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.
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.
RSS