Golden Rule Entertainment announces Quincy Baseball Club will officially play in Prospect League

QUINCY — The unofficial return of collegiate summer baseball to the Gem City is finally official.

Now comes the push to be ready by May.

Golden Rule Entertainment, the parent company of the Quincy Baseball Club and the owner of the Prospect League’s Springfield Lucky Horseshoes, announced during a press conference Friday morning Quincy will field a team in the Prospect League that will play at QU Stadium beginning with the 2025 season.

That leaves six months to choose a nickname, create a logo and a brand, develop a roster and make improvements to QU Stadium before the the league is scheduled to kick off its season, somewhere around May 27.

“We will act rather swiftly,” said Jamie Toole, the president and chief storyteller for Golden Rule Entertainment.

That starts with a name-the-team contest. Much like it did when it launched the Lucky Horseshoes, Golden Rule Entertainment will seek the input of the community in developing a nickname. The contest will be online through quincybaseball.com.

“Everything we do, we want it to be about the community and geared toward the community,” Toole said. “Baseball is our platform, not our purpose.”

The purpose is to promote and encourage community interaction and growth. 

It’s been the way Toole and others have approached things since the first phone call was made.

Last April, Toole contacted Tim Hoker, a 2000 Quincy University graduate and a member of the Golden Rule Entertainment team, with the idea of bringing baseball back to Quincy. The Quincy Gems ceased operations following the 2023 season and were sold to Full Count Ministries of Henderson, Tenn. The Full Count Rhythm played in the Prospect League during the 2024 season.

Hoker just happened to be on the beach spending spring break with his family when Toole called, but it didn’t keep him from jumping on board immediately.

“(Toole) was like, ‘How about Quincy?’” said Hoker, who lives in Grayslake, Ill., but will run the Quincy Baseball Club. “I was like, ‘Let’s do it.’ So it’s been a relatively short timeframe, but there are all of the things we have gotten done so far. And there’s still plenty more to do.”

Structurally, that means making improvements to QU Stadium.

Hoker said there are three specific projects that need addressed — fixing the dugouts, redoing the seating and replacing the lights — and the cost will be shared by what Hoker referred to as a three-headed monster of Golden Rule Entertainment, Quincy University and the City of Quincy.

How much each will be asked to contribute is still being negotiated.

In the meantime, the ownership group is working on putting a team together.

Brad Gyorkos, the head coach at Culver-Stockton College, will be the Quincy manager. Gyorkos spent the 2022 and ’23 seasons as the Quincy Gems manager and skippered the Springfield Lucky Horseshoes last summer. The move back to Quincy is welcome and Gyorkos is excited to build a winning franchise here.

“Summer baseball belongs in Quincy,” Gyorkos said.

But Toole, Hoker and others want to impact the community beyond baseball season.

“We’re not going to be a baseball team that’s here for 30 games,” Hoker said. “We’re going to be a baseball team that’s ingrained in the community.”

Said Toole, “We want to create a vision. We want to be sustainable.”

And recognizable, which is why picking the right nickname with the right colors and the right logo is vitally important.

“We want to sell hats and shirts,” Toole said. “We want people in Hawaii and Alaska and Florida wearing Quincy merchandise. We’re proud of this community and we want the rest of the world to know how cool it is.”