infrared41

I was talking about attendance, but thanks.

So who were you before this?

If nothing else, we should have a thread in which name changes are announced.

Callers are nothing more than a crutch for bad hosts. A good host can weave in the occasional caller and Jim Rome is pretty good at mining his callers for decent content, but to rely on callers is just really bad radio. Roughly 1% of the actual listening audience will pick up the phone to call a radio show. Do any of us really believe that we're getting the best and brightest out of that 1%? The first year I did my old radio show, we tried to concentrate on callers. That only lasted about 3 months because the callers were just awful. They just dug hearing themselves on the radio. They added nothing to the actual show. After that, we decided one caller per 1/2 hour was all we'd allow and that caller had to really bring it. Not relying on callers was the smartest thing we did in three years of doing that show.

I have permission and I would have seconded your vote, but LMU already took care of it.

I was just going to the mod section to suggest adding it to the Goldmine. My work here is done.

Didn't we do this once before about 10 years ago? Break out the old "Hi, I used to be..." name tags.

You finally got rid of that awful underscore! Well done, Maggle.

On a similar note, back when I first joined Facebook, I decided it would be funny to send friend requests only to people who shared my name. It was hilarious for a little while - who knew there were over 50 "infrareds" on Facebook? Then it just got very confusing. But it was a hoot for a little while. My Facebook "holy grail" was to find some guy with my name who was born the same day and year as I was, but chaos ensued and I never got there. Oh well.

Cleveland has had more hockey teams than I can remember. AHL, WHA, NHL, IHL, and back to AHL. None of them have been particularly successful. It's not the Coliseum's fault that hockey has never worked here. That aside, I think the WHA's Crusaders, a team in a league that wasn't the NHL, averaged about 6,500 a game in their short tenure at the Coliseum because they were pretty good. At that time, in this area, 6,500 a game for hockey is like getting 35,000 a game for baseball. The Barons 2.0 New NHL Version wouldn't have worked if they had played downtown for free. Whatever the Indoor Soccer League team was supposed to be did well despite the games being played in Richfield. Indoor soccer fans set an attendance record there. I don't think you can use hockey's failure as some sort of proof that the Coliseum was a failure. But what do I know, I was only here for the entire existence of the Richfield Coliseum. Granted, living here and following those teams doesn't give me the same expertise as a Brewers fan who read some articles, but I do think I have some perspective on the matter.

Albert Belle, the player who got me thinking that there was a serious steroid problem in Major League Baseball. Still remember him taking Troy Percival deep to beat the Angels. In fact, the Tribe kinda owned Troy Percival.

Yeah, that's not entirely accurate. Just like any other team, attendance at Cavs games was good when they were competitive. Concerts and WWE events at the Coliseum did very well. Hell, 20,000+ showed up for an indoor soccer league game at the place. The Coliseum was in a weird location and the traffic sucked, but it was hardly the failure you're making it out to be.

Former Cavs and Cleveland Crusaders owner, Nick Mileti, came up with the idea for the Coliseum. The idea behind putting it in a field in Richfield Township was to draw people from both Akron and Cleveland as well all the towns in the surrounding area. It was reasonably close to Interstate 77 and the Ohio Turnpike. It was located near an exit on the Interstate 271 bypass at the junction of Ohio Route 303. The problem was that the main access road to the place was Ohio Route 303 which is a great little road two lane road for site seeing and motorcycle riding (as well as occasionally seeing the aforementioned Amish in their horse and buggies) but not so great at getting 18,000-20,000 people to an event. Traffic was a at best and a disaster at worst. From where I lived at the time, we'd take Ohio 303 all the way to Richfield which was about a 45 minute drive under normal conditions. If you were headed that way for an event, you had to add at least an extra hour and a half to have any chance of getting there on time. This is Ohio 303...

I hate to break this to you, but the Richfield Coliseum, former home of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Cleveland Crusaders, was in a field out in the middle of nowhere. The Richfield Coliseum was located in Richfield Township which is almost as big as it sounds. Richfield is as close to Akron as it is Cleveland. (And no, Akron and Cleveland are not the same market.) Point being, the Coliseum and Richfield Township were more under the "sphere of influence" of the Amish than they were of the City of Cleveland. Don't believe me? See for yourself. Aerial shots of the Richfield Coliseum. No, this is nowhere.

Technically, we aren't supposed to call people idiots in the first place. That aside, my opinion is that a down vote or dislike button is a bad idea. We've both been here long enough to know how it would turn out.

My two favorite sports are baseball and NASCAR. I'm sure I'm not the only person to really like both sports. Anyway, I don't want you to get the impression that I don't like Charlotte. It's actually one of my favorite cities. I have family there, I've been the the 600 twice and the October race. I love Charlotte and the surrounding area. (I'd move there tomorrow if I could) That said, based on the economics, I don't see how an MLB team could carve out a spot in an already saturated sports market like Charlotte. 81 home games is a lot of dates to sell at MLB prices. Sure, you can get the occasional good, cheap seat at an MLB game, but the team makes its in the park money on season tickets, the high dollar seats, concessions, luxury boxes, in stadium ads, etc. Another thing to consider is this, will the Panthers, Hornets, and NASCAR sponsors either spend more money or move their ads to the new MLB team? Maybe, maybe not. Will the people who own luxury suites with the current teams by yet another one for a baseball team? Then you gotta work out TV and radio deals, get sponsors for those deals, and so on. Point being, it's not as simple as just putting an MLB team in Charlotte and waiting for everyone to show up. A new team throws a huge wrench into an established sports market. There are only so many dollars to go around. As I said before, a new team doesn't bring in new money to a market, it has to fight for the money that's already there. That's why I think any MLB relocation should be to either completely "untapped" markets or markets with just one "big 4" team.

The Braves can’t even sell out playoff games. Anyway, something to consider is this, new teams don’t bring in new money to the local economy. New teams simply move around money that’s already in the local economy. So how do the local sports fans redistribute their money if you add a baseball team? Do Panthers fans drop their season tickets? BobHornetCats fans? Do the local NASCAR fans skip the all-star race or the 600 to spend that money on the new MLB team? See how tough it would be to add MLB to that market now? Again, minor league attendance and major league attendance are two entirely different animals. MiLB is dirt cheap, MLB is very expensive.

I “purposely” left out Charlotte because an MLB team won’t work there. There’s too much competition and not enough interest. The Panthers, BobHornetCats, three NASCAR races, at least one major NHRA event, local track racing, and hot summers all add up to 12,000 fans a game for baseball...if you’re lucky. MLB has expanded twice in the last 20 years. If Charlotte is such a great market, how did it miss out on four chances to land a team? With regard to MiLB, it’s a helluva lot easier to draw fans when your average ticket price is 30-40 bucks lower than the average MLB ticket. If MiLB success translated to MLB success, we’d have MLB teams in places like Erie, PA and Toledo, OH. Finally, if people will show up “no matter where” then why are we even talking about moving teams? Using your logic, Tampa and Miami are already successful which means there’s no reason to relocate either team.

I was joking, dude. But thanks for being such a downer.

On topic, any relocation by MLB should be to a city that has no more than one other “big 4” team. Ideally, the relocated MLB team would be the only team in town. MLB needs to come to grips with the fact that it doesn’t have the status it used to. Teams aren’t going to do well trying to compete in new markets that have established NFL and NBA teams.

That’s the second best argument I’ve heard for keeping the Marlins in Miami.

And that, folks, is the best argument I’ve ever heard for keeping the Marlins in Miami.

Agreed. Anyone who listens to Basically a Sports Show knows my position on Major League Baseball in Florida. It was a bad idea from the start and it just got worse from there. Those two teams are never going to be successful in Florida. Move them, get rid of them, or find a way to have them play just the Yankees, Red Sox, and Cubs for their home schedules. It's a shame that a pretty cool stadium is being wasted on Miami.

Of all the things MLB needs to do, expanding isn't any of them.

I'm a Cleveland Browns and Cleveland Indians fan. Where would you like me to begin?