By Ray D. Enze, NLN baseball blogger

July 7, 2019: Aurora, Colorado: The Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance was founded in 2006 and opened it’s doors for competitive games in 2007, after the demise of Major League Baseball due to greed, drugs and general fan apathy towards the sport. The Founding Fathers of the League, including the original Commissioner and owner of the Aurora Borealis, John Rodriguez, Sr, envisioned a sport that would avoid the pitfalls that killed its predecessor.

So far, no drugs and attendance is up across the board as teams who struggled early in the Leagues infancy have stepped up the competitive ladder – especially Reno, Yuma and Kentucky. But, the League has not avoided the financial boom that ultimately killed MLB. Baseball across the board – from the PEBA to its sister across the Pacific, the League of the Rising Sun, has once again become a big money business.

Why do I bring this up, faithful readers? I bring this to your attention because there are grumblings coming out of Asheville that the Board of the PEBA are on the verge of making an announcement on some mighty big changes to the PEBA landscape that will shape it as it moves closer to its 15^th anniversary.

Not even sketchy details have been provided by my source, who prefers his anonymity, but I could guess as to some possible outcomes:

First, there is the revenue sharing that has helped prop up the teams who’ve struggled over the leagues early years – Yuma, Reno, San Antonio, and Canton for example, at the expense of those profitable teams – Aurora, Bakersfield, Florida, Crystal Lake. They made an internal calculation adjustment a few seasons ago that reduced the burden on the ‘givers’, and it’s conceivable that, now the bottom tier teams are more financially stable, revenue sharing may go the way of the dinosaurs – and not the Fargo variety.

Of course the change need not be inherently financial. There have been whispers from owners and GMs that many would like to see an inter-league schedule adopted, much like the old NL-AL series that ardent MLB fans point to as the beginning of the end for the old establishment. Of course, MLB held onto inter-league, after it’s use to draw fans back to the game after the strike that killed the World Series had succeeded – for financial reasons. Imagine what the gate would be for the F’heads returning to Northern Lights Park for a rematch of their 2011 PEC.

Another possibility might be expansion. There has been whispers of some team relocation – West Virginia has intimated on numerous occasions that they’ve held an eye sideways on Tacoma and some believe that the Nutmeggers would love nothing better than to ditch New England for Portland – the Oregon kind. Between those two teams and others – Las Vegas, numerous cities in California (Sacramento being the most often mentioned site), Little Rock and Mobile, expansion would be yet another way of the League increasing it’s visibility as well as financial growth.

Of course, one can’t rule out something global – baseball fans across the west and far east have hankered for a true ‘World Series’ that would involve the champions of the two sister leagues. I gotta wonder, though – could Edo or Shin Seiki really hang with Bakersfield’s pitching?

Whatever it may be, we are sure to find out in the coming days as my sources suggest an announcement is eminent.