Salem is joining the Red Sox nation.

Mike Dee, chief operating officer of the Boston Red Sox, announced Monday that Fenway Sports Group is buying the Salem Avalanche baseball franchise at a news conference at Salem Memorial Baseball Stadium. Dee is also president of FSG, a sister company of the Red Sox.

The franchise, one of the top-drawing teams in the high-A Carolina League, will not move out of Salem, and general manager John Katz and his front office staff are expected to stay in place.

The Avalanche's affiliation with the Houston Astros will also remain through the 2008 season, but that is widely expected to change in 2009.

The Avalanche's player development contract with the Astros expires at the end of the 2008 season, the same time that the Red Sox's PDC with Lancaster in the high-A California League runs out.

Baseball rules prohibit tampering with other teams' affiliation deals, and Dee would not say that the Red Sox will move affiliations from the West Coast to East, but said several times that a major selling point for the Salem franchise was that "our baseball guys really wanted to be in the Carolina League."

"We're back in the league, and we're here for the long haul," Dee said.

All of the Red Sox's minor-league affiliates are in the Eastern U.S. except for Lancaster. Dee said maintaining an affiliation with a California-based team is "impractical."

Ricky Bennett, assistant general manager of the Astros, said he expects that the Red Sox will take over the affiliation with the Avalanche in 2009.

"We'll have to do the best we can to find a new home, hopefully in the Carolina League," Bennett said. "It's unfortunate for us. We like Salem. We like the community. We like the ballpark. But there's not a whole lot we can do about it."

The sale has already been approved by the Carolina League, league president John Hopkins said, and now must be OK'd by both Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball. Those approvals, though, are expected to come through without a hitch given the Red Sox's plush financial foundation.

Fenway Sports Group is owned by New England Sports Ventures, which also owns the Red Sox, Fenway Park and the New England Sports Network. FSG bought a 50 percent interest in Roush Racing in February and also handles marketing for the Red Sox, Boston College athletics and the PGA Tour's Deutsche Bank Championship. Several FSG executives are also employed by the Red Sox.

None of the parties involved in the sale would reveal the price, but Atlanta-based investment group Hardball Capital paid roughly $8 million for the Avalanche last year, a source close to that sale told The Roanoke Times at the time.

Jason Freier, managing partner of Hardball Capital, said "We really didn't intend on selling the team, but it was something they [FSG] really wanted to do."

Freier, whose group also owns a franchise in Fort Wayne, Ind., said Hardball Capital intends to remain in the baseball business and "ultimately to own several teams." But FSG had the resources to overcome Hardball's "economic and emotional reasons to stay" in Salem.

The Red Sox have been in the Roanoke Valley as far back as 1943. Boston was the major-league affiliate of the Roanoke Red Sox, and later RoSox, in the Piedmont League from 1943-1950. Hall of Famer Heinie Manush managed the team in 1943, followed for three seasons by Eddie Popowski who became a third- and first-base coach for the Boston club in the 1960s and 70s.

Boston has had an affiliate in the Carolina League for most of the league's 54-year history, missing only four seasons from 1953 through 1994.

After an 11-season hiatus, they returned to the league as the affiliate of the Wilmington (Del.) Blue Rocks. But that relationship lasted just two seasons, the length of the original contract. Wilmington's owner at the time decided to drop the Red Sox and go back to the Kansas City Royals, who had provided the Blue Rocks with pennant-winning teams in eight of 10 seasons since they joined the league in 1993.

The Red Sox were forced to take their high-A team to California.

"You don't control your own destiny in minor-league baseball," Dee said.

Unless, of course, you own the team.

Dee said FSG would not be "absentee owners." FSG has some limited partners in this venture, Dee said, and is also looking for some local owners to join the investors' group.

Katz, a life-long Red Sox fan, said it was hard to separate his personal excitement over the deal from his professional excitement.

"Sure these guys have never put on a dizzy bat race at a minor-league ballpark, but what the Red Sox bring ... having that brand power," Katz said. "They have the knowledge base, the experience base, the access to resources that we just don't have at this level."

Dee pointed to three "commitments" to the Avalanche. First was to "hopefully field a team each year that's competitive" and "worthy of the fan's support." Second is to provide a "fun, affordable atmosphere." Third is to be "active participants in the community."

The first of those commitments might prove the toughest. All minor-league baseball teams, even those owned by their major-league affiliates, are charged with developing major-league talent more than with winning.

Salem has gone 360-334 in five seasons with the Astros, but toiled for 18 seasons under the auspices of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Colorado Rockies and the Astros without winning even a half-season division title until 2006. They returned to the playoffs last season and reached the league championship series before falling to Frederick.

"Our organizational philosophy is to try to put players at levels where they can grow and succeed, and part of growing and succeeding is winning," Dee said.

In the absence of control over the players, Dee said, the Avalanche can still "create a winning atmosphere" by making sure the facilities and buses and the like are top notch.

"We'll bring a championship attitude from Day 1," Dee said.