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Minor league lame ducks: Relocating franchises face challenges

As the sun sets on minor league baseball in Pawtucket, R.I., after almost half a century, the PawSox’s impending move has contributed to a continued attendance decline.Katherine Foultz

The Hometown Collection is essentially Minor League Baseball’s graveyard of defunct teams.

 

To join the Hometown Collection — an online MiLB store that sells retro hats and apparel — a franchise first has to leave its current location. Then the departing club decides whether to keep the trademark on its team name; trademarks that aren’t kept transfer to MiLB control, and possibly end up in the Hometown Collection.

The Mobile BayBears, New Orleans Baby Cakes and Pawtucket Red Sox will all make their trademark decision soon. The BayBears and Baby Cakes head for new homes at the end of this season, and the PawSox leave Rhode Island after the 2020 campaign. Each team announced in 2018 that it was departing, creating a challenging business environment for the remainder of its stay — a lame-duck season, or two in the case of the PawSox.

“Lame duck is tough from an operational standpoint,” said Pat O’Conner, MiLB president and CEO. “It’s an oxymoron to say, ‘Come on out and support us, but we’re leaving.’”

A variety of factors can dictate the success, or struggle, of a franchise’s lame-duck season — everything from public anger over a team’s pending departure to an owner’s desire for a strong finish to a farewell campaign.

Few know the experience more intimately than D.G. Elmore, whose Elmore Sports Group moved four MiLB franchises between 2016 and 2018. One of those teams, a rookie-league club in Helena, Mont., averaged only 840 fans per game in 2018, the club’s second straight season under 1,000.

In a typical year, Elmore said, the Helena Brewers were a break-even operation. But during the lame-duck season?

“The losses were more significant than we had ever experienced before,” he said. “Our final year there was not a break-even operation.”

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The BayBears announced in May 2018 that they would move to Madison, Ala., a Huntsville suburb five hours north. Mobile is the birthplace of baseball hall of famers Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey, Satchel Paige and Ozzie Smith, but the BayBears finished last in the Southern League in attendance each of the previous four seasons. The 69,504 fans they drew to Hank Aaron Stadium in 2018 was the lowest in Class AA.

General manager Ken Clary is overseeing the team’s final season in Mobile. Clary joined the Los Angeles Angels affiliate last fall and was drawn to the job because of the owners’ commitment to the final season, including a 30% increase in the club’s marketing budget.

“They gave us more resources that this team has not had in the past,” Clary said of BallCorps, which bought the team in 2017.

More resources resulted in four more fireworks shows than prior seasons, and the team gave out bobbleheads five times this season, the first time in eight years that it’s done any bobblehead giveaways. Both efforts seem to have helped. The BayBears’ 2019 average attendance of 1,590 fans per game is the team’s best in five years, and nearly 500 more per game than last season. 

The BayBears offered a $19.97 monthly ticket subscription this season — an homage to their 1997 debut in Mobile — that provided a general admission ticket to every home game. Clary said sales weren’t great, in large part because he didn’t have the staff to promote the offer.

In Elmore’s experience with lame-duck seasons in California, Colorado, Montana and Texas, maintaining a full staff for the final year is difficult. Not every employee will move with a team, and some land new opportunities before the season ends.

“You really need a dedicated GM because if you don’t have them you’re going to really struggle to close out well,” Elmore said.

The BayBears developed a special logo to honor the final year in Mobile and, according to MVPindex social media data, the team’s most-used hashtag on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram since April 1 has been #farewellseason.

“Everyone knew we were leaving and we wanted to celebrate the final year in the 22 years of the great history of this team being here,” Clary said.

A 30% increase to its marketing budget helped the BayBears’ final season in Mobile generate an uptick at the gate. Mobile BayBears

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Professional baseball has been played in New Orleans since the 19th century, but it won’t be in 2020 when the Baby Cakes move to Wichita, Kan.

The Class AAA club plays in the Shrine on Airline, a 22-year-old stadium in Metairie, La., about 20 minutes from downtown New Orleans. The venue is infamous for a short video clip that aired on ESPN in 2017 showing a Baby Cakes player and coach diving into five feet of floodwater in the team’s dugout. The Shrine doesn’t meet MiLB facility requirements in several key categories, including substandard railings in the stands, areas of the stadium that are still damaged from Hurricane Katrina, and an inadequate field drainage system, critical in a city that received 35 straight days of rain at one point during 2018.

“The challenge in New Orleans is that, after [Hurricane] Katrina, there was not over time the facility upkeep needed to keep the stadium at a [Triple-A] level,” said team owner Lou Schwechheimer.

The Baby Cakes’ exit from New Orleans hasn’t fared as well, resulting in a 47% attendance drop in the last two years.Parker Waters

The Baby Cakes endured MiLB’s biggest drop in average attendance in 2018, going from 5,554 per contest the previous year to 3,827. That was before the team announced its decision to move. Attendance has plunged again this season, down to 2,922, a 47% decrease in two years. 

Schwechheimer said that after the move was announced, the team lost a number of corporate sponsors. Most of them were not surprised that the team was moving to Wichita; they were aware of the stadium’s issues and declining attendance, and their effect on the Baby Cakes’ business.

Elmore experienced a similar sponsorship loss during Helena’s last season in 2018. He said many companies buy minor league sponsorships as a way of supporting the community and not necessarily with an expectation of return on investment. Elmore and Schwechheimer learned that some sponsors’ loyalties lie more closely with the local community than the exiting franchise.

Several of New Orleans’ memorabilia giveaways this season, including a Fats Domino bobblehead doll, celebrated the city’s heritage. But there have been times this summer at the Shrine where the atmosphere has been melancholic, according to Schwechheimer, a vibe that’s difficult for lame-duck franchises to avoid.

“You have a city that for so many years has hosted professional baseball,” he said, “so, there is a certain degree of ‘This is our last hurrah.’”

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The Pawtucket Red Sox hope local fans stick with the team after it moves 45 minutes north to Worcester, Mass.Katherine Foultz

The Pawtucket Red Sox will move 45 minutes north to Worcester, Mass., located just over an hour west of Boston, in 2021. While there may have been an inevitable feeling about Mobile’s and New Orleans’ departures, the PawSox’s move caught many longtime fans by surprise, in part because of the club’s successful history.

Pawtucket has long been synonymous with minor league baseball, and its 46-year relationship with the Red Sox is the fourth-longest in Minor League Baseball. The town placed in SBJ’s top-25 minor league markets five out of the seven times the rankings have been published, and the Class AAA organization was considered a top-25 most valuable minor league baseball franchise by Forbes in 2016. Two years later, the club finished among MiLB’s top 25 teams in terms of merchandise sales for the 17th time in 25 years.

Where are they headed?

Worcester, Mass.

Worcester is building a 10,000-spectator stadium that will cost close to $90 million to host the Red Sox’s AAA affiliate, with an additional $35 million of state and local government money committed to improving infrastructure in the surrounding area. The venue will be named Polar Park after local carbonated beverage company Polar and will include a hotel overlooking the playing field.

Wichita, Kan.

Wichita’s new stadium will cost $81 million and is expected to draw people and development to the city’s downtown area on the banks of the Arkansas River. The stadium will have 60 permanent and mobile concession stands — six times the number in New Orleans — and will have 6,000 fixed seats, with the ability to hold 4,000 more people in standing areas and an outfield berm.

Madison, Ala.

The new $46 million home of the Rocket City Trash Pandas — named after nearby Huntsville’s town nickname and an internet meme that calls raccoons “trash pandas” — will anchor a mixed development in the Breland Cos.-owned Town Madison. The development also will include shopping, an apartment complex and a Jimmy Buffet-owned Margaritaville Hotel, with a water park and lazy river just beyond center field.

The PawSox led the International League in attendance in 2005 (9,561 fans per game) and 2006 (9,289) but have finished 10th or lower in the 14-team league each of the last four seasons. Their 2018 average attendance (5,982) was the lowest since 1992, according to NumberTamer.com’s annual MiLB attendance report, and the slide has continued into 2019. The club is drawing 5,206 fans per game headed into the final week of the season.

The PawSox’s home field, McCoy Stadium, was built in 1942 and, like New Orleans’ and Mobile’s facilities, lacks the modern amenities that major league clubs prefer for their developing prospects and rehabbing stars. Pawtucket and Rhode Island state politicians tried to strike a new stadium deal but that effort fell flat and Worcester and the state of Massachusetts swept in with the offer of a new, publicly funded $90 million stadium.  

Pawtucket was left in the dust, and its fans blame the team and politicians evenly, said city councilman Terrence Mercer. Their collective feeling toward the team’s impending exit is reflected in attendance figures.

“The dip you see this year is much more driven by apathy or resentment,” said Mercer, who grew up 300 yards from McCoy Field’s left field foul pole and whose first job was selling popcorn and peanuts in the stadium’s grandstands. “I think people are weaning themselves off the team.”

The team still hopes to attract some of its Rhode Island fan base to its new home. PawSox team President Charles Steinberg explained that Pawtucket and Worcester are at opposite ends of the same MiLB market, the Blackstone River Valley, which spans the Massachusetts-Rhode Island border, and both towns are hotbeds of Red Sox fandom. While Steinberg thinks the Pawtucket community’s love for the Sox will carry over to the Class AAA club even after it moves north, Mercer disagrees.

“Nobody in Pawtucket or Rhode Island has any kinship to Worcester,” he said.

The PawSox still have another season in Pawtucket, and they hope they can use that time to attract some of their current fans to future games in Worcester. To that end, Steinberg said the team activated a plan to conduct 50 custom-crafted acts of kindness for communities throughout Rhode Island. Among this summer’s acts of kindness, executives and players visited a senior center and the club paid Little League Baseball sign-up fees for underprivileged kids.

“While you might think there is a hint of us turning our shoulder northward,” Steinberg said, “we’re in fact putting more attention on Rhode Island than ever before.”

Pawtucket encapsulates the lame-duck challenge. At its worst, fan resentment and ownership excitement about a new venue can make the final season a somber afterthought. At its best, with the proper resources committed, a lame-duck season can be a minor blip on a team’s business, but is still bittersweet. The team still leaves.

Elmore was in Helena during the Brewers’ final homestand last fall. While one fan was particularly angry with Elmore, the crowd “was mostly people saying, ‘Hey, I get it. Thank you,” he said.

“But there was disappointment."

Writers Bret McCormick and Bill King take a deeper dive into relocation woes at 10:46:

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