up to the standards Major League Baseball demands from the teams that are still in affiliated baseball.

When the Lexington ballpark (currently referred to as Counter Clocks Field as a naming-rights deal is sought) opened in 2001, “we were up to Double-A standards in terms of number of seats, the lighting, everything,” Stein said. “But (the park) has deteriorated, there’s no question about it, over the course of 23 years. Most particularly and more rapidly, (the park has deteriorated) in the last 10 years. However, Nathan is making the investment here to get everything to the standards.”

As it pertains to the new ownership group’s most controversial move to date — changing the name of the Lexington franchise from the Legends to the Counter Clocks — Stein said he understands the rationale even if he would not have made that decision himself.

“A lot of that had to do with the decision early on that the whole franchise, the whole process over here, had deteriorated to a degree that they were convinced that we needed a total refresh,” Stein said. “I don’t disagree with that. I’m not sure I would have changed the name and given up 20-plus years of brand equity.”

Pro baseball in Lexington has more competition for the summertime sports entertainment dollar in 2023 than it has had before. Lexington Sporting Club, a men’s professional soccer team playing in USL League One, is in its inaugural season.

Stein said there’s sufficient space in the Lexington market for pro soccer, pro baseball plus University of Kentucky baseball and softball to all succeed. “There is plenty of room,” Stein said. “We don’t need 30, 50, 70,000 people a night to come to the ballpark to be successful — nor does the soccer team.”

The first goal for the Counter Clocks franchise in 2023, Stein said, is to make the “fan experience” at the ballpark consistently fun again.

“I really hope that people will be both excited and patient,” Stein said. “They need to understand that this new ownership group … is really committed to creating the kind of thing that Lexington has shown in the past it liked and it wanted. That is not going to all happen overnight, but we are on the right path. I hope Lexington will share our enthusiasm.”

‘Really just needed a clean slate.’ After 22 years, Lexington Legends have a new nickname.

A timeline of professional sports in Lexington over the past five decades

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