Mark and Joan Sperandio, owners of the Everett AquaSox Baseball Club, the class A affiliate of the Seattle Mariners, announced today the sale of the baseball team to the family of Peter and Rita Carfagna who are the majority owners of the Lake County Captains Baseball Team, the Class A affiliate of the Cleveland Indians located near the Carfagna’s home in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio.

The sale of the Everett AquaSox is contingent upon the approval of the Northwest League, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues and Major League Baseball.

The Sperandio Family has owned and operated the AquaSox for the past six years. “Joan and I have loved our time here in Everett. Our employees have accomplished so much over the past few seasons, and we are so proud of what they did as a team. We are fortunate to have had such talented people working along side us.”

The Sperandios will work for the AquaSox for the next few months to help during the transitional period.

The Carfagna family has been involved in owning and operating minor league baseball teams for a number of years, most recently with the highly successful Lake County Captains who have drawn more than 860,000 fans during the last two seasons.

“We are proud to continue the longstanding tradition of family owned and operated minor league baseball that started with the Bavasi family and which has been continued most successfully with Mark and Joan Sperandio for the past six years,” said the Carfagnas.

Like Mark Sperandio did in 1998, one of the Carfagna’s family members, Peter E. Carfagna, will be relocating to the Seattle/Everett area to oversee the AquaSox baseball operations and to continue the tradition of providing affordable, fan-friendly family entertainment to the greater Everett community.

The Carfagnas also look forward to fostering the already close working relationship which the AquaSox have with their nearby parent club, the Seattle Mariners.

Additional biographical information on Peter Carfagna, Rita Murphy-Carfagna and Pete Carfagna is attached.

Rita Murphy Carfagna
Rita Murphy Carfagna serves as Lake County Captains President and Chairman of the Board. In addition to her baseball life, Mrs. Carfagna is a busy mother of four. She is also president of the Murphy Family Foundation, and a trustee of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland Foundation, Beaumont School, and Saint Ignatius High School. Together with her husband, Peter, she is also a member of the advisory committees for Womankind Maternal and Prenatal Health Care Center and the West Side Catholic Center. Her family spans five generations in Northeast Ohio. Her Cleveland-born great grandfather, Jeremiah T. Murphy, founded the company that began making Murphy's Oil Soap in 1905.

Mr. Carfagna graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1975. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, and continued his education at Oxford, where he earned an Honours Degree in Jurisprudence in 1977. He returned to Harvard and earned his J.D., magna cum laude, in 1979.

Peter E. Carfagna
Vice-President, Baseball Operations Everett AquaSox A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Peter has a strong sports business background including three years experience as an executive at IMG, the world’s premier sports marketing and client management company. In this capacity he represented the personal interests of professional athletes and counted as his own over twenty high-profile clients. Peter has also played an advisory role throughout his family’s highly successful ownership of the Lake County Captains, a Class A affiliate of the Cleveland Indians. Peter was a member of the 1997 Ivy League Championship football team and graduated cum laude from Harvard College. He has relocated to the Puget Sound area to join the AquaSox front office as Vice-President, Baseball Operations, and will oversee the day-to-day operations of the team.