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Plain fun behind boom in US minor league baseball

Minor league baseball has become big business, with the mom-and-pop operators once typical in the leagues giving way to corporate ownership groups with sophisticated financing schemes and multimillion-dollar budgets. Three young girls dance in the stands at a game in Troy, New York. PHOTO: NY TIMES

It's Saturday night in this hard-scrabble city of idle shoemaking factories, and the place is jumping.

Just past empty storefronts in Brockton's downtown 15 miles south of Boston, a crowd of nearly 5,000 has packed a new US$17 million minor league baseball stadium to watch the Rocks, the home team named after the former heavyweight champion and Brockton native Rocky Marciano.

The upper grandstand, where seats cost US$4, is jammed with families giggling at festivities that include a fan race against a large rock deposited in the base-paths (the rock is winless for the season), a water balloon-tossing contest and a shirtless boxer who jukes and jabs his way through the stands, pausing only to deliver bouquets of flowers to women. Fans clutch commemorative Marciano dolls, a promotional handout and children's groups abound. Just the night before, local Girl Scout troops had camped in the outfield after the game.

There was also a minor league baseball game going on, but like the drive-in, the mall or the bowling alley before it, the stadium and its game were only the pretext for a community gathering. On the field, the Rocks, also known as the Rox, were losing. In the stands, the score was registered in smiles. And the home team was winning in a rout.

Family entertainment is the focus of minor league ball, with fun stuff for kids such as this giant ball featured at Campanelli Stadium in Brockton, Massachusetts. PHOTO: NY TIMES

This summer, it is likely that more people than ever before -- perhaps as many as 40 million -- will flock to small ball parks to watch minor league baseball games in North America. That's more than half the number that will attend Major League games this season.

Affordable, family friendly and a spiritual touchstone to small-town America, minor league baseball is enjoying an unprecedented boom. Not only has attendance approached record highs established in pretelevision days, an astonishing number of new ball parks -- frequently publicly financed -- has sprouted in every region of the country. Since 1995, 78 minor league parks have been completed in the US, and two in Canada.

A phenomenon of fun

As major league baseball grapples with economic problems, a deteriorating image and a possible players' strike, minor league baseball is a phenomenon of fun where a family of four can attend a game for less than US$40, food, drinks and parking included, and the children will probably come away with a player's autograph, too.

"People never gave up on a night at the ball park; they were just starving to feel the connection," said Dave Echols, general manager of the Brockton franchise. "We give them a game they can almost touch, and a good time, too."

Expansion and unparalleled growth have come with consequential change. Minor league baseball has become big business, with franchises selling for as much as US$25 million. The mom-and-pop operators once typical in the minor leagues, whose job it was to rake the pitcher's mound and flip the burgers in the concession stand, have increasingly given way to corporate ownership groups with sophisticated financing schemes and multimillion-dollar budgets.

Debt among minor league owners has doubled in the last five years, according to industry officials, and has led to questions about the long-term financial health of some franchises even as more cities continue to pursue minor league fields of dreams. It is estimated that as many as a third of the roughly 200 minor league teams are not profitable.

Last year, the Portland Beavers in Oregon, whose stadium got a US$38 million face lift, had about US$10 million in operating losses.

It is also possible that financially troubled Major League Baseball, which pays for the salaries, health insurance and equipment for all the players and coaches on the 160 minor league teams affiliated with big-league franchises, may decide to reduce that subsidy when its contract with those teams comes up for renewal in two years. That could have a devastating effect on the budgets of many minor league teams.

For now, though, there's no stopping minor league's booming place in North America's sports culture. From Aberdeen, Maryland, to Edmonton, Alberta, teams are playing in bustling parks. The core appeal? Minor league baseball is successfully marketing fun.

And while that is a nostalgic notion, it is revealing that the selling is being done in an altogether different, and modern, way. Because going to a minor league game is anything but an old-fashioned trip to that dusty old ball park downtown.

The notion that a new stadium can act as an engine for economic development has been debunked by a paper trail of academic research longer than 73 Barry Bonds home runs measured end to end. Economists studying the effect of new ball parks have almost universally concluded that such projects -- with some exceptions -- offer very little tangible economic return for the taxpayers' dollar.

"They don't feed any positive economic growth or impact," said Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College, who has written extensively on the subject. "It won't produce a huge per capita increase or mean many more jobs. People don't travel great distances to see these teams. It is revenue recirculated in the community. They spent it at the minor league ball park instead of the cineplex."

Zimbalist and other economists agree on the likely exceptions: cities where the ball park is but one piece of an extensive urban-renewal effort with goals more far-reaching than providing sporting entertainment.

"If it's part of a long-term project, a stadium might improve the gestalt of a downtown," Zimbalist said.

To those in the minor league baseball industry, that is precisely the point -- it is all about the feel-good effects. In Brockton, city leaders point to the brightly lit, packed baseball stadium as proof of what's new in a city once viewed as drab and aging. Waterfront development, much of it initiated by a new minor league ball park, has transformed the aura of the downtowns in Trenton, New Jersey, and Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Marvin Goldklang, who heads a group that owns five minor league teams and is a consultant to two others, conceded that the economic benefit of a baseball franchise is hard to quantify.

"But it is real," Goldklang said. "Just open the local chamber of commerce's pitch book. We're on the first few pages. For a small-or medium-sized city or region, a minor league team is more central to attracting new industries to the area than at the major league level."

This is a message not lost on economists, at least when discussing minor league baseball.

"If you believe in the power of minor league baseball," Zimbalist said, "it doesn't matter if it raises income levels and creates jobs. The American culture does love baseball; it's good, wholesome entertainment. That's how it should be evaluated."

`Nobody Night?'

At the River Dogs' games in Charleston, South Carolina, there is a concierge booth, where fans can make their postgame dinner reservations. The River Dogs have also held a women's night at the ball park, when men were turned away at the gate. The game sold out. Earlier this month, the River Dogs announced they would play host to something called Nobody Night.

Before their July 7 game with the Columbus, Georgia, Red Stixx at Joseph P. Riley Jr Park -- a stadium nicknamed "the Joe" -- the River Dogs padlocked the gates so that the official attendance would be zero. That broke the previous record for the smallest crowd at a professional baseball game, which had been 12 people for an 1881 game between Chicago and Troy.

Thousands of River Dogs fans congregated outside the ball park July 7, some watching from beyond the center-field wall. After the fifth inning, when the game became official, the gates were opened and fans streamed in to find candy and T-shirts (not to mention unclaimed foul balls) awaiting them.

Then there was "Lawyer Appreciation Night," when each attending lawyer was charged twice the ticket price and billed again every half inning. Proceeds went to Legal Aid.

Bill Dowling, president and principal owner of the New Britain Rock Cats, was once executive vice president of the Yankees.

"Everything about the major leagues costs so much now and the players are perceived as greedy or unconcerned," he said. "We appreciate that we have to entertain you for the US$7 you paid to get in. So we entertain. We sell joy."
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