MLB to Small Town America: Drop Dead

It is a fantastic location and a great place to watch a game. With no season and the future of in person attendance in doubt, for MLB to point a gun at Chattanooga’s head and say spend $25 million or more to build a stadium that won’t seat more people and just has indoor batting cages seems incredibly insane.

 

If you Google Earth the Chattanooga ballpark, there is plenty of room on the stadium footprint and adjacent spaces where they could build an indoor practice facility. Maybe not one that could fit a full field under a bubble dome, but certainly enough for a half dozen hitting/pitching cages.
Chattanooga ain't the fuckin Arctic. The weather is perfectly tolerable to practice outside 9 months a year.
Is that what it's coming to now for these billionaire fuckers the MLB owners, they demand not only free taxpayer built stadiums, but now they want full sized domes for the minor league teams to practice in? We're talking about practice, man!

 

I've tried to make a habit of seeing at least one baseball game every time I go on an extended vacation in the summer. Love Nat Bailey in Vancouver BC, Biscuits ballpark in Montgomery, saw the Portland Beavers and the Rockies at old/new Civic Stadium, the old Eugene ballpark was great, Modesto, Stockton, Tacoma, Salem-Keizer...
cue Johnny Cash.

 

The Red Sox are finishing up their run in Pawtucket (Providence) and moving the AAA team to Worcester. I think it’s a $100 million stadium. I forget the exact population figures re: Worcester and Providence metros, but I’d say they’re fairly close. Rhode Island wouldn’t play ball after Curt Schilling took the state to the cleaners, so the Sox shook down Mass. and Worcester.

 

I was at Nat Bailey a couple of years ago. Beautiful gem of a park and bought a sweet ass hat while I was there.

It sounds like the historic parks, and the built to look old downtown parks are the ones MLB is having a problem with, so this will likely get dumb and all the cities that used Chattanooga as a blueprint to revitalize their downtowns, are going to get hammered.

 

https://www.fresnobee.com/sports/mlb/fresno-grizzlies/article247444700.html

 

Hope that winds up in court, especially if they file in the state of California. While MLB has federal antitrust, eliminating MILB and voiding all previous agreements which were signed in good faith far exceeds what was agreed upon in 1922. And since Congress decided baseball was "a state-centric business," I'm all for seeing what judges in Sacramento think.

I don't know if the ownership in Fresno has a case, but it would be worth their effort to force MLB's hand. They invested -- and ran a franchise -- under the rules that existed under the agreement. Can MLB arbitrarily eliminate a for-profit venture without compensation?

To show how poorly thought out this whole situation has become, there are no 2021 schedules for any level of MILB -- meaning minor league affiliates can't offer specific dates for promotions, sell advertising or in some cases, even offer season ticket packages (not knowing how many games they're playing at what level).

 

The MiLB team about five miles from where I am sitting is selling ticket packages for next season. They do not have a schedule, though. They are selling 12 undated vouchers and four tickets for opening weekend, whenever that might be.

 

And if the team goes bankrupt because of the fall out from COVID or from the loss of affiliation get all there money back in bankruptcy? Caveat emptor.

 

The article describes how Fresno is probably going to lose a Triple A team with a Class A team. But each MLB team will continue to have a Triple A Affiliate. Who is going to replace Fresno as one of the 30 AAA teams.

I also read that the owners of minor league teams will be compensated for their economic loses. So if a Triple A team was worth 20 million and a Class A team is worth eight million MLB will reimburse the owners 12 million dollars. I can not believe that is true.

 

I know that the Twins recently dropped Rochester, N.Y. as their AAA affiliate and it's believed that will be replaced by the St. Paul Saints, long one of the most prominent organizations in Indy ball. The Nationals appear to have picked up Rochester and dumped Fresno, which was always probably a huge upgrade in convenience for them. The fact that the Dodgers own their AAA club in OKC means geographically, there was always going to be a East or Central MLB club stuck with a West Coast PCL team.