Pro Baseball in Emporia? Nice Dream
Opinion: Joey’s Journal
By Joey Berlin
Thursday, August 14, 2008
The idea didn’t seem completely crazy at the time.
So many cities have minor league or independent league baseball — literally hundreds of towns and metro areas all over the country, ranging from “cosmopolitan” to “po-dunk” — that I recently thought, “Could Emporia have a pro baseball team?”
The knee-jerk reaction of most Emporians, I suspect, would be to giggle like a sleep-deprived elementary schooler and dismiss the idea out of hand. But when I thought about how many minor league and independent league cities there are, I knew that a chunk of them had to have populations comparable to or less than Emporia’s. And city leadership has made much of maintaining and improving the quality of life here, after all. If it could work, the addition of a minor/independent league baseball team, and the absurd promotions and general silliness that come with it, would certainly qualify as a part of that. And of course, at times the players and games might be interesting, too.
So, I began looking into the possibility a little bit. Could pro baseball work in Emporia?
As it turned out... not likely.
On the bright side, it wasn’t difficult to find minor league towns, A-ball level or lower, with around or below 26,000 people. Burlington, Iowa, is home to the Burlington Bees, one of the Kansas City Royals’ three A-ball affiliates. Burlington’s estimated population, as of two years ago, is 25,464, according to city-data.com. Adelanto, Calif., home to Seattle A-ball affiliate the High Desert Mavericks, has a little more than 27,000 people. Neither of those cities is part of a larger metro area.
Facts like those were encouraging. Then came the wet blankets — a.k.a. “people who know what they’re talking about.”
J.J. Picollo, the Royals’ assistant general manager and director of scouting/player development, said the vast majority of minor league affiliates are independently owned, rather than being owned by the major league parent club. Picollo pointed out that the aforementioned Bees don’t draw many fans. Owned by the city of Burlington, the Bees drew just 997 fans per game in 2007, according to ballparkdigest.com.
“Typically, they’re in last or next to last every year in the Midwest League attendance,” Picollo said. “So they do not draw well. We like being there, because it’s a good facility, but from an attendance standpoint, it’s not very well-attended.”
Major league teams look for existing minor league cities that are convenient proximity-wise. For instance, it’s convenient for Kansas City to have its Triple-A club in Omaha.
“It’s like for Emporia, if you were going to have a team,” Picollo said, “you would need one of the existing (minor league) owners to look to basically shut down operations in one town and move to Emporia, because they think they can make more money in Emporia, is what it really comes down to.”
The other option, he said, is for someone to put up the capital to buy a minor league team and move it to Emporia. While we’re waiting for one of our wealthier citizens to step up on that, what about the independent leagues?
At least one existing one, the Frontier League, includes several towns with comparable or lower populations, like Chillicothe, Ohio (22,216 estimate in 2006) and Florence, Ky (26,929). That league includes mostly teams in the upper Midwest; if a similar league could someday be formed closer to the middle of the country, that might be Emporia’s best bet for a ballclub.
Bill Lee, president of the Frontier League, said that when the league looks for a new team, it talks to the potential ownership group and looks at the results of a feasibility study of the market. Lee looks at the target market’s media, industry, demographics and whether it has a relatively strong economic base. He said the financial condition of the market is more important than the demographics, and strong management and ownership are key to maintaining a franchise.
“It does get tough to maintain everything if you’re in one of those smaller markets,” Lee said. “Because the revenue sources just aren’t there sometimes to sustain a long-term growth for some clubs.”
The Frontier League also looks at available facilities and whether a ballpark needs to be built. Safe to say, Trusler Sports Complex, in its current form, isn’t a pro baseball facility. For example, Champion Window Field, home of the Florence Freedom, seats about 4,000.
If a new stadium is needed, these days it’s typically built with a mixture of public and private financing.
“I think you’ve got to have, minimum, 3- to 4,000 seats,” said Miles Wolff, who founded the Northern League and currently runs the American Association, which looks for markets with a metro population of at least 100,000. The AA includes the Wichita Wingnuts.
“Most of the ballparks now are pretty new and in pretty good shape,” Wolff added. “So that’s usually what we’re looking for, or the ability to somehow work with the city to get something like that.”
Sound promising, Emporia baseball fans? Yeah, I didn’t think so, either.
“Just on the surface, and I don’t know Emporia well,” Wolff said, “it would seem to be more suitable for one of the summer college leagues — the Jayhawk League or the MINK league ... that you can really average 4- to 500 a night and can make it there, and they’re good-quality college players.”
Speaking of good-quality college players, the kill shot for any notion of pro baseball here might be attendance figures for Emporia State baseball, which last year gave fans a 35-game winning streak and an unstoppable offense that, on any given night, threatened to outscore the attendance.
The Hornets averaged 266 fans per home game last season, and Sports Information Director Don Weast said around 200 of those would have been admitted free because of free student admission and pass lists. The Hornets’ largest crowd last season — believed to be their largest ever — was 673.
So, your knee-jerk reaction was probably right: barring the emergence of a rich, eccentric Emporian hellbent on bringing pro baseball to the Flint Hills, the chances of it coming to Emporia anytime soon are slim to none.
Hey, I had hope.
beth (anonymous) says...
I'll bet if you took out all those ESU games that are played in February and March the average would be a lot higher. The games that I went to in April and May seemed like a lot more than 250 people. But I still don't think minor league or semi-pro baseball would work here. I don't think any of the cities you mentioned also have a D-II college baseball program in town as well.
August 14, 2008 at 1:32 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )