Haslams selling Double-A team

Associated Press

KODAK, Tenn.

Cleveland Browns owner and Pilot Flying J CEO Jimmy Haslam and Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam are selling the Tennessee Smokies minor league baseball team.

Pilot Flying J is under a federal investigation into alleged rebate fraud. Lauren Christ, a spokeswoman for the truck-stop chain, said the sale of the Smokies wouldn’t affect Haslam’s ownership of the Browns and was unrelated to the investigation.

Randy Boyd, the CEO of Knoxville-based Radio Systems Corp. and a top education adviser to Gov. Haslam, is buying the Chicago Cubs’ Double-A Southern League affiliate, the team announced Friday.

“It does have something to do with Cleveland in that we’re obviously going to be spending more time there,” Jimmy Haslam told the Knoxville News-Sentinel, which first reported the sale. “But I think the reality is the entire partnership group had owned the team for 12 years and felt like it was time for new ownership.”

Boyd said the deal awaits a letter of approval from Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig’s office. Terms of the sale weren’t announced.

The Haslams had served as principal owners of the Smokies. One of the ownership partners had been Gary Wade, chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court.

The Haslams will retain a security interest in the team, but Wade will no longer be a partner under the new deal.

The team said the sale had been discussed since January and that an agreement was reached in March, well before FBI and Internal Revenue Service agents raided the Pilot Flying J headquarters on April 15.

At a Friday news conference, Boyd said he reached a deal to buy the team a couple of days after Haslam contacted him in January about the possibility of buying the team.

Boyd said an announcement wasn’t made until now because lawyers needed to iron out the details and the sale had to receive approval from the Southern League.

“My partners and I have been honored to own the Smokies for the past 10 years and didn’t want to let the opportunity to sell to a local owner pass by,” Haslam said in a statement. “Randy is a great community leader, a quality person and a first-class businessman. I know he will be an excellent owner.”