It’s hard to feel down and blue in the summer time. But if you are, we have just the cure: Head on over to Holman Stadium for a Nashua Silver Knights game.

Summer is in full swing over at Campanella Way and there’s nothing but good karma.

This isn’t meant to be a body of work full of advertising; Nashua’s Futures Collegiate Baseball League can pretty much take care of that by itself. But truth be told, there’s not a whole lot of negative to say about the way the Knights’ sophomore season is going.

The team, both on and off the field, has taken things to a higher level from its inaugural 2011 title winning, FCBL Organization of the Year campaign. The team is averaging a solid 200-plus more fans a game, corporate sales are up and the outfield wall is covered with advertising billboards.

It doesn’t hurt that Mother Nature has dealt the team a winning hand, either. Weather for games has been spectacular.

On the field, the ball club recently enjoyed a 13-game win streak, opening up a five-game lead atop the FCBL standings. Overall, the team won 23 of its first 29 games. Fans love a winner, and while the entire entertainment package offered doesn’t rely solely on baseball, winning certainly helps.

“I think it’s a combination of things,” Silver Knights and Lowell Spinners Vice President/General Manager Tim Bawmann said. “I think we’re starting to gain trust in the market.”

This past Thursday’s dollar draft night brought a crowd in of 1,521. Not bad for a franchise whose ownership was thinking 300-400 a night its first season.

“They’re catching on,” Silver Knights manager B.J. Neverett said of the local fandom. “They should come out to see this team. It’s a fun team to watch play.”

Bawmann and his right hand man, marketing VP Jon Goode, are pointing to the night of July 3 as a great indicator. The team was playing its toughest competitor in the league, North Shore, (Lynn, Mass.) on a beautiful night. Add to it a post-game fireworks show, kind of a Fourth of July warm-up act, and you get a turnout of 2,001.

“It was perfect,” Bawmann said. “There were a lot of new people there. I’d like to see five or six July 3 nights this season. Then we can build on that for next year.”

Now, let’s put things in perspective: If this were a professional minor league team, a nightly average of close to 1,100 fans wouldn’t cut it. The independent baseball teams who formerly called Holman home, especially the Nashua Pride, needed to pay players and deal with insurance and workman’s compensation, and the stadium rent was substantial. It’s called high overhead, and the Pride survived for a lot longer than most expected thanks to two dedicated owners, first Chris English and then John Stabile, but ultimately were undercapitalized.

Money is not an issue here. The Silver Knights are an amateur team run in a professional minor league manner. They’ve paid their rent in advance two years in a row. They don’t have to pay player salaries, so the overhead is fairly low and the dollars go into advertising and marketing. If you live in Nashua and haven’t received a Knights promo/game schedule in the mail the last few months once or even more, you’re in the minority.

“The biggest difference is we had to introduce a whole new team to the community last year,” Goode said. “This year we had a full year of planning to go into it.

“Last year we were just learning Holman Stadium. We hadn’t gotten a comfort level. Everything was brand new to us last year,” Goode continued. “But now we’ve been at Holman Stadium, been in the community, been in our offices a whole season, a lot of the players are back and they knew what to expect. … We have high expectations for this year and the future. We’re happy where we are, but we’re not stopping there.”

They look at every number and have found an increase over 2011. Even the Silver Knights youth baseball camp, held at Holman this week, has about 20 more kids than a year ago.

“That’s the type of thing you look at,” Goode said. “You want to see growth. The trend is there.”

So is the credibility of the league. The FCBL more than doubled in size, and Nashua’s fan growth goes with the league’s growth, as two new franchises, Brockton and Pittsfield, Mass. are also drawing 1,000-plus a game.

It all adds up. The fact that Drew Weber is the owner is key. His Lowell Spinners have dominated the market with their night-in, night-out fun themes and Weber’s people have brought a touch of that to Nashua.

The Spinners have always been customer first, and the Silver Knights are certainly that and more. They listened to focus groups and tweaked a couple of things this year, including going from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. starts on Saturday nights. That alone has probably doubled the Saturday crowds.

And that has doubled the Silver Knight fun at Holman. There’s just about a month left in the season if you include playoffs, so let the good times roll.