a successful franchise in New York City. With some encouragement from his fellow owners, Dick Butera traded King to the New York Sets in a complicated deal. Upon announcing the trade, Butera said, "It not an easy thing to let Billie Jean go. I feel like King Faisal giving away his oil wells." After King was traded, a group of investors that included Bob Mades, a Somerville, Massachusetts meat-packing executive who lived in Belmont, Massachusetts, Paul Slater, a Newton, Massachusetts realtor, Herbert S. Hoffman, a Boston jeans distributor who had been a part owner of the recently contracted Hartford Royals, Robert K. Kraft, a forest products company executive, and Harold Bayne, a Boston meat-packing executive, expressed interest in buying the original Boston Lobsters. However, the Lobsters had already been contracted by WTT. With the Buteras far less enthusiastic about their team after trading King, the two sides struck a deal, and the group purchased the Freedoms on March 27, 1975, and moved the team to Boston. In order to claim the name of the original Lobsters, the new ownership group would be required to settle some of the debts of the former team. The new owners decided to do this and renamed the team the Boston Lobsters. Mades was named president of the team, and Slater was named chairman of the board. First season in Boston In 1975, the reincarnated Lobsters presented themselves as a continuation of the original Lobsters that folded after the 1974 season in promotional materials and media guides, since they had paid for that privilege. The team ignored any connection with its actual history as the Freedoms. The Lobsters also adopted the team logo of the original Lobsters. The Lobsters played a 46-match WTT regular-season schedule in 1975. They had 15 home matches, 15 road matches and 16 neutral-site matches. The league used neutral-site matches to cut down on travel and create events where fans could see multiple teams either with one admission or over the course of a few days. These special events were called WTT Spectaculars. Because of these and because of scheduling challenges created when the Houston E-Z Riders suspended operations just days before the season started, the 10 teams in the league did not play an equal number of matches. Seven of them played 44 matches, while the Lobsters, Hawaii Leis and San Diego Friars each played 46 matches. Of the Lobsters'