MLB Stadium Saga: Oakland/Tampa Bay/Southside

[Jimmy!]

8 hours ago, Cujo said:

 

Zero.

 

Don't you live up that way? You should know this.

How many versions of the Beavers, Mavericks, and Rockies have they lost? If they can’t keep interest in minor league baseball, why would MLB be any different?

[McCall]

1 hour ago, Jimmy! said:

How many versions of the Beavers, Mavericks, and Rockies have they lost? If they can’t keep interest in minor league baseball, why would MLB be any different?

Well, to be fair, people tend to be more interested in Major League teams than Minor League teams.

[WestCoastBias]

The Salt Lake Bee's play on Sundays and they have a top 20 attendance in MiLB. Utah's athletics also have no problem playing on Sundays. 

 

I don't think playing on Sunday would be that big of an issue. 

[Cujo]

2 hours ago, Jimmy! said:

If they can’t keep interest in minor league baseball, why would MLB be any different?

 

My bad. I was talking about how Portland has no chance at an expansion MLB team. I'm sure they could score a minor league team if they wanted.

[Jimmy!]

16 minutes ago, Cujo said:

 

My bad. I was talking about how Portland has no chance at an expansion MLB team. I'm sure they could score a minor league team if they wanted.

They have the Hops, a Single A team, and the Pickles, a sub-minor league team.

 

 

[gosioux76]

1 hour ago, Jimmy! said:

How many versions of the Beavers, Mavericks, and Rockies have they lost? If they can’t keep interest in minor league baseball, why would MLB be any different?

 

And the Hops, meanwhile, are investing $120 million to build a new baseball stadium in the Portland suburbs. 

 

There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical about Portland as a MLB market, but having a long history of departed minor league franchises isn't one of the big ones. That city, as a fanbase, could ably support a MLB team, but it's bigger issue is whether there's an ownership group that could secure an adequate stadium location and finance it themselves. 

[Cujo]

Oh yikesssss

 

Still. All that being said, Portland would still be a better home for the Rays than Tampa.

[BBTV]

I've always thought that minor-league success or failure has no bearing on a market's viability as a home for a major-league team, in the same way that exhibitions at neutral sites are in no way a "test" for that market.

 

Like if Skydome doesn't sell out for a neutral site NFL game, that absolutely cannot be held against Toronto.  If nobody goes to Portland Beavers games, while it's worth looking into, it's not necessarily indicative of how a major-league team would be received.

 

Even past major-league failures need to be fully dissected before being held against any market, as the reasons for failure may be completely independent of the actual location.

 

(by "major league", I mean "top tier", like MLB, NFL, NBA).

[Ridleylash]

18 minutes ago, BBTV said:

I've always thought that minor-league success or failure has no bearing on a market's viability as a home for a major-league team, in the same way that exhibitions at neutral sites are in no way a "test" for that market.

 

Like if Skydome doesn't sell out for a neutral site NFL game, that absolutely cannot be held against Toronto.  If nobody goes to Portland Beavers games, while it's worth looking into, it's not necessarily indicative of how a major-league team would be received.

 

Even past major-league failures need to be fully dissected before being held against any market, as the reasons for failure may be completely independent of the actual location.

 

(by "major league", I mean "top tier", like MLB, NFL, NBA).

Exactly; oftentimes, a failed team isn't just "this place isn't a major-league market", but more "the owner failed this market"; it's not coincidence that the teams that get moved are generally the teams with bad ownership, low attendance, bad ballparks and poor historical success.

 

The Expos are a great example of this; they were generally pretty decent in terms of support, but a lack of success, poor Canadian dollar and an aging ballpark combined with the scum of Loria combined helped doom the franchise to relocation.

[The_Admiral]

On 4/12/2023 at 3:15 PM, GDAWG said:

Isn't there some sort of state law where no Utah teams play at home on Sundays?  

The Mormon Church is a moneymaking enterprise; they'll raise no stink about it if they run the numbers on a SLC baseball team and can find a way that they'd come out ahead. They're against gambling but built Las Vegas. They're against homosexuality but profited from radio stations that played Elton John and Joan Jett. The church owns a mall. They don't have actual principles that the rest of baseball would have to acquiesce to.

[Jimmy!]

5 hours ago, BBTV said:

If nobody goes to Portland Beavers games, while it's worth looking into, it's not necessarily indicative of how a major-league team would be received.

 

 

I could get behind that if it was a one-off instance. But when that city has had multiple relocations, I can’t subscribe to Portland being MLB ready. But that’s just one old man’s opinion.

[BBTV]

On 4/14/2023 at 9:12 PM, Jimmy! said:

I could get behind that if it was a one-off instance. But when that city has had multiple relocations, I can’t subscribe to Portland being MLB ready. But that’s just one old man’s opinion.

 

I have Phillies season tickets.  Even when they blow.  If they didn't exist and we had only a minor-league team, I would probably go to a game or two just for fun, but they wouldn't be the "event" that a major-league game is.  I cannot hold it against people that they don't want to spend their time at minor-league games. 

 

That's not to say that there aren't reasons that would carry over to a ML team - but sometimes it's just that people want major-league sports and not minor league.  I know neither Portland nor it's situation with the Beavers (assuming that's it's MiLB team still) - but I have a hard time equating minor-league support to major-league support.

[who do you think]

So ignoring the Sunday issue... I know they don't own the Jazz anymore, but is Larry Miller corp or whatever still capable of being principal owners of a big league team, as far as we know? Or at this point are they just another group of yokels and pitchmen making websites and drawing on napkins while they wait for someone with actual money to come along, like Nashville?

 

If it's the former I would think this puts their bid way out in front of all the other roll call cities. I think we've established that no one important wants to own/build anything MLB-related in Portland or Montreal, and Vegas entered the "two more weeks" meme zone a while ago.

[Jimmy!]

1 hour ago, BBTV said:

 

I have Phillies season tickets.  Even when they blow.  If they didn't exist and we had only a minor-league team, I would probably go to a game or two just for fun, but they wouldn't be the "event" that a major-league game is.  I cannot hold it against people that they don't want to spend their time at minor-league games. 

 

That's not to say that there aren't reasons that would carry over to a ML team - but sometimes it's just that people want major-league sports and not minor league.  I no neither Portland nor it's situation with the Beavers (assuming that's it's MiLB team still) - but I have a hard time equating minor-league support to major-league support.

The third iteration of the Beavers left in 2010. 

[Walk-Off]

On 4/14/2023 at 7:59 PM, the admiral said:

The Mormon Church is a moneymaking enterprise; they'll raise no stink about it if they run the numbers on a SLC baseball team and can find a way that they'd come out ahead. They're against gambling but built Las Vegas. They're against homosexuality but profited from radio stations that played Elton John and Joan Jett. The church owns a mall. They don't have actual principles that the rest of baseball would have to acquiesce to.

 

While I am not personally aware of anything that the Latter-day Saints Church has done to help "build" Las Vegas as we know that place today, I did live for a while in a region where, at the time, the LDS Church-owned Bonneville International Corporation owned and operated two commercial FM radio stations -- one specializing in classic secular rock music and the other devoted to alternative secular rock.  Thus, my impression is that the LDS Church has been most willing to own and/or run businesses that at least seem to contradict well-known church doctrines if and when the church can keep an extremely low profile about such enterprises.

 

Yes, the LDS Church's highest-ranking leaders have apparently spent decades tolerating Sunday home games played by the current Salt Lake Bees club, previous professional baseball teams in Salt Lake City, and pro baseball teams elsewhere in Utah (e.g. the Pioneer League's Ogden Raptors) and in heavily Mormon communities outside Utah (e.g. the Pioneer League's Idaho Falls Chukars).  Even so, I would not put it past the LDS organization's grand poobahs to be brazen enough to exploit Major League Baseball's far higher profile and level of wealth by trying to hold an MLB franchise in the church's mother city to an unreasonably much higher standard regarding compliance with LDS doctrines on matters such as the home game schedule.  Should that happen, I hope rather strongly that the team's ownership and/or the MLB commissioner's office will use the LDS Church's history of "sinful" business ventures to push back hard against any such demand.

[The_Admiral]

1 hour ago, Walk-Off said:

While I am not personally aware of anything that the Latter-day Saints Church has done to help "build" Las Vegas as we know that place today

 

They settled the place, have a long history of quietly investing in casinos, and ran everything on the ground for Howard Hughes.

 

We used to have Bonneville stations in Chicago and they were probably the best-run shops in town. 

 

[gosioux76]

20 hours ago, Jimmy! said:

The third iteration of the Beavers left in 2010. 

 

They did not leave. They were sold. That's a big difference in this circumstance.

 

The Beavers' exit from Portland wasn't because the city didn't want our couldn't support baseball. They left because the owner, Merritt Paulson, also owned the Portland Timbers soccer club and was investing a significant amount of capital to move that franchise into Major League Soccer. One of the league's requirements in that pursuit was that the Timbers play in a soccer-specific stadium.

 

That meant that PGE Park (now Providence Park), which was the home of both the Beavers and the USL-era Timbers, would have to be renovated into a soccer-specific venue, which rendered it unusable for baseball.

 

Paulson made several attempts to relocate the Beavers within the metro area, but was unable to find a suitable location nor a local government that was willing to help him finance a new stadium. He eventually sold it to an ownership group that eventually put the club in El Paso, Texas.

 

Much like @Gothamite was suggesting, there is no reason to suggest that Portland would fail as a baseball market based on this example. 

[Jimmy!]

Doesn’t matter how they left. They still left.

[dont care]

11 hours ago, Jimmy! said:

Doesn’t matter how they left. It was the third time they still left.

FTFY

[kolob]

On 4/15/2023 at 6:20 AM, Walk-Off said:

 

While I am not personally aware of anything that the Latter-day Saints Church has done to help "build" Las Vegas as we know that place today, I did live for a while in a region where, at the time, the LDS Church-owned Bonneville International Corporation owned and operated two commercial FM radio stations -- one specializing in classic secular rock music and the other devoted to alternative secular rock.  Thus, my impression is that the LDS Church has been most willing to own and/or run businesses that at least seem to contradict well-known church doctrines if and when the church can keep an extremely low profile about such enterprises.

 

Yes, the LDS Church's highest-ranking leaders have apparently spent decades tolerating Sunday home games played by the current Salt Lake Bees club, previous professional baseball teams in Salt Lake City, and pro baseball teams elsewhere in Utah (e.g. the Pioneer League's Ogden Raptors) and in heavily Mormon communities outside Utah (e.g. the Pioneer League's Idaho Falls Chukars).  Even so, I would not put it past the LDS organization's grand poobahs to be brazen enough to exploit Major League Baseball's far higher profile and level of wealth by trying to hold an MLB franchise in the church's mother city to an unreasonably much higher standard regarding compliance with LDS doctrines on matters such as the home game schedule.  Should that happen, I hope rather strongly that the team's ownership and/or the MLB commissioner's office will use the LDS Church's history of "sinful" business ventures to push back hard against any such demand.

 

As a member of the prominent religion here in Utah the "concern" of Sunday home games isn't so much a matter of LDS leadership demands, in fact I'd say there hasn't been much of a demand from leadership since (if ever) the early 20th century. However, over the past 20-25 years it's more so a matter of population demand. While a good segment of LDS fans probably wouldn't attend a Sunday home game, SLC and the surrounding areas have enough of a population where it's a moot point.