Minor Pleasures
For a record number of Americans, it's a
whole new ballgame. As
minor-league parks go upscale, Conor
Dougherty finds luxury
skyboxes, wine gardens, hot tubs... and even some
baseball.
By CONOR DOUGHERTY
Staff Reporter of THE
Baseball season is under way, but it's been a
while since there's been a
major trade. Unless, of course, you count a
little-noticed deal that sent
Robert Spence from the St.
Louis Cardinals down to the Memphis Redbirds.
Mr. Spence doesn't consider his move from the
big leagues a demotion. He's an attorney from
because he can watch a local farm team from the
$38,000-a-year luxury skybox he booked this season.
"It's all here in our backyard," he
says.
This summer, more Americans are saying,
"take me out to the
ballgame." But not that ballgame.
Far from the showboating
millionaire players and $8 beers of Major League Baseball,
fans
are heading in record numbers to the country's
other pro
ballparks.
These are hardly the rickety stadiums of old:
Even at the
humblest levels of the sport, minor-league teams are
offering up
an entertainment free-for-all with wine gardens,
hot tubs with
prime outfield views, climbing walls for the kids --
oh, and a few
guys playing baseball in the middle of it all.
So is it time to hit the minors? To get a sense
of parks that mix
bush-league charm with big-league sheen, Weekend Journal
took
a 10-city baseball road trip from
We found everything from skyboxes with Web
hookups (in
goofy promotions like Dr. Seuss Night (announcers
speak in rhyme, and players wear striped socks).
These parks tend to draw families and casual
fans turned off by big-league stadiums, where corporate
groups often lock up the best seats years in advance
and season tickets can cost as much as $10,000 for
groups often lock up the best seats years in advance
and season tickets can cost as much as $10,000 for
a pair. Last summer, minor-league parks hosted
39.9 million fans -- up 6% since 2000, according to the
National Association of
Professional Baseball Leagues.
By comparison, about 73 million people went to
see Major
League Baseball games last year, up less than 1%
since 2000.
This year, eight new stadiums opened for
minor-league teams,
the most in three years.
Fancy parks are sprouting up at all levels of
the minor leagues,
from Triple-A, where players are one step away from
the
majors, down to Single-A, where fans stand a good
chance of
seeing a ground ball dribble between the legs of a
19-year-old
infielder.
This year in
with a separate field for little-leaguers, a
climbing wall for kids and a swimming pool behind the rightfield
wall (two home-run balls have already plopped into
the pool). In
Grasshoppers just got a stadium with a fancy
brick facade and a party deck for private functions. (Price
of a party for 60? $1,650 with burgers and fries,
beer not included.)
Teams are focusing on amenities not only because
they're
profitable, but also because they're one of the few things
they
can control. According to pro baseball's
century-old farm
system, each Major League club has roughly a
half-dozen
affiliated minor-league teams throughout the
The big-league club pays all the salaries and
determines where
players will report for duty. That means owners of a minorleague
affiliate may boast a big talent one week -- and lose him
the next week to the team up the line.
Fans of teams like the Dayton Dragons have
plenty to take
their mind off baseball. The Dragons' five-year-old
park has 30
luxury boxes (fans there get free massages on Fridays
and
Saturdays), a new dessert bar with $4 funnel cakes
and a guy in
tights who roams the stadium roof, dropping
"softy" baseballs
on the crowd (he's called "Roof Man").
The front office says it has a 5,000-person
waiting list for the
park's 7,230 seats. And the team?
It's in dead last place. Says
fan Jeff Stern, a 47-year-old
information-technology manager
who goes to about four games a year: "They
could be playing croquet and we'd still be here."
But some fans just want to see the game. Mike Eady watches about 25 Sacramento River Cats games a
season and can rattle off the names of the latest
pitchers to filter in and out of the team's roster. But the
promotions such as the "Hot Dog Cannon" routine,
where stadium employees shoot foil-wrapped franks
says.
Here are highlights from minor-league stadiums
across the country:
BIG-LEAGUE TOUCH: Skyboxes with leather couches
BUSH-LEAGUE TOUCH: Park employees dress as big
dots, race around outfield
INSIDE BASEBALL: You can still buy tickets to
sit on the parks grassy bermor watch games free from
the sidewalk behind right field.
The new owners have brought entertainment
scripts right out of Vegas: The team has four mascots (one
between-inning routine involves a dragon in drag
seducing an umpire), the seven-story scoreboard plays
clips from "Charlie's Angels 2," and on
Fridays and Saturdays luxury-suite customers get
complimentary massages. Other fan
favorites? On-field toddler races, and a
senior-citizen act that
stands on top of the dugout and performs '70s songs.
(They're called the Retirement Village People.)
Kane
BIG-LEAGUE TOUCH: Hot-tub seating, $175 for
eight
BUSH-LEAGUE TOUCH: Between-inning racerun by staffers carrying cutout horse heads
INSIDE BASEBALL: A few seasons ago, the team
fielded shortstop Rex Rundgren, son of singer Todd
Rundgren.
There was Thom Curtis of
game's first pitch, a fastball down the middle.
("Don't kill my catcher," said a team official, who
presented Mr. Curtis the ball, which bore a Caribou
Coffee logo on one side.) Over in the Kidzone,
Greg and Niki Watchinski watched two of their three kids play on a
"Mini Moonwalk." Over the
outfield fence from right field, Jason Smith of
as he and his fiancée watched the game from the
stadium hot tub. And then there was Rick McAdams, a
59-year-old from
years ago, and keeps returning to the minors because
he can get to know coaches, scouts and managers.
"I gotta go back
to work one of these days," he says.
For the Watchinski
family of
park. "I don't think there'd be a place for a
stroller and blanket at a major-league stadium," says Niki
Watchinski.
BIG-LEAGUE TOUCH: $7 beers
BUSH-LEAGUE TOUCH: No ballpark parking lot
INSIDE BASEBALL: All team profits go to a
foundation that funds youth baseball and other programs.
The Memphis Redbirds, the Triple-A affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals, play in the minors'
most
expensive stadium -- a $72 million park with two levels
of executive suites (starting at $38,000 a year),
a batting cage, a 24-foot-high climbing wall and
a boardwalk for kids that includes a "Birdbath"
watergun race. For all of this, fans pay the price: A
32-oz. beer here costs $7, just two bucks less than
the same beer at the Cardinals' Busch Stadium.
Still, fans were forgiving: The Redbirds are
owned by a nonprofit foundation that funds local kids'
programs. The idea was hatched by Storage
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programs. The idea was hatched by Storage
bought the team for $7.5 million, then donated it and helped
plan the stadium, which opened in 2000 as
the centerpiece to
In fact, the city's bar-filled core, just a few
blocks away, may be the biggest distraction. Richard Collie
paid a $5 admission and sat at a picnic table beyond
the outfield, but he and his wife stayed just a few
innings before heading over to hear some blues just a
couple blocks over. "I get the cheapest tickets they
have, have a beer, then walk down to
from
BIG-LEAGUE TOUCH: On the field, nothing but
baseball
BUSH-LEAGUE TOUCH: Luxury suites under the
stands
INSIDE BASEBALL: Baseballs longest recorded game
took place here33 innings in 1981 featuring
future stars Wade Boggs and Cal Ripken.
Even as other minor-league teams move into new
stadiums with luxury boxes and more on-field
entertainment, this affiliate of the Boston Red Sox hews to
tradition. "The field is sacred," says team
spokesman Bill Wanless. That
means no mascot races between innings, and scoreboards that show
statistics and highlights, not animated three-card monte. The "luxury suites" that were added as
part of a
$16 million facelift in 1999 are on the ground
level.
And while the Pawtucket Red Sox play 45 miles
south of
Fans in
from live Red Sox games on a big monitor behind
right field. Still, George Arguin, a print-shop owner
from Mattapoisett,
contracts. "This is a purer form of the sport,"
he says. "You don't see that at Fenway."
BIG-LEAGUE TOUCH: When the New Orleans Zephyrs
come to town, fans in the best seats get
gumbo
BUSH-LEAGUE TOUCH: National anthem played by
grade-schoolers with violins
INSIDE BASEBALL: This team is affiliated with
the Oakland As, whose Moneyball strategy values
players who take lots of walks. Translation: Expect
longer games. (Only a few minutes longer, the team
says.)
The River Cats bring a big-league spin to the
farm: With more than 750,000 fans attending last year, it
was the minor leagues' top draw -- packing its
14,600-capacity stadium and outdrawing the struggling
major-league Montreal Expos club. The organization targets
fans at all levels, from the businesses that
rent luxury suites for as much as $55,000 a year
down to the salmon-taco-eating families in the $5
seats.
"Our audience is people who eat," says
Alan Ledford, the River Cats president. "That is, everybody."
Raley Field has plenty of touches you're less likely
to find in the bigs, like the musical number we
caught during our visit -- the Star-Spangled Banner
played by the varsity violin class from Sierra
during his business trip to