In November 2020, Peter Davis, proud proprietor of the Missoula PaddleHeads, was two years into life as a minor league baseball owner when disaster struck.
The PaddleHeads, who had been a farm team for the Arizona Diamondbacks, were now "de-affiliated," one of 43 teams jettisoned into life as an independent club. The Diamondbacks had been responsible for paying PaddleHeads players and coaches, and that money was now gone. As was the financial value that came with owning an affiliated team.
"We'd lost all the equity. Disappeared overnight," Davis says. "We had no clue what we were going to do at that point.