Goodbye Counter Clocks. Under new owner, Lexington’s baseball team changing name again.
The Counter Clocks are no more, but professional baseball is continuing in Lexington.
Under new ownership, Lexington’s professional baseball team is likely to have a familiar name too.
Temerity Baseball, which owns minor league baseball teams in Kannapolis and Greensboro, North Carolina, has partnered with a group of local investors to purchase the team and stadium on North Broadway. Among the local investors is Alan Stein, who led the charge to bring a minor league team to Lexington in 2001.
While Temerity founder and chairman Andy Sandler declined to announce the new name of the team, which will continue to play in the independent Atlantic League, on Thursday — instead teasing an announcement on Feb. 15 — he hinted the team is likely to return to being known as the Lexington Legends.
“You haven’t heard me say the word Counter Clocks,” Sandler said. “... I will tell you we have held focus groups around town. We have gotten very clear feedback from the community as to what its aspiration is for what we do with the rebranding of the team. There is no ambiguity. While I’m not going to spill the beans, you may start seeing billboards around town that say something along the lines of, ‘It will be legendary.’
“Draw your own conclusions, but don’t make assumptions because that could be many, many things.”
The Legends played in minor league baseball’s Low A South Atlantic League from 2001 to 2019, first as an affiliate of the Houston Astros and later as an affiliate of the Kansas City Royals. The franchise was one of 40 teams cut from affiliated minor league baseball in December 2020 (after no season was played that summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic) but carried on as a member of the Atlantic League.
After Nathan and Keri Lyons, who lived in Nashville, bought the team in 2022, they changed the name to the Lexington Counter Clocks for the 2023 season. The new name was designed as an homage to the horse racing industry since horses run counterclockwise around the track but was met with criticism from fans who had fond memories of the Legends.
While that new name has been abandoned, Stein made sure to thank the Lyons for their decision to buy the team during Thursday’s news conference.
“What most people don’t know is without their acquisition of this club a year ago we wouldn’t have professional baseball in Lexington,” Stein said. “So, thanks to Nathan and Kerry for saving the club and now giving us the opportunity to make the investment a successful one for our community as an asset again.”
In one season playing as the Counter Clocks, the team went 41-75, finishing in third place in the Atlantic’s League South Division during the first half and last in the division in the second half.
Unlike affiliated minor league teams that have no say in the players on the team as they are assigned from MLB franchises, independent teams in the Atlantic League are responsible for signing their own players and coaching staff. Through a partnership with MLB, the Atlantic League has been used in recent years to test rule changes, including many of the ones that were adopted by MLB for the 2023 season.
Stein was the leader of the original ownership group that brought minor league baseball to Lexington in time for the 2001 season. Several investors from the initial ownership group have returned to partner with Temerity. The Legends were then owned by the Shea family from 2005 to 2022.
At Thursday’s announcement, the new ownership group confirmed Transylvania University has signed a long-term deal to continue playing its home baseball games at the stadium formerly known as Counter Clocks Field.
“I jumped at (this opportunity) because candidly, the last few years have not been up to the standard that we had hoped to maintain over many years,” Stein said. “… I wanted to see us return back to the glory days. When I heard it was (Temerity) and I did my research on all the things they had done in the past, I knew this was our opportunity to bring it back and to get to those glory days.”
This story was originally published January 25, 2024 at 3:05 PM.