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April 14, 2012

Minor League Baseball: the Carolina League (Class A-Advanced).

Filed under: Baseball,Baseball: MiLB Class A — admin @ 7:08 pm

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2012 Carolina League
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The Carolina League is an 8-team Class A-Advanced minor league in Organized Baseball, 3 levels below Major League Baseball. In 2011, the Carolina League, as a whole, drew 3,448 per game. That figure was better than the other two Class A-Advanced leagues in Organized Baseball, the California League (which averaged 2,303 per game in 2011), and the Florida State League (which averaged 1,642 per game in 2011). The Carolina League also drew better than one league in Organized Baseball which is higher-placed than it – the Southern League, which averaged 3,242 per game. {List of all minor leagues’ 2011 league-attendance-averages, along with a map of the 122 highest-drawing MiLB teams in 2011, here.}

The Carolina League traces its history back to 1945, when it was established as a Class C minor league with 8 teams, 2 of which were unaffiliated (or Independent). The 8 teams in the 1945 Carolina League were all based in either southern Virginia (2 teams) or North Carolina (6 teams) – the Independent team the Burlington (NC) Bees, the New York Giants’ farm team the Danville (VA) Leafs, the Independent team the Durham (NC) Bulls, the Philadelphia Phillies’ farm team the Greensboro Patriots, the Chicago Cubs’ farm team the Leaksville-Draper-Spray (NC) Triplets, the Philadelphia Athletics’ minor league team the Martinsville (VA) A’s, the Cincinnati Reds’ minor league team the Raleigh (NC) Capitals, and the St. Louis Cardinals’ minor league team the Winston-Salem Cardinals.

These days [2012], there are still 2 teams from southern Virginia in the Carolina League – the Boston Red Sox’ farm team the Salem Red Sox, and the Atlanta Braves’ farm team the Lynchburg Hillcats. But there is no longer a majority of teams from North Carolina in the Carolina League, because the range of the Carolina League has expanded north to include teams from northern Virginia (the Washington Nationals’ farm team the Potomac Nationals, based in Woodbridge, VA), from Maryland (the Baltimore Orioles’ farm team the Frederick Keys) and from Delaware (the Kansas City Royals’ farm team the Wilmington Blue Rocks); and the Carolina League range has spread south to include a team from South Carolina (the Texas Rangers’ farm team the Myrtle Beach Pelicans). Rounding out the rest of the 2012 Carolina League teams are the Winston-Salem Dash (a Chicago White Sox farm team), and the Carolina Mudcats (a Cleveland Indians farm team). These last two teams are from two areas in North Carolina which have had a long connection with the Carolina League.

The top 3 drawing teams in the Carolina League
Winston-Salem, North Carolina has had a team in the Carolina League all throughout the league’s 68-year history [up to 2012]. Here are all the names of the Winston-Salem minor league baseball teams -
Winston-Salem Dash (2009-present)
Winston-Salem Warthogs (1995-2008)
Winston-Salem Spirits (1984-1994)
Winston-Salem Red Sox (1961-1983)
Winston-Salem Red Birds (1957-1960)
Winston-Salem Cardinals (1945-1953)
Winston-Salem Twins ([pre-Carolina League teams: 1905, 1908-1917, 1920-1933, 1937-1942], 1954-1956).
Below – Winston-Salem Dash
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Photo credit above – BB&T Ballpark/visitsouth.com.

The highest drawing team in the Carolina League these days is the oldest team in the league, the Winston-Salem Dash, who drew 4,662 per game in 2011. It must be pointed out that Winston-Salem’s league-leading gate figures are pretty much the result of a brand-new stadium (their BB&T Ballpark opened in 2010), because in 2008, the Winston-Salem team, then called the Warthogs, drew 2,575 per game; and in 2009, when most every baseball fan in town, it seems, was waiting for the new ballpark to open, they only drew 901 per game (and Winston-Salem drew 4,593 per game in the inaugural season in BB& T Ballpark, in 2010).

Below – Wilmington Blue Rocks
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Photo credit above – milb.com/Frawley Stadium.
The other two teams in the league that draw over 4,000 per game are the Wilmington Blue Rocks (see above), and the Frederick Keys (see below). Unlike Winston-Salem, both Frederick and Wilmington have been drawing above 4,000 per game since at least 2005 (which is as far back that the attendance data I could find goes,here, at the Biz of Baseball.com site). Wilmington, Delaware, with a city population of around 70,000, is 21 miles south of Philadelphia, PA. Frederick, Maryland, with a city population of around 65,000, is 40 miles NW of Washington DC.
Below – Frederick Keys
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Photo credit above – ballparkdigest.com/ballpark-visit-harry-grove-stadium-frederick-keys.

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Below: franchise and league shifts of teams in the Carolina League between the 2011 and the 2012 seasons…
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The Greater Raleigh/Durham area has one team currently in the Carolina League – a new team, the second incarnation of the Zebulon, NC-based Carolina Mudcats, who took over the Kinston, NC-based Kinston Indians’ spot in the Carolina League after the 2011 season. [Zebulon, NC is 18 miles east of Raleigh, NC.] The Carolina Mudcats dropped down a level, from being a Double-A level Southern League team (in the Cincinnati Reds’ farm system), to being a team in the Class A-Advanced Carolina League (as a team in the Cleveland Indians’ farm system). This was implemented by the Carolina Mudcats taking the league-place of the Kinston Indians, who are now defunct (the Kinston Indians were the lowest-drawing team in the Carolina League, drawing 1,780 per game in 2011). The franchise that was the Carolina Mudcats (I) of the Southern League (1991 to 2011) moved to Pensacola, Florida to become the Pensacola Blue Wahoos, in 2012. ['Pensacola Blue Wahoos' (en.wikipedia.org).]

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Bull Durham and its connection to the 1987 Carolina League
At one time there were 2 teams from the Greater Raleigh/Durham area in the Carolina League – the Durham Bulls and the Raleigh Capitals. The Durham Bulls still exist…they moved up a couple levels to Triple-A baseball, and have been in the International League since 1998, where they flourish as the top minor-league affiliate of the talent-loaded Tampa Bay Rays’ organization. The Durham Bulls were a Carolina League team from the league’s establishment in 1945 to 1967, and were re-established from 1980 to 1997, then made the aforementioned jump up to Class AAA. This second incarnation of the Durham Bulls, circa the mid-to-late-1980s, was concurrent with the filming and release of the classic film Bull Durham (1988), which was the brainchild of ex-minor league baseball player Ron Shelton, who wrote the screenplay and directed the movie. Sports Illustrated called Bull Durham the greatest sports movie of all time. {Here is the official site for Bull Durham at MGM.com.}

While Shelton never actually played in the Carolina League {Ron Shelton minor league stats at baseball-reference.com}, he did have a 5-year career in the Baltimore Orioles organization, playing in the Appalachian League, the Texas League, the California League, and the International League. He retired from baseball during the 1972 player strike. Cut to around 14 years later, and Shelton began writing what would become the screenplay for Bull Durham as he took a meandering road trip through North Carolina. He then went back to Los Angeles and wrote the screenplay for Bull Durham in a 12-week period (I am guessing that this occurred in 1986).

Shelton at this point had 2 filmed screenplays to his credit (including The Best of Times (1986), which starred Kurt Russell and Robin Williams as former high school football players), but Bull Durham was his directorial debut. Many of the scenes in Bull Durham are reconstructions of incidents, anecdotes, and general characteristics of the minor league baseball world which Shelton encountered as a minor league ballplayer. The character of the veteran catcher called “Crash” Davis (played by Kevin Costner) was named after a former MLB and Carolina League player named Lawrence “Crash” Davis {his Wikipedia page, here}. The baseball-groupie/seductress/ “Church of Baseball” proselytizer character played by Susan Sarandon in the film, Annie Savoy, was so-named because minor league ballplayers often called the groupies that hung around the ballparks “Baseball Annies”. But the Annie Savoy character was not a shallow groupie, she was a pretty deep thinker…via the IMDB.com site, here/scroll down a bit for quote that starts with ‘opening narration’ is the great soliloquy Annie has in the film, on why baseball is a better religion than any of the other established religions. Incidentally, the “Nuke” LaLoosh character (a cocky young phenom pitcher), played by Tim Robbins, which is so instrumental to the greatness of the film, was set to be played by Anthony Michael Hall, until Shelton put his foot down and threatened to leave the project unless Robbins got the role.

A scene from Bull Durham, which you can see here…
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Image credits above – Orion Pictures/MGM via Trelvis68 at youtube.com [see the video clip, here]. logoshak.com. amazon.com/Durham-Jersey-Crash-Davis-Baseball/dp/B002YY2DLE.

In Bull Durham, the team, the fictional 1987 Durham Bulls, and the real-life Durham Bulls’ ballpark of the time, are two of the primary features of the film. [Durham Athletic Park (1926-present, not in use today/Wikipedia page, here.] The teams in the film wear the actual uniforms of the real-life teams in the 1987 Carolina League (and not just the Durham Bulls uniforms, but also the Peninsula White Sox, the Winston-Salem Spirits, the Salem Bucs, etc. are the real 1987 uniforms of those teams). The only place where Bull Durham lacks versimilitude is that, in the film, teams from another actual minor league, the South Atlantic League of 1987, play against the Durham Bulls, which would never happen in real life (such as, in the scene above, where the Durham Bulls were playing the [now-defunct] Fayetteville Generals, who were a South Atlantic League team from 1987 to 1996). Not that that detracts at all from the film, it’s just that, as a baseball geek, I felt duty-bound to point that out.

‘Bull Durham filming locations‘ (IMBD.com).
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Here were the teams in the 1987 Carolina League -
North Division
Team (with Affiliation):
Salem Buccaneers PIT
Hagerstown Suns BAL
Prince William Yankees NYY
Lynchburg Mets NYM

South Division
Team (with Affiliation):
Kinston Indians CLE
Winston-Salem Spirits CHC
Peninsula White Sox CHW
Durham Bulls ATL

Here is where the 1987 Carolina League teams/franchises are today, and what those teams are named today:
In the 1987 Carolina League, there was 1 team from Maryland –
Hagerstown Suns (still an MiLB city as of 2012, having moved over to the Class-A South Atlantic League in 1993).

In the 1987 Carolina League, there were 4 teams from Virginia -
- Lynchburg Mets (still a Carolina League city as of 2012 – today known as the Lynchburg Hillcats).
- Peninsula White Sox (Hampton, VA; no minor league team there today [2012], but the franchise still exists…the Peninsula Pilots moved north to Wilmington, Delaware in 1993, where the Wilmington Blue Rocks still exist as a Carolina League team).
- Prince William Yankees (franchise started as Alexandria (VA) Dukes (1978-80; 1982-83)/ moved to Prince William (VA) (1984-98)/ moved to Woodbridge (VA) today the franchise (from 1999 to present) is known as the Potomac Nationals).
- Salem Buccaneers (still a Carolina League city as of 2012 – today known as the Salem Red Sox).

In the 1987 Carolina League, there were 3 teams from North Carolina -
- Durham Bulls (still exist as a Triple-A team in the International League [since 1998].
- Kinston Indians (went defunct after 2011, franchise moved east to become Carolina Mudcats (II) (est. 2012 as a Carolina League team).
- Winston-Salem Spirits (still a Carolina League city as of 2012 – today known as the Winston-Salem Dash).

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Here is a Q&A with Ron Shelton, by Richard Deitsch at SI.com, ‘Ron Shelton Q&A‘.

Here is a very comprehensive interview of Ron Shelton, by John Zelazny, at eightmillionstories.com, ‘Ron Shelton: From the Red Wings to BULL DURHAM‘.
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Photo and Image credits on the map page -
Frederick Keys/ Harry Grove Stadium, here2play.wordpress.com.
Lynchburg Hillcats/ Calvin Falwell Field, littleballparks.com.
Potomac Nationals/ G. Richard Pfitzner Stadium, bing.com/maps.
Wilmington Blue Rocks/ Daniel S. Frawley Stadium, bing.com/maps.

Carolina Mudcats/ Five County Stadium, skyscrapercity.com thread, ‘Little Ballparks‘.
Salem Red Sox/ Lewis-Gale Field at Salem Memorial Baseball Stadium, “the basebal travele…” at panoramio.com.
Myrtle Beack Pelicans/ BB&T Coastal Field, bing.com/maps.
Winston-Salem Dash/ BB&T Ballpark, visitsouth.com.

I used this list, from Ballparkdigest.com, ‘2011 Baseball Attendance by Average [350 minor league baseball teams' 2011 average attendances]‘. Thanks very much to the Ballparksdigest.com site for the comprehensive attendance data.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘Minor league baseball‘; ‘Carolina League‘.

February 29, 2012

Minor League Baseball – Top 122 drawing teams within Organized Baseball, and in the Independent Leagues – all teams that drew over 3,000 per game in 2011.

Filed under: Baseball,Baseball: MiLB>attendance map 2011 & 2013 — admin @ 9:00 am

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2011 Minor League Baseball Attendance Map


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Side-note:
At Reddit.com, there are some interesting, informative, and pretty funny comments on this map. Here is the comment thread for this 2011 Minor League Baseball Attendance map at reddit.com, http://en.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/13o9fu/attendance_in_minor_league_baseball_map_of_the/.

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In 2011, in North America, there were 350 minor league teams in 34 leagues which measured attendance. This map shows all the minor league baseball teams that drew over 3,000 per game in 2011 (figures from home regular season average attendance). 103 of these teams are pro teams from Organized Baseball. 18 of these teams are pro teams from Independent minor league baseball leagues. 1 team is amateur, the highest-drawing team of the 19 Independent teams on the map, the Madison Mallards of Madison, Wisconsin, who play in the College summer league called the Northwoods League.

108 of these teams are based in the United States. 11 of these teams are based in Mexico. 3 of these teams are based in Canada.

Minor League Baseball (aka MiLB), which is part of Organized Baseball, has teams who are affiliated, as farm teams, with one of the 30 Major League Baseball clubs (with the exception of the Mexican League, which is part of Organized Baseball, but whose 14 teams have no affiliation with an MLB club). Minor League Baseball has 19 leagues spread across 4 levels (AAA, AA, A, Rookie). 15 of these 19 leagues in MiLB post attendance figures (the leagues in MiLB that do not record attendances are the Arizona League, the Gulf Coast League, the Dominican Summer League, and the Venezuela Summer League – all Rookie Leagues).

Note: average attendance by league can be found three paragraphs down.
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The map is an attendance-map for the 122 teams. The logos and circles on the map are sized to reflect average attendance…the larger the team’s cap logo and accompanying circular segment is, the higher the team’s attendance is. At the far right on the map page is a two-column-list of all the 122 teams, in order of 2011 attendance rank. Alongside each team in the list is their home cap logo; and either their MLB parent club’s home cap logo, or the logo of their league (for the 30 teams from either the Mexican League [there are 11 Mexican League teams on the map] or for the teams from one of the 5 Independent Leagues represented here [there are 19 Independent teams on the map, 8 teams from the American Association of Independent Professional Baseball]; 7 teams from the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball; 2 teams from the Frontier League; 1 team from the Northwoods League (which is a College summer league), and 1 team from the Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball (aka the Can-Am League).]
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Below: the 19 Independent minor league baseball teams that drew over 3,000 per game in 2011…
Note: to enlarge image below, click on image below, then hit the Ctrl key and the + key at the same time, twice…
minor-league-baseball_top-drawing-independent-league-teams2011_segment_c.gif

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Breakdown of the 103 teams from Organized Baseball on the map. Included is the 2011 average attendance of each league.
Triple-A / AAA:
6,956 per game – International League – all 14 teams on the map.
6,156 per game – Pacific Coast League – all 16 teams on the map.
4,693 per game – Mexican League – 11 of the 14 teams on the map.
Double-A / AA:
4,868 per game – Eastern League – all 12 teams on the map.
3,242 per game – Southern League – 7 of the 10 teams on the map.
5,247 per game – Texas League – all 8 teams on the map.
Class-A / A:
Class A-Advanced:
2,303 per game – California League – 2 of 10 teams on the map.
3,448 per game – Carolina League – 5 of 8 teams on the map.
1,642 per game – Florida State League – none of the 12 teams on the map.
Class-A:
3,754 per game – Midwest League – 10 of 16 teams on the map.
3,358 per game – South Atlantic League – 6 of the 14 teams on the map.
Class A-Short Season:
3,507 per game – New York-Penn League – 8 of the 14 teams on the map.
3,007 per game – Northwest League – 3 of the 8 teams on the map.
Advanced Rookie:
862 per game – Appalachian League – none of the 10 teams on the map.
2,229 per game – Pioneer League – 1 of the 8 teams on the map.

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Photo credits above – Rochester Area Ballparks site. noisenation.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/who-are-the-lehigh-valley-ironpigs.
The top drawing minor league baseball team in 2011 was Allentown, Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley IronPigs, who drew 9,428 per game to their Coca-Cola Park (Allentown), which opened in 2008 and has considerably less seats than their average crowd last season…the ballpark has 8,100 seats, and has a capacity of 10,000 (overflow can sit on the grass areas as seen in the photo at sunset above; and, in picnic areas as seen in the foreground in the top photo above). The Lehigh Valley IronPigs are the Philadelphia Phillies’ top minor league affiliate, and play in the International League. Allentown, Pennsylvania is 48 miles north of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Allentown, PA has a city population of around 118,000 and a metropolitan area of around 816,000 {2010 figures}, making it the 62nd largest metro area in the USA. The Lehigh Valley IronPigs, originally called the Ottawa Lynx, moved to eastern Pennsylvania from Ottawa, Canada after the 2007 season, following years of low attendance in the Canadian capital.

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Photo and Image credits above – unclebobsballparks84.tripod.com/fifththirdfield. bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view.
The highest-drawing team outside of Triple-A baseball is once again the Dayton Dragons, who are the third-highest-level farm team in the Cincinnati Reds’ organization, and who play in the Class-A level Midwest League. In 2011, the Dayton Dragons drew 8th-best in all of minor league baseball despite the fact that there are 104 teams in MiLB that are in leagues (5 leagues) higher-placed than the Class-A level. The Dragons drew 8,288 per game last season to their 7,230-seating-capacity ballpark called Fifth Third Field (Dayton). So, in other words, last season Dayton filled all their seats each game plus they had over 1,000 fans per game who watched the Dragons from the lawn areas of their ballpark (as seen in the foreground of the top photo above). Dayton, Ohio is 49 miles north of Cincinnati, Ohio. Dayton, OH has a city population of 174,000 and a metropolitan area population of 841,000, making it the 61st biggest metro area in the USA.

The Dayton Dragons have a sold-out streak that is an active record [circa end of 2011 season], and is above 800-straight-sellouts. From nytimes.com, from July 2 2011, by George Vecsey, ‘For One Minor League Baseball Team, Never an Empty Seat,’

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I used this list, from Ballparkdigest.com, ‘2011 Baseball Attendance by Average [350 minor league baseball teams' 2011 average attendances]‘. Thanks very much to the Ballparksdigest.com site for the comprehensive attendance data.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘Minor league baseball‘; ‘Independent minor leagues (not affiliated with Major League Baseball)‘.

February 21, 2012

Major League Baseball: Attendance map for 2011 regular season, with percent changes from 2010, and percent-capacities.

Filed under: Baseball,Baseball >paid-attendance — admin @ 8:57 pm

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2011 Major League Baseball average attendance map
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Please note: to see the most recent MLB paid-attendance map-and-post, click on the following: category: Baseball >paid-attendance.
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On the map, which you can see in full by clicking on the image above, each ball club’s 2011 home ball cap crest is sized to reflect 2011 gate figures…the higher the team’s average attendance, the larger the team’s circular logo is on the map. At the right on the map page are the 30 MLB teams (with their 2012 home cap crest), listed by 2011 attendance rank. Three extra stats for each team are included at the far right-hand side of the map page – Percent-Change from 2010 attendance, Stadium Seating Capacity, and Percent-Capacity [percent-capacity is arrived at this way...average attendance divided by stadium capacity equals Percent-Capacity]. Two teams played to sold out and standing-room-only crowds all last season – the Philadelphia Phillies and the Boston Red Sox.

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Image credit above – bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view.

In 2011, the Philadelphia Phillies supplanted the New York Yankees as the highest-drawing team in Major League Baseball. For the third straight season, and ever since they won their second-ever World Series title (in 2008), the Phillies have been playing to standing room only, for their entire 81-game home schedule. For the 2011 regular season, the Phillies pulled in an impressive 104.0 percent-capacity at their 43,651-capacity Citizens Bank Park in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Phillies drew 45,440 per game in 2011. And yes, the Phillies only led in attendance in 2011 because of certain decisions that the New York Yankees’ front office has made in the last 4 or 5 years (see below), as well as the implosion of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who have been the best-drawing MLB team throughout much of the last 5 decades (and who most recently had the best MLB gate figures in 2009). But it is still a noteworthy achievement that the best-drawing ball club in America in 2011 was from the 5th largest city in the United States – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1.5 million city population/5.9 million metro-area population {2010 census figures}).

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Image above credit above -bing.com/Bird’s Eye satellite view.

The New York Yankees, who drew second-best last season, only played to 89.6 percent-capacity at the prohibitively expensive Yankee Stadium (II) in The Bronx, New York. In the 2011 regular season, the Yankees drew 45,107 per game at Yankee Stadium II (opened in 2009). When the Yankees began building their new ballpark in the mid-2000s, they decided to make the new Yankee Stadium around 6,000-capacity smaller than the original Yankees Stadium. Yankee Stadium (I), 1923 to 2008, had a final capacity of 56,936. The present-day Yankee Stadium has a capacity of 50,291. That makes its capacity 6,645 seats smaller than the original Yankee Stadium. The Yankees’ top brass knew they could recoup revenue by higher-priced tickets, and by luxury boxes, and by things like putting restaurant franchises in the new stadium. But the thing is, the Yankees’ organization priced out a whole segment of fans who either couldn’t afford high three-figure-priced tickets or were offended by the concept of paying such larcenous fees for good seats. They call the first eight rows the “Legends Suite”. Giving the obscenely expensive ($500 per seat, on average) front rows some pretentious name like the Legends Suite was pretty pompous. When the stadium opened, after the first couple of games, there started to be vast swaths of empty seats right behind home plate and up each foul line. On television broadcasts, it looked so weird, in a bad way, in a way that you couldn’t stop looking at it, like a car wreck. No one wanted to pay a thousand bucks or so for one ball game. It’s like the Yankees front office went on this collective gigantic ego trip, and thought that people would actually be willing to shell out over a thousand dollars for one ticket to one regular-season ball game – because it’s a Yankees game – like every game in Yankee Stadium is supposedly a Super Bowl-caliber event. Please. The arrogance of the Yankee organization is truly stupefying. So a few months into the 2009 season, the Yankees slashed their most expensive tickets (some tickets were actually $2,600). The final average attendance in 2009 in the first season at the new Yankee Stadium was 45,364 – meaning there were, on average, over 4,500 empty seats per game…in the opening season of the stadium (!). In 2010, average attendance rose a little bit over one thousand per game to 46,491 (an increase that was aided by the inevitable uptick in crowds following a title-winning season, after the Yankees had won the 2009 World Series title). In 2011, average attendance went down around 1,350 per game to 45,107. So the Yankees had even worse attendance in 2011 than in 2009, when they had their empty-seats-in-most-of-the-front-rows public relations disaster.
the-new-yankee-stadium_empty-seats_2009-2010-2011_c.gif

Photo and Image credits above – jordoncooper.com zackhample.mlblogs.com. duelingcouches.blogspot.com. nymag.com.

There are fundamental fan-unfriendly design problems in the new Yankee Stadium. The partitioning of fans in the “cheap” seats (see photo above at the left), fenced off from the rich-folks-seats is creepy (it evokes the sense that the Yankees’ organization and their rich fans in the Legends Suite seats are part of the 1%). Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia page on Yankee Stadium (II), “…Legends Suite seats are also separate from the other lower bowl seating and are vigorously patrolled by stadium security, with the divider being described as a “concrete moat”. Fans that do not have tickets within this premium section in the front rows are not allowed to access it, nor stand behind the dugouts during batting practice to watch players hit or request autographs.”…That’s the New York Yankees management for you, building a moat to separate the 1% from the masses. Another egregious aspect of the new Yankee Stadium is the fact that there are hundreds of seats that have large and crucial parts of the field obscured from view. Management fit so many things like a Hard Rock Cafe and an Indian casino sports bar into the new Yankee Stadium layout, that two large sections – one section in the right-center field stands, and one section in the left-center field stands (see photo above at the right) – cannot see a big chunk of the left field or right field areas (see the satellite image of the new Yankee Stadium [further above] where you can see how the center field restaurant blocks views from the stands on either side of it). $35 to park your car in the lots around the stadium also shows the Yankees organization’s disdain for their fans. The seats-with-blocked-views problem, as well as the fact that some fans are not renewing season tickets because of the poor fan experience at the new stadium, is discussed in the following short article – From the Field of Schemes site, from April 6, 2011, by Neil deMause ‘Yankees fans disguising selves as empty seats again‘. Outside of the left field bleachers area (which are just aluminum slats with no back, more suitable for a high school stadium than for the most successful baseball team on the planet) or nosebleed third deck seats, it is still pretty much a rip-off to attend a Yankees game these days. As a commenter in the post linked to above says, “It’s just not fun when everything costs twice to 10 times more than it should.” And it shows in the gate figures…the New York Yankees, the most successful franchise in North America, the winner of 27 World Series titles, as well as a team that has made 16 out of 17 straight post-season appearances and won the most championships in the last 2 decades (with 5 World Series titles in 17 years)…these Yankees cannot draw higher than 90 percent-capacity. In a stadium whose capacity they reduced by 6,450 from their previous stadium. A previous stadium which had charm to spare and an awesome and historic grandeur, and which, in its final season in 2008, had an average attendance of 53,069 per game (93.2 percent-capacity). Message to Yankees’ management – nice epic fail with your new stadium. Your corporate greed sucked the soul right out of the place. And no thanks at all for tearing down the House that Ruth built.

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Photo credit above – marriott.com.

Third-best-drawing in 2011 were the then-reigning champions, the 2010 World Series winning San Francisco Giants, who just missed out playing to full capacity in 2011, at 99.7 percent-capacity. The Giants drew 41,818 per game last season to their 41,915-capacity AT & T Park, a jewel of a ballpark on the shore of San Francisco Bay. The Giants saw a +11.5% increase in attendance after winning their first-ever World Series title as the San Francisco Giants [the New York (baseball) Giants won 5 World Series titles in the years that this franchise was located in Manhattan, NY (from 1883 to 1957)]. The San Francisco Bay area has 2 MLB teams (the Giants and the Oakland A’s) and is the 5th largest combined statistical area in the USA, with (via a 2012 estimate) a population of 8.3 million in the 11-county region (which includes San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose, plus Santa Cruz and San Benito counties), see this ‘San Jose/San Francisco/Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area‘.

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http://billsportsmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/target-field_minnesota-twins_b.gif
Photo credit above – markwhitt at flickr.com.
The fourth-best-drawing ball club in 2011 did not even play .500 baseball, and that was the Minnesota Twins, who drew 39,112 per game in their second season at beautiful Target Field in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. Coming from a municipality of their size, the Minnesota Twins have drawn pretty decent over the last decade, even before they had a good venue, wih a 23,759 average in 2002, then starting a 6 post-seasons-in-9-years run and closing their Metrodome era with a 29,486-per-game figure in 2009 (the poor Vikings of the NFL are still stuck in that dump). Nevertheless, one can see the effect a brand-new ballpark has on increasing attendance. The Twins are drawing 39,000 per game, while playing in the 16th largest metro area in the USA. Minneapolis/St. Paul’s metro area population is 3.3 million {2010 figure}. If the Twins rebound and challenge for the post season once again in 2012, they will probably maintain these numbers (they played to 99.0 percent-capacity in 2011).

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Image credit above – bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view.

Fifth-best-drawing ball club in 2011 were the Los Angeles Angels, who challenged for the post season but eventually fell off the Wild Card pace. In 2011, the Los Angeles Angels did something they had never done in their 52-year history – they outdrew the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Los Angeles Angels averaged 39,090 (which was actually a -2.6% drop from 2010), while the owner-from-hell-plagued Los Angeles Dodgers averaged 36,326 (a drop-off of -17.6%, the worst in MLB; and the Dodgers have dropped fom #1 attendance draw in MLB in 2009 to the #11-highest drawing in 2011, losing 14,000 per game in a 2-year span). The Angels had come close to out-drawing the Dodgers twice before. In 2003, the year after the Angels won their first and only World Series title [in 2002], the team, then called the Anaheim Angels, drew about 1,400 less than the Dodgers, at 37,330 per game (an increase of 8,900 per game versus 2002), while the 2003 LA Dodgers drew 38,748 per game. And in 1987, the year after the Angels had made the playoffs and then agonizingly lost to the Boston Red Sox in the 1986 ALCS, the team, then called the California Angels, averaged 33,288, which was about 1,300 less than the Dodgers, who averaged 34,536 that year (1987). The Los Angeles Angels, along with the Washington Senators (II) [present-day Texas Rangers], were American League expansion teams in 1961, and the Angels spent their first season at the old PCL ballpark Wrigley Field (Los Angeles), before being renters at Dodger Stadium for 4 years from 1962-65. Since 1966, the Angels have played next door to Disneyland in Anaheim, Orange County, California at Anaheim Stadium [now called Angel Stadium at Anaheim, and NFL-free since 1995, thank goodness].

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Photo credit above – Peter Bond at panoramio.com.

Sixth-best-drawing MLB club last season were the 2011 World Series champions the St. Louis Cardinals, who pulled in 39,196 per game, seeing a -6.2% drop in average attendance compared to 2010, and a 86.8 percent-capacity. This is the second time in 7 years that the Cardinals have crept into the playoffs almost anonymously, way below the radar and with the worst record of any playoff team that year, yet then gone on to outlast everyone else and claim the title [the St. Louis Cardinals boast the second-most World Series titles, with 11, second only to the New York Yankees, who have won 27 World Series titles]. From 2005 to 2010, St. Louis had a 6-season run drawing above 40,000 per game, and you can bet that in 2012 the Redbird faithful will swell the ball club’s gate figures this season closer to the 43,975-capacity of Busch Stadium (III). St. Louis, Missouri has the 18th largest metro area in the US, with a metro area population of 2.81 million {2010 figure}. The 18th largest city in the country, with just 2.8 million in the Greater St. Louis area, and the Cardinals are drawing 39 K to 40 K per game, year in, year out – that’s impressive.

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Photo above by Christian Petersen/Getty Images North America via zimbio.com.

Seventh-best-drawing ball club in 2011 were the Milwaukee Brewers, who drew 37,918 per game (a +10.6% increase over 2010). The Milwaukee Brewers are much like the Minnesota Twins and the St. Louis Cardinals in that all three are Midwest-based ball clubs with a relatively new stadium and a recent record of post season qualification (the Brew Crew have made the playoffs twice in the last 4 years) – and who all draw very well for cities of their size. The metro area population of Milwaukee, Wisconsin is 1.55 million {2010 figure}, making it the 39th largest metro area in the United States [from en.wikipedsia.org, 'Table of United States Metropolitan Statistical Areas']. Miller Park, which opened in 2001, is sort of a surreal venue that features a retractable roof and plenty of open-air vistas thanks to transparent walls, and seems more like an amusement theme park than a ballpark. It has a fan friendly vibe including the Famous Racing Sausages (see above), and mascot Bernie Brewer and his multi-story slide (in the photo above you can just make out the huge, yellow, corkscrewing slide Bernie uses to celebrate Brewer home runs and Brewer victories, between the Chorizo Sausage and the Bratwurrest Sausage) {see this; also see this, from mlb.com, ‘The Famous Racing SausagesTM – A Historical Perspective‘.}. The Brewers can pack them in for a medium-small-sized market, but it must be pointed out that the Milwaukee Brewers have it easier than most MLB clubs when it comes to competition for the sports entertainment dollar – Milwaukee has no NHL team, no Division I college football team (the closet is the Wiscionsin Badgers football team in Madison, WI, which is 72 miles west of Milwaukee), and the closest NFL teams are in Green Bay, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois. But still, drawing over 37,000 per game, for 81 baseball games, in only the 39th biggest city in America – hats off to Milwaukee.

_

Thanks to Captain Walrus for the circular logos I used on the map, ‘Captain Walrus’ Circular Logos‘ (http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/board).
Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘Major League Baseball‘; and at the Ballparks of Baseball.com site, for ballpark capacity numbers.
Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com for attendance data from past decades, the following link set at 1987 MLB attendance.
Thanks to ESPN site for 2011 and 2010 attendance figures.

July 8, 2011

Minor League Baseball: the New York-Penn League (Class A-Short Season).

Filed under: Baseball,Baseball: MiLB Class A — admin @ 8:34 pm

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New York-Penn League (Short Season A)

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The New York-Pennsylvania League is a minor league baseball league that is almost universally known as the New York-Penn League. Although part of the Class A level of minor league baseball, it is, along with the Northwest League, classified as a Short-Season A league. And they really are short seasons – the New York-Penn league regular season consists of 74 games played by each of the 14 teams in the circuit. By way of comparison, the Class A Midwest League plays 138 games in a season, and the Advanced-A California League plays 140 games in a season. The other Short Season A league – the Northwest League – plays 76 games in a season, and has 8 teams.

The shorter season and the player restrictions (see below) contribute to the fact that Short Season A leagues are viewed as effectively one level lower than the two Class A leagues (the South Atlantic League and the Midwest League) and two levels below the three Advanced-A leagues (the California League, Florida State League, and the Carolina League).

from en.wikipedia.org –
“Player limits and requirements for the New York-Penn League…
New York – Penn League teams may have no more than 3 players on their active lists that have 4 or more years of prior combined Major League / Minor League service, with the exception of position players changing roles to become a pitcher or a pitcher changing into a position player. Teams may get to eliminate up to one year of time of Minor League service for players who have spent time on the disabled list.
By July 1 of each year, all clubs must have at least 10 pitchers.
Maximum number of players under team control is 35, 30 of those may be active, but only 25 may be in uniform and eligible to play in any given game.”
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Last season, the New York-Penn League was the 6th highest-drawing minor league in Organized Baseball.
The New York-Penn League drew 3,490 per game in 2010, and had a better average attendance than 5 other minor leagues which are at a higher level.
Here are all the minor leagues’ average attendances for 2010 -
Average attendance of minor leagues in 2010…
International League (AAA) – 6,908 per game.
Pacific Coast League (AAA) – 6,120 per game.
Texas League (AA) – 5,264 per game.
Eastern League (AA) – 4,663 per game.
Midwest League (A) – 3,787 per game.
New York-Penn League (A-Short Season) – 3,490 per game.
South Atlantic League (A) – 3,306 per game.
Carolina League (A-Advanced) – 3,256 per game.
Mexican League (AAA) – 3,232 per game.
Southern League (AA) – 3,188 per game.
Northwest League (A-Short Season) – 2,920 per game.
California League (A-Advanced) – 2,237 per game.
Pioneer League (Rookie) – 2,158 per game.
Appalachian League (Rookie) – 865 per game.
[Arizona League, Gulf Coast League, Dominican Summer League and Venezuela Summer League attendances not available]
[Numbers from Baseball-Reference.com].

Part of the reason for the popularity of the New York-Penn league with fans is that some franchises in the league have relocated to certain areas in the last decade…well-populated areas that have enough people that basically have embraced the lower-minor-league fan experience. Specifically, those areas are Greater New York City; Greater Boston, MA; and Greater Washington, DC/Baltimore, MD. The teams that now sit at the top of the NY-Penn attendance list each season are the Brooklyn Cyclones (a New York Mets farm team), the Staten Island Yankees (a New York Yankees farm team), the Lowell Spinners (a Boston Red Sox farm team), and the Aberdeen Ironbirds (a Baltimore Orioles farm team). All 4 of these ball clubs regularly draw over 5,000 per game, and Brooklyn and Aberdeen drew over 6,500 per game last season. The Brooklyn Cyclones play in Coney Island and drew 7,147 per game to their MCU Park (MCU Park in Brooklyn, from en.wikipedia.org,{see this}. That was good enough for the 15th best attendance in all of minor league baseball in 2010 [list of all 334 teams' attendances in minor league baseball in 2010 {click here} (Ballparkdigest.com}.Those are astounding numbers for a league that is 5 steps below the Major Leagues. Over half of the 30 Triple-A ball clubs didn't draw that well in 2010...18 Triple-A teams drew below that 5,300 per game figure that these New York-Penn teams drew above...
The Brooklyn Cyclones (7,147 per game at MCU Park/15th best in MiLB).
The Aberdeen Ironbirds (6,548 per game at Ripken Stadium {see this}/22nd best in MiLB).
The Staten Island Yankees (5,806 per game at Richmond County Bank Ballpark {see this}/34th best in MiLB).
The Lowell Spinners (5,446 per game at Edward A. LeLacheur Park {see this}/44th best in MiLB).

And the success of teams like this has blown away the received wisdom that minor league baseball teams cannot survive within close proximity to Major League Baseball teams. With the low prices of an outing to a NY-Penn League game, the opposite is pretty much true now. For example, why pay an arm and a leg to see a game at the elitist and over-priced Yankee Stadium, when a fun and affordable outing at the Staten Island Yankees or the Brooklyn Cyclones ball park can be had for a fraction of the cost. Besides, you can just see the next Yankees or Mets game on television anyway.

The only loser in this state of affairs are the small towns and cities that have lost New York-Penn League teams in recent years, like Geneva, NY; Watertown, NY; Oneonta, NY; Utica, NY; and Pittsfield, MA. But the fact is, if there are larger crowds to be had elsewhere, you can't criticize the franchises for pulling up stakes and seeking greener pastures. Most of the municipalities that lose lower minor league teams find replacement ball clubs in independent minor leagues from outside the Organized Baseball set-up. Personally, I hope that the current smallest municipality with a ball club in the New York-Penn League, the Batavia Muckdogs, does not fall to the same fate and relocate, but that is because Batavia, whose population is only around 16,256 {figure from 2006} is nearby my home in Rochester, NY, and I have seen around 15 or so Batavia Clippers games (that was their old name before 1997) and Batavia Muckdogs games. And I have had a blast each time, and have never spent more than $25 per game there (including ticket), no matter how much I ate and drank. Now that's value. [The only reason the Batavia Muckdogs, the oldest member of the New York-Penn League [with a team consecutively since 1961] have not moved elsewhere is that Rochester Community Baseball, Inc. which runs the Triple-A ball club the Rochester Red Wings, took over operation of the Muckdogs two seasons ago. The Rochester Red Wings are the second largest sports franchise in North America that is completely supporter-owned – the largest being the NFL’s Green Bay Packers.]
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Photo credits -
Aberdeen IronBirds/Ripken Stadium…Photo from LittleBallparks.com, here.
Brooklyn Cyclones/MCU Park [formerly Keyspan Park]…Photo from Uncle Bob’s Ballparks 56 site, here.
Hudson Valley Renegades/Duchess Stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye Satellite view, here.
Staten Island Yankees/Richmond County Bank Ballpark…Aerial photo from Skyscrapercity.com, thread, ‘Little Ballparks‘.

Auburn Doubledays/Falcon Park…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Batavia Muckdogs/Dwyer Stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Jamestown Jammers/Russell Diethrick Park…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Mahoning Valley Scrappers/Eastwood Field…Photo from DigitalBallparks.com, here.
State College Spikes/Medlar Field at Lubrano Park…Photo from State College Spikes’ page at MiLB.com, here.
Williamsport Crosscutters/Bowman Field…Photo from ExplorePAhistory.com, here.

Connecticut Tigers/Dodd Stadium…Photo from CollegeBaseball360.com, here.
Lowell Spinners/LeLacheur Park…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Tri-City ValleyCats/Joseph L. Bruno Stadium…Photo from U.W. Marx Construction Co. site, here.
Vermont Lake Monsters/Centennial Field…Photo from LittleBallparks.com, here.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘New York-Penn League‘.

Thanks to David Kronheim at NumberTamer.com. Attendance figures from NumberTamer.com/ -Numbertamer.com’s Minor League Baseball – 2010 attendance analysis [pdf] (Note, league attendances begin on page 28 of the 60 page pdf.)

June 26, 2011

Minor League Baseball: the Midwest League (Class A).

Filed under: Baseball,Baseball: MiLB Class A — admin @ 3:57 pm

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Midwest League
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The Midwest League is a Class A minor league baseball league. [Class A is four levels below Major League Baseball, with leagues classified as AAA, AA, and A-Advanced above it.] Despite its lower-minor-league status, the Midwest League as a whole outdraws 4 other leagues above it – the higher-placed leagues the Midwest League outdrew last season were the Mexican League, the Carolina League, the Southern League, and the California League. The Midwest League is one of 2 Class A leagues (the other being the South Atlantic League). The Midwest League now has 16 teams – its ranks were increased by two in the off-season, with the Bowling Green Hot Rods and the Lake County Captains both moving over from the South Atlantic League.

In 2010, the Midwest League averaged 3,787 per game. That made the Midwest League the fifth-highest-drawing minor league.
For the record, here are all the minor leagues’ average attendances for 2010 -
Average attendance of minor leagues in 2010…
International League (AAA) – 6,908 per game.
Pacific Coast League (AAA) – 6,120 per game.
Texas League (AA) – 5,264 per game.
Eastern League (AA) – 4,663 per game.
Midwest League (A) – 3,787 per game.
New York-Penn League (A-Short Season) – 3,490 per game.
South Atlantic League (A) – 3,306 per game.
Carolina League (A-Advanced) – 3,256 per game.
Mexican League (AAA) – 3,232 per game.
Southern League (AA) – 3,188 per game.
Northwest League (A-Short Season) – 2,920 per game.
California League (A-Advanced) – 2,237 per game.
Pioneer League (Rookie) – 2,158 per game.
Appalachian League (Rookie) – 865 per game.
[Arizona League, Gulf Coast League, Dominican Summer League and Venezuela Summer League attendances not available]
[Numbers from Baseball-Reference.com].

The Midwest League was established in 1947, as the Illinois League, a Class D minor league, with six teams from southern Illinois. [At the time, Class D was the lowest level of the minor league system, before re-organization in 1963, and would be equivalent to the Rookie League level of modern Organized Baseball (or the 6th level below MLB).] The six original teams in the Illinois League were from Belleville, Centralia, Marion, Mattoon, Mount Vernon, and West Frankfort (all in the southern half of the state of Illinois). Today, none of those locales have teams in the Midwest League (or any other minor league in Organized Baseball), although some of these franchises still exist, like, for example, the Mattoon, Illinois franchise, which moved to Keokuk, Iowa in 1958; then to Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin in 1963; then to Kenosha, Wisconsin in 1984 – before finally settling in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1993.

The oldest current member of the Midwest League which has remained in the same location is the Clinton LumberKings, who were formed in 1954 as the Clinton Pirates. The Clinton ball club has had affiliations with a dozen MLB franchises, starting with the Pittsburgh Pirates (1954-58), and currently is affiliated with the Seattle Mariners (since 2009). The second-oldest ball club in the modern-day Midwest League which has never left its original location is the Quad Cities River Bandits, who were formed in 1960, as the Quad Cities Braves. [The term Quad Cities is the popularly-used name for the five-city metropolitan area of Davenport, Iowa/Bettendorf, Iowa/Rock Island, Illinois/Moline, Illinois/East Moline, Illinois - and which straddles the Mississippi River in southeastern Iowa/northwest Illinois.] The Quad Cities River Bandits have had affiliations with 7 MLB ball clubs, and are currently, since 2005, the fourth-highest minor league farm team of the nearby St. Louis Cardinals.

The third and fourth-oldest teams in the Midwest League which have remained in the same location are two Iowa-based ball clubs – the Burlington Bees and the Cedar Rapids Kernals. Both these teams joined the Midwest League in 1962 from the Three-I League [Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa League] which had just disbanded in January, 1962. Actually, in terms of actual ball club longevity regardless of league, these teams are the oldest in the current Midwest League because the present-day Burlington ball club was formed in 1947, and the present-day Cedar Rapids ball club was formed 2 years later in 1949. Burlington has been affiliated with 13 MLB franchises, but were Independent prior to joining the Midwest League in 1962, when they had a one-year affiliation with the Pittsburgh Pirates, followed by a 12-year affiliation with the Kansas City Athletics/Oakland Athletics. As of this season [2011], the Burlington Bees are back within the Oakland Athletics’ farm system. The Burlington Bees had the lowest average attendance in the Midwest League in 2010, drawing just 971 per game to their rather out-of-date ballpark. Granted, Burlington is a pretty small municipality that frankly has no business calling itself a “city” (as its Wikipedia page does), seeing as how it has a population of around 26,800 {2000 figure}. I don’t know what the situation is with the Bees, but it would not surprise me in the least if this team is the next Midwest League ball club to move to greener pastures. By comparison, the Cedar Rapids Kernals don’t have near the problems drawing fans that Burlington does, due to its size {~255,000 metro-area population in Cedar Rapids} and a relatively new ballpark (opened in 2002), but still, Cedar Rapids drew only 12th-best in the Midwest League in 2010, averaging 2,585 per game.

The fact is, aside from Kane County, all the best-drawing teams in the Midwest League are in the Eastern Division, which means teams from locations outside the original Iowa/Illinois/Wisconsin region of the Midwest League; and, including Kane County, all the best-drawing teams are from locations that the Midwest League expanded into in the last 20 years. In other words, the reason the Midwest League has such good attendance numbers in relation to its relatively lower-minor-league level is that, with a few exceptions (like Burlington and Clinton), the league and its franchises have opted to relocate to municipalities which offered a larger fan base, and in doing so, the teams were able to secure new stadiums in those locales. One example is the aforementioned Fort Wayne Tin Caps (the nickname is a Johnny Appleseed reference), who drew third-best in the league last season, pulling in 5,735 per game. Other examples can be seen in the Dayton Dragons, the Kane County Cougars, the West Michigan Whitecaps, the Lansing Lugnuts, the Lake Country Captains (located east of Cleveland), and the Great Lakes Loons (located in central Michigan). None of these teams existed 20 years ago, and the impressively-drawing Dayton Dragons are just 11 years old, while the Lake Country Captains and the Great Lakes Loons teams are just 9 and 7 years old, respectively. These teams have nice new ballparks and draw very well, all drawing over 4,000 per game last season.

The highest-drawing ball club in the Midwest League is the Dayton Dragons. Dayton drew 8,535 per game in 2010, which was the 5th-highest average attendance in all of minor league baseball last season (!). {See this list (from BallparkDigest.com) of all minor league teams’ attendances from 2010.} The Kane County Cougars, of Geneva, Illinois drew second-best in the Midwest League in 2010, with an average attendance of 6,244 per game. The Kane County Cougars are within the loosely-defined area known as Chicagoland, and are 34 miles west of the city center of Chicago.

As I have mentioned in earlier posts on minor leagues recently, a trend with minor league farm teams is for the parent-club Major League team to place one or more of their minor league teams relatively close to where the big league team plays – and no better example of this can be seen than in the Dayton Dragons’ case. Because Dayton is just 49 miles north of Cincinnati. The prevailing wisdom in the era that spanned from after World War II right up to the early 1990s was that minor league teams couldn’t survive when placed less than 60 miles or so from a Major League team. The few exceptions to this rule-of-thumb were with San Jose, California; with Toledo, Ohio; with Pawtucket (ie, Providence, Rhode Island); and with Reading, Pennsylvania – all four of which were/are less than 50 miles from San Francisco, Detroit, Boston and Philadelphia, respectively. Dayton, Ohio is a good example of how this thinking has changed. Dayton is a pretty large city {Dayton metro-area population is currently around 841,000}. But Dayton did not have a minor league baseball team for almost half a century! Between the years 1952 and 1999, there was no baseball team in Dayton {see this, from Baseball-Reference.com}. It’s impossible to prove whether the people who ran baseball back then were right about this “zone of exclusion”, as it were. Because back in the 1960s and the 1970s and the 1980s, it wasn’t so expensive to see Major League Baseball games, so the lesser prices that a theoretical minor league team would charge in a near-to-an-MLB-team market like Dayton might not make a difference to the average fan there. But these days, with the high cost of attending Major League Baseball games (especially when factoring in the price gouging that goes on with parking fees and the price of concessions in MLB venues), it makes economic sense for, say, a family of 4 from Dayton, Ohio, to not make that expensive trip to down the road to Cincinnati to see a Cincinnati Reds game, but stay right in Dayton, and see the Dayton Dragons, featuring some future Cincinnati Reds prospects. And all for about one-fourth of the cost, at least. With the case of the Kane County Cougars, well, despite the fact that the team is not affiliated with either of the Chicago MLB teams 35 miles or so to the east the Cougars still draw over 6,000 per game. The fact of the matter is that attending minor league baseball games is a fun, relaxing and very affordable recreational activity. And now in many more areas of the United States, people who live within easy driving distance of a Big League ball club have the option of going out to a ball game without spending an arm and a leg.

From the Midwest League page the of MiLB site, ‘History [of the Midwest League]‘.

Photo credits -
Bowling Green Hot Rods/Bowling Green Ballpark…photo from RaysProspects.com, here.
Dayton Dragons/Fifth Third Field 9Dayton)…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Fort Wayne Tin Caps/Parkview Field…photo from In.gov/visitindiana/blog, here.
Great Lakes Loons/Dow Diamond…photo from the Great Lakes Loons’ page at MiLB site, here.
Lake County Captains…Aerial image fron Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Lansing lugnuts/Cooley Law School Stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
South Bend silver Hawks/Stanley Covaleski Regional Stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
West Michigan Whitecaps/Fifth Third Ballpark (Grand Rapids)…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Beloit Snappers/Harry C. Pohlman Field…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Burlington Bees/Community Field…Photo from LittleBallparks.com, here.
Cedar Rapids Kernals/Veteran’s Memorial Stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Clinton LumberKings/Alliant Energy Field…Aerial photo by Michael J. Kearney, at en.wikipedia.org, here.
Kane County Cougars/Elfstrom Stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Peoria Chiefs/O’Brien Field…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Quad Cities River Bandits/Modern Woodmen Park…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Wisconsin Timber Rattlers/Time Warner Cable Field at Fox Cities Stadium…Photo from this April, 2009 article at OnMilwaukee.com, by Andrew Wagner, ‘Deal with Brewers paying off for Timber Rattlers‘.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘Midwest League‘.
Thanks to David Kronheim at NumberTamer.com. Attendance figures from NumberTamer.com/ -Numbertamer.com’s Minor League Baseball – 2010 attendance analysis [pdf] (Note, league attendances begin on page 28 of the 60 page pdf.)

June 13, 2011

Minor League Baseball: the Eastern League.

Filed under: Baseball,Baseball: MiLB Double-A — admin @ 7:04 am

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Eastern League (baseball)

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The Eastern League, established in 1923, is one of 3 Double-A minor leagues in Organized Baseball. Double-A is two steps below Major League Baseball. {You can see my map of all 3 Double-A minor leagues, with 2010 attendances and all 30 teams’ MLB affiliations, in this post, here.}. The Eastern League was historically centered in New York and Pennsylvania, and by the 1930s, the league had expanded it’s range to include teams from cities in New Jersey and Connecticut. The present-day Eastern League has teams in 9 states – in the Northeast, in Pennsylvania [with 4 teams], New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, and Maryland); plus one team in in Ohio; and one team in Virginia.

For it’s first 15 season. the Eastern League was originally known as the New York-Pennsylvania League. [That name has actually been used for 3 different minor leagues, starting with the New York-Pennsylvania League (I) that existed for just one season in 1891; while the current New York-Pennsylvania League (III) is almost universally known as the New York-Penn League and is a Class A-Short Season League.]

The charter members in 1923 of the league that the present-day Eastern League evolved from – the New York-Pennsylvania League (II) – were ball clubs from Binghamton, NY; Elmira, NY; Scranton, PA; Wilkes-Barre; PA; Williamsport, PA; and York, PA. A team from Harrisburg, PA entered the league the following season of 1924. Binghamton and Harrisburg have (different) ball clubs in the present-day Eastern League. The longest-running current team in the Eastern League is the Reading (Pennsylvania) Phillies, who began playing in the league in 1967. Reading also is the team in the Eastern League with the longest-running continuous affiliation with the same Major League team, the Philadelphia Phillies. 2011 will be the 45th-straight season of the Philadelphia/Reading partnership. This 45-year run is tied with one other MLB/minor league partnership for the longest currently in Organized Baseball – the other being between the Class A Florida State League ball club the Lakeland Tigers and the Detroit Tigers.

Throughout it’s first 10 seasons, the New York-Pennsylvania League (II) was a Class B league (equivalent to the fourth level below the Major Leagues). In 1933, it was upgraded 2 levels (by-passing the A-1 level), to a Class A league. In 1938, when the Scranton ball club moved to Hartford, CT, the league changed it’s name to the Eastern League (III). [The "(III)" is there because there was a minor league called the Eastern League (I) that existed in the Nineteenth century from 1884 to 1886 (it merged with two other leagues to form the precursor-league to the present-day Triple-A league the International League). The second Eastern League (II) was what the International League was called between 1892 and 1911.]

The modern-era Eastern League moved up a level and became a Double-A level league in 1963, when Organized Baseball did an overhaul of it’s league-level classifications. The Double-A Eastern League of 1963 was a 6-team circuit comprised of these ball clubs (with MLB affiliations noted)…Binghamton Triplets (Kansas City A’s), Charleston [West Virginia] Indians (Cleveland Indians), Elmira Pioneers (Baltimore Orioles), Reading Red Sox (Boston Red Sox), Springfield [Massachusetts] Giants (San Francisco Giants), York [Pennsylvania] White Roses (Washington Senators).

From 1958 to 1993, the Eastern League fluctuated from 6 to 8 teams. In 1994, the modern-day Eastern League began when the league expanded to 10 teams and 2 divisions, with the addition of new ball clubs in Portland, ME and New Haven, CT. New Haven lost their team when the franchise moved to Manchester, NH in 2004. The most recent shift saw the Norwich, CT team move to Richmond, VA in 2010. That team, the Richmond Flying Squirrels, led the Eastern League in attendance in their debut season last year, drawing 6,626 per game.

Besides Richmond, the Eastern League features several other teams that draw above 5,000 per game these days – the Reading Phillies, the Portland Sea Dogs, the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, the New Britain Rock Cats, and the Trenton Thunder. Another good-drawing ball club in the Eastern League, particularly for the small size of it’s municipality, is the Altoona Curve. Altoona, Pennsylvania only has a metro-area population of 126,000, yet the Altoona Curve is able to draw over 4,000 per game. Granted, Altoona’s Blair County Ballpark {Bing.com/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here} is next door to an amusement park (Lakemont Park), and you can see the roller coaster that looms behind right field, but it is pretty impressive for a town smaller than 150,000 to regularly draw over 4,000 per game for minor league baseball.

As a whole, the Eastern League averaged 4,663 per game last season.

Click on image below for list of Eastern League statistics – 2009 average attendances; 2010 average attendances; teams’ metro areas and metro area populations; age of teams and length of time the team has had their current MLB-affiliation; and Eastern League titles…
milb_eastern-league_metro-areas_attendance2009_2010_mlb-affiliations_titles_segment_.gif

Photo credits -
Binghamton Mets/NYSEG Stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
New Britain Rock Cats/New Britain Stadium…Aerial image from bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
New Hampshire Fisher Cats/Northeast Delta Dental Stadium…photo by David Sailors/Corbis, at Flickr.com, here.
Portland Sea Dogs/Hadlock Field…photo from http://www.projectballpark.org/boston/hadlock.html.
Reading Phillies/First Energy stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Trenton Thunder/Mercer County Waterfront Park…photo from SwinglePrints.com.

Akron Aeros/Canal Park…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Altoona Curve/Blair County Ballpark…Photo from Baseballparks.com, here.
Bowie Baysox/Prince George’s Stadium…photo from LittleBallparks.com.
Erie SeaWolves/Jerry Uht Park…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Harrisburg Senators/Metro Bank Park…Aerial image from bing.com/maps/Bird’s eye satellite view, here.
Richmond Flying Squirrels/The Diamond…Aerial image from bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘Eastern League (baseball)‘.
Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com, ‘Eastern League (AA) Encyclopedia and History‘.

Attendances from NumberTamer.com, [ NumberTamer.com ] pdf, ‘2010 Minor League Analysis / 2010 Minor League Att‘ [attendances by league begin at page 29 in the pdf].
Thanks to the Biz of Baseball site, for 2009 attendances, here.

Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com, here, for Eastern League total attendance numbers.
Thanks to the MiLB/Eastern League site, for this article, .’History – Eastern League History (1923-Present)‘

May 25, 2011

Minor League Baseball: the Texas League.

Filed under: Baseball,Baseball: MiLB Double-A — admin @ 7:21 am

Click on image below for 2011 Texas League map, with team profiles including ballpark photos
milb_2011_texas-league_post_b.gif
Texas League (baseball)

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The Texas League is one of 3 Double-A (AA) minor leagues in Organized Baseball. Double-A is two steps below Major League Baseball. {You can see my map of all 3 Double-A minor leagues, with 2010 attendances and all 30 teams’ MLB affiliations, here.} Of the 3 leagues, the Texas League draws the highest these days. The Texas League pulled in an average of 5,264 per game in 2010.

Click on image below for chart of Texas League teams, with metro populations, teams’ average attendances the last 2 seasons, teams’ MLB affiliations (including tenure), and Texas League titles –
milb_texas-league_metro-areas_attendance2009_2010_mlb-affiliations_titles_segment2.gif

The Texas League (II) has played continuously since 1902, except for 3 years off during World War II (1943-45), making this season, 2011, the Texas League’s 107th season. The oldest current ball club in the Texas League that has played continuously in the same metro area is the Arkansas Travelers, of Little Rock, AR, who have been a minor league ball club since 1963 (starting out with a 3-year stint in the Triple-A PCL), and have been in the Texas League since 1966, making 2011 the ball club’s 46th straight season in the Texas League [Note: before this, there was a Little Rock Travellers in the now-defunct Southern Association from 1901-09; 1915-58;1960-61 - see this, 'Little Rock, Arkansa Teams History' at Baseball-Reference.com, here]. Another team, the Midland (Texas) RockHounds, have now played 40 straight seasons in the league. Midland also have the longest current affiliation with an MLB team (the Oakland A’s) – 13 years.

The first incarnation of the Texas League was established in 1888, and played 5 seasons, up to 1892. A decade later, in 1902, the Texas League (II) was re-formed as a D-class minor league, with 6 teams (all teams with no MLB affiliations [ie, were Independents])…Corsicana Oil Citys, Dallas Giants, Fort Worth Panthers, Paris Eisenfelder’s Homeseekers, Sherman-Denison Students/Texarkana Casketmakers, Waco Tigers. By 1911, the Texas League was a Class B level league [~equivalent to the Class-A Short Season level today, 5 levels below the Majors]. In 1921, the Texas League became a Class A level league. In 1936, the Texas League moved up another level, becoming a Class A1 league. And in its first season back after WWII, in 1946, the Texas League became a Class AA level league. The teams in the Texas League that first season at Class AA in 1946 were (with MLB affiliation)…Beaumont Exporters (New York Yankees), Dallas Rebels (Detroit Tigers), Fort Worth Cats (Brooklyn Dodgers), Houston Buffaloes (St. Louis Cardinals), Oklahoma City Indians (Cleveland Indians), San Antonio Missions (St. Louis Browns), Shreveport Sports (Chiicago White Sox), Tulsa Oilers (Chicago Cubs).
From the Baseball-Reference.com, ‘Texas League (AA) Encyclopedia and History‘.

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On the map page
On the map page each team’s location is shown with a dot and the team’s home ball cap logo. At the right of the map page, each team’s home cap logo is also shown in larger size in the team’s profile box. The profile boxes include a photo of the team’s ballpark, the team’s year of establishment and their year of joining the Texas League. 2010 home regular season average attendance is also listed along with ballpark capacity, and the year the ballpark opened. Finally, the profile boxes include each team’s Major League Baseball parent-club, and the length of time the team has been part of that MLB team’s farm system.

The list of 8 teams’ 2010 average attendances is below the map. 2010 attendance figures from NumberTamer.com/ -Numbertamer.com’s Minor League Baseball – 2010 attendance analysis [pdf] (Note, league attendances begin on page 28 of the 60 page pdf.)
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Map page photo credits -
Arkansas Travellers/Dickey-Stephens Park…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Northwest Arkansas Naturals/Arvest Ballpark…Photo from Skyscrapercity.com thread, ‘Little Ballparks‘.
Springfield Cardinals/Hammons Field…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Tulsa Drillers/ONEOK Field…Photo by Tom Gilbert at Tulsa World via NewsOK.com, here.

Corpus Christie Hooks/Whataburger Park…Photo from mysite.verizon.net/CharlieBallparks, ‘A Tasty Burger, a Tasty Field‘.
Frisco RoughRiders/Dr. Pepper Ballpark…Photo from Skyscrapercity.com thread, ‘Little Ballparks‘.
Midland RockHounds/Citibank Ballpark image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
San Antonio Missions/Nelson W. Wolff Municipal Stadium…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘Texas League‘.
2009 attendance figures from BizOfBaseball.com/Minor League attendance database, here.
Thanks to NumberTamer.com…2010 attendance figures from NumberTamer.com/ -Numbertamer.com’s Minor League Baseball – 2010 attendance analysis [pdf] (Note, league attendances begin on page 28 of the 60 page pdf.)

April 19, 2011

Minor League Baseball: the Southern League.

Filed under: Baseball,Baseball: MiLB Double-A — admin @ 6:19 pm

Click on image below for 2011 Southern League map, with team profiles including ballpark photos
milb_2011_southern-league_post_e.gif
Southern League (baseball)



The Southern League is one of 3 Double-A minor leagues in Organized Baseball. Double-A is two steps below Major League Baseball. {You can see my map of all 3 Double-A minor leagues, with 2010 attendances and all 30 teams’ MLB affiliations, in this post, here.}. The modern-day Southern League was established in 1963, when the fourth incarnation of the South Atlantic League moved up one level, from Class A. and as part of Organized Baseball’s re-organization of the minor league system, became one of three Double-A leagues. The following year, 1964, the South Atlantic League (IV) changed it’s name to the Southern League (II).
Click on image below for list of Southern League statistics – 2009 average attendances; 2010 average attendances; teams’ metro areas and metro area populations; tenure [age] of teams and length of time the team has had their current MLB-affiliation; and each team’s Southern League titles…
milb_southern-league_metro-areas_attendance2009_2010_mlb-affiliations_titles_segment_.gif
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The Southern League annually plays one official league game in the oldest operating ballpark in the USA – Birmingham, Alabama’s Rickwood Field {from Baseball Pilgrimages site, ‘Rickwood Field, opened 1910′}. For the 2011 Rickwood Classic on June 1st, spitball pitcher Gaylord Perry will be guest of honor, and the teams – the Birmingham Barons and the Chattanooga Lookouts – will be wearing throwback uniforms of the 1961 Southern Association teams the Birmingham Barons and the Chattanooga Lookouts. 2011 is the 50th anniversary of the 1961 Southern Association season. The 1961 Southern Association season was the last season of the now-defunct Southern Association, a league which the present-day Southern League is heir to, in terms of it’s minor league level and in the similarity of the locations of it’s teams. I think the organizers of the game this year at Rickwood Field ignored the fact that some anniversaries should not be honored. Because in 1961, 14 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, and 15 years after black ball players were playing on minor league baseball teams in other minor leagues, the 1961 Southern Association was the only professional baseball league in the USA that was still segregated. Wearing uniforms from that period, in this celebratory manner, honors, by default, the institution those uniforms came from. And in 1961, the Southern Association, by still clinging to a policy of segregation, was a racist institution. The Southern Association in 1961 was acting in a manner that would become outlawed by an act of Congress 3 years later (the Civil Rights Act of 1964).

The first Southern League existed for just 5 seasons in the late Nineteenth century, from 1885 to 1889. 13 years later, the Southern Association filled the void in the region left by the passing of the original Southern League of the 1880s. The Southern Association started in 1901 and existed for 61 seasons, from 1901 to 1961. The 8 original charter members of the Southern Association in 1901 were these 8 ball clubs (with no MLB affiliations [ie, all the 8 teams were Independents])…Birmingham Barons, Chattanooga Lookouts, Little Rock Travellers, Memphis Egyptians, Nashville Vols, New Orleans Pelicans, Selma Christians, Shreveport Giants.

The Southern Association was initially graded Class B in 1901. In it’s second season, in 1902, the Southern Association was moved up a minor league level to Class A (from 1902 to 1935). The Southern Association then was raised a level to Class A1 from 1936 to 1945; then raised another level to Class AA from 1946 to 1961 [Class AA was the equivalent of modern-day Double-A level ball.] The ball clubs in that first season that the Southern Association was a Class AA league in 1946 were (with MLB affiliations listed)…Atlanta Crackers (Independent), Birmingham Barons (Pittsburgh Pirates), Chattanooga Lookouts (Washington Senators), Little Rock Travellers (Chicago White Sox), Memphis Chickasaws (Independent), Nashville Volunteers (Chcago Cubs), New Orleans Pelicans (Boston Red Sox).

At the same point in time as this, the minor leagues saw it’s first black players play, in 1946, for the the Brooklyn Dodgers’ highest farm team, the Class AAA Montreal Royals of the International League. Those two players were Jackie Robinson and Johnny Wright. Also in 1946, the Brooklyn Class B farm team the Nashua (New Hampshire) Dodgers also had 2 black players on it’s roster – Don Newcombe and Roy Campanella. The reason for this was baseball visionary Branch Rickey, who, as General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers National League ball club, opposed segregation on moral grounds and felt that it was well past time for American society to see black players play in the Major Leagues…and besides, it was foolish to not tap into such a deep pool of talent that Negro Leagues ball players represented. Some of his colleagues in baseball felt otherwise, some very strongly; and some of the paying public felt otherwise, some very strongly – but those sort of people belonged in pointed white hoods. The following season, Jackie Robinson was called up to the Brooklyn Dodgers, and broke the color barrier. Two months later in June, 1947, Larry Doby of the Cleveland Indians became the first black player to play in the American League. Four years later – by May, 1951 – 6 Major League teams had integrated – the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Cleveland Indians, the St. Louis Browns, the New York Giants, the Boston Braves, and the Chicago White Sox {from en.wikipedia.com, see this, ‘List of first black Major League Baseball players by team and date‘}. By 1955, 13 teams had integrated. The holdouts were: the Philadelphia Phillies (integrated in April 1957), the Detroit Tigers (integrated in May 1958), and finally, because of a racist owner in Tom Yawkey, the Boston Red Sox (in July 1959). {see this, ‘Baseball color line‘}.

Similarly, through the early-to-mid-1950s, all the many and varied minor leagues throughout North America became integrated following the Brooklyn Dodgers’ farm system’s example, with one notable exception – the Southern Association was never integrated. By way of comparison with other minor leagues from the South…the Carolina League was integrated by 1951, and the South Atlantic League was integrated by 1953 (with one of the first 5 black players there being Hank Aaron). Eight years after that, into the 1960s, the Southern Association – the highest level minor league in the South at the time – still kept black players off their teams. For this reason, it was pretty much for the best that the Southern Association shut down after the 1961 season. The reason for it’s demise is still debated.

There is no doubt that minor league attendances were dropping pretty much everywhere in the era of the late 1950s and early 1960s. A popular theory is that the Southern Association went bust mainly due to sharp declines in attendance exacerbated by fan indifference as a result of television broadcasts of Major League ball games, which had became widespread by the late 1950s. But baseball writer Alan Barra, in his book ‘Rickwood Field‘, insists televised MLB games were not the reason. However, his point that there are a plethora of Major League ball games on most every night these days, and that doesn’t hurt minor league baseball today, fails to account for the novelty factor of televised baseball in the 1950s. Barra does feel that segregation contributed to the Southern Association’s declining popularity, and rightly points out that black fans in the South would have had a big incentive to stay away from segregated minor league ball games when black stars in the Major Leagues could be followed on television or the radio. Boycotts led by Civil Rights leaders in several Southern Association cities also contributed, most notably in New Orleans, where the demise of the Pelicans after the 1959 season is blamed specifically on the boycott that saw attendance plunge dramatically. The following season, 1960, Memphis also saw attendances decline to the point that they were only drawing around 670 per game, and the ball club folded. Plus, two teams, New Orleans and Mobile, saw their Major League affiliations dropped, and were forced to become Independent. New Orleans was dropped by the Yankees after the 1958 season; Mobile was dropped by the Indians after the 1960 season. In each case, the following season these teams had losing records and went bust at the end of the season.

Another factor could have been the rise of Little League participation, replacing the family outings to minor league ballparks. College football’s rise in popularity in the South by the late 1950s was yet another factor in undermining interest in minor league baseball in the region. There also is the fact that by the late 1950s, many minor league ballparks were in decline and were in areas that had become run down and viewed as being unsafe. Finally, there is the fact that MLB teams stopped going to Southern Association ballparks and playing the widely popular exhibition games that were a big part of the minor league experience back then, because the MLB teams’ black players would be barred by Jim Crow laws from playing. This contributed to the pall that began to hang over the increasingly empty ballparks in the league. Barra, while ultimately insisting that nobody really knows why attendances fell off so bad in the late 1950s and the early 1960s in the Southern Association, does concede the following in a footnote on page 165 – that writer Willie Morris told him “The combination of air-conditioning and television did keep a lot of people in the South from the ballparks during the summer”. This is a good point. But I think all the factors mentioned above contributed to wounding the condition of the Southern Association, but the stake to the heart was the refusal to integrate. I am holding out for the essential decency of most people, and saying that attendances dropped so precipitously because maybe enough baseball fans in the South knew deep down that, at a time when black MLB players like Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, Hank Aaron, and Ernie Banks were winning Most Valuable Player awards, that a segregated baseball league in the late 1950s and the early 1960s was an enterprise that was just wrong, and should not be supported.

Perhaps sports writer Sam Heys, of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said it best, “The Southern Association chose death over integration.”
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With the Southern Association gone after 1961, this left only the Texas League as a Class AA league, meaning in 1962 there were only 12 Class AA teams in all of minor league baseball. At the time, the Major Leagues were comprised of 20 teams (10 in each league), so just 12 Class AA farm teams supplying players to 20 big league ball clubs was a problem. To address this gap, the president of the Class A South Atlantic League, Sam Smith, led the drive to elevate the South Atlantic League (IV) (aka the “Sally League”) up one level to the Class AA status as a replacement for the defunct Southern Association. Just as this was happening, before the 1963 season, minor league baseball was re-organized, with the modern-day classifications introduced, so the South Atlantic League became a Double-A (AA) league in 1963. It would change it’s name the following year, 1964, to the Southern League (II). [Note: the South Atlantic League (V), still affectionately known as the Sally League, would be re-born 17 years late, in 1980, as a Class-A league.]

In 1963, the 8 teams from the old South Atlantic League that moved up a minor league level to AA were…Asheville Tourists (Pittsburgh Pirates), Augusta Yankees (New York Yankees), Charlotte Hornets (Minnesota Twins), Chattanooga Lookouts (Philadelphia Phillies), Knoxville Smokies (Detroit Tigers), Lynchburg White Sox (Chicago White Sox), Macon Peaches (Cincinnati Reds), Nashville Volunteers (Los Angeles Angels). Augusta and Nashville dropped out after 1963, and in 1964 when the league changed it’s name to the Southern League, two additional teams were created in Birmingham, AL, and Columbus, GA. Birmingham’s new team was again called the Barons, and was an Oakland A’s affiliate. Columbus’ team was called the Confederate Yankees. Confederate Yankees? In a league that replaced a segregated league?… Sigh. None of these original, modern-day Southern League teams remain, but 3 of those metropolitan areas – Birmingham, Chattanooga and the Greater Knoxville area have teams in the current, 2011 Southern League. [With respect to Knoxville, the current Southern League team the Tennessee Smokies can be considered as being from Greater Knoxville (they play home games 22 miles east-south-east of Knoxville, in Sevier County, in the foothills of the Smokey Mountains).]

Going back further in history, there are 5 cities that had Southern Association teams, and that currently have teams in the Southern League as of 2011. They are…Birmingham, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Mobile, and Montgomery. Half of the current Southern League is comprised of teams from cities that have Southern Association history going back 8 decades or more, and in the case of Birmingham, Chattanooga, Mobile, and Montgomery, these four cities had ball clubs in the Southern Association going back more than 100 years ago. And in the case of the Birmingham Barons and the Chattanooga Lookouts, even the nicknames have remained the same.
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The map itself shows each team’s location with their home ball cap logo. At the lower right of the map page, 2010 Southern League home regular season average attendances are shown. At the right of the map page, each team’s home cap logo is also shown in larger size in the team’s profile box. Just below that is listed the ball club’s metro area population (and home-city [or town] population, if the team plays on the outskirts of a larger city). The profile boxes also include a photo of the team’s ballpark, the team’s year of establishment, and their year of joining the Southern League. 2010 home regular season average attendance is also listed along with ballpark capacity, and the year the ballpark opened. Finally, the profile boxes include each team’s Major League Baseball parent-club, and the length of time the team has been part of that MLB team’s farm system. The Birmingham Barons have the longest-running affiliation, 26 years now, with the same MLB team – the Chicago White Sox (1986-2011).

[Note: with minor league baseball being fundamentally a developmental entity, and not a competitive end in itself, titles are not really considered to be of the prime importance that they are in the Major Leagues. But if you are curious about titles won by the Southern League teams, that can be found at the far right on the second gif in this post, here.
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The longest-running team in the Southern League is the Jacksonville Suns. The Suns are also the reigning back-to-back champions, winning the 2010 Southern League title (as well as winning the 2009 title). The Jacksonville Suns are entering their fourth decade of consecutive play in the Southern League. The Suns are also the highest-drawing ball club in the Southern League these days, drawing 5,141 per game in 2010. Counting the 2011 season, the Jacksonville Suns have played 42 consecutive seasons now in the Southern League [although for a 6-year period the Jacksonville Suns were known as the Jacksonville Expos]. This team was formed in 1962 and played 7 seasons as a Triple-A team, as the Cleveland Indians top farm team in 1962-63; then as the St. Louis Cardinals top farm team in 1964-65; then as the New York Mets top farm team from 1966 to 68. The Jacksonville Suns went on a 1-year hiatus in 1969, and then dropped down to the Double-A level and joined the Southern League in 1970, as a dual Montreal Expos/Milwaukee Brewers farm team. After a short return back to the Cleveland Indians’ farm system in 1971, the Jacksonville Suns began a 13-year affiliation with the Kansas City Royals in 1972. The Suns were a KC Royals farm team from 1972 to 1984. After that, Jacksonville became part of the Montreal Expos farm system again, this time for 6 seasons – from 1985 to 1990. During this period the team was called the Jacksonville Expos. A notable Jacksonville player from this era was future-Hall of Famer Randy Johnson. The 6’10” left-handed pitcher, who later became known as The Big Unit and won 303 games in the Major Leagues, spent 1987 in Jacksonville, going 11-8 with a 3.73 ERA in 24 starts.
In 1991, Jacksonville became called the Suns again, and began a 3-year stint as a Seattle Mariners farm team (1991-93). Then from 1994 to 2000, the Suns became a Detroit Tigers farm team. In 2001, the Suns began an 8-year stint as a Los Angeles Dodgers farm team. Finally, in 2009, the Jacksonville Suns became a farm team of a Major League Baseball team in the same state that Jacksonville is in, when they began their current stint as a Florida Marlins farm team [the Marlins' Triple-A team is the New Orleans Zephyrs of the PCL]. There is speculation that the Jacksonville Suns might return to Triple-A status in the near future.

Photo credits -
Carolina Mudcats/Five County Stadium…Aerial photo from Skyscrapercity.com thread, ‘Little Ballparks‘.
Chatanooga Lookouts/AT&T Field…Aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Huntsville Stars/Joe W. Davis Stadium…Photo from CityVoter.com, here.
Jackson Generals/Pringles Park photo from MinorLeagueBaseball.com, here.
Tennessee Smokies/Smokies Park…Photo from InsideSevierville.com/ ‘The Tennessee Smokies‘.

Birmingham Barons/Regions Park…Photo from Skyscrapercity.com thread, ‘Little Ballparks‘.
Jacksonville Suns/Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville photo from MinorLeagueBaseball.com, here.
Mississippi Braves/Trustmark Park aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s eye satellite view, here.
Mobile BayBears/Hank aaron Stadium aerial image from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Montgomery Biscuits/Montgomery Riverwalk stadium aerial image [facing est], from Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘Southern League (baseball)‘.

Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com, ‘Southern League (AA) Encyclopedia and History‘.

2009 attendance figures from BizOfBaseball.com/Minor League Attendance Database, here. 2009 and 2010 cumulative and league-average Southern League attendance from Baseball-Reference.com, here.
2010 Attendance figures from NumberTamer.com/ -Numbertamer.com’s Minor League Baseball – 2010 attendance analysis [pdf] (Note, league attendances begin on page 28 of the 60 page pdf.)
Unincorporated community of Kodak, Tennessee population from Fizber.com.

No thanks to whoever wrote the following article at the MiLB/Southern League official site, ‘League History – History of the Southern League‘. This article touches on the history of the South Atlantic League that morphed into the Southern League, as well as the history of the Southern Association. But it should have been mentioned in this article that the Southern Association was never integrated. This is where a lot of people are going to get their information on the history of minor league baseball in the South, and this sort of white-washing of history is dangerous. The thing is, saying that the Southern Association was never integrated does not harm the reputation of the Southern League, because the Southern League came from a league that WAS integrated.

April 12, 2011

Minor League Baseball: the 3 Double-A leagues…the Eastern League, the Southern League, and the Texas League. Map, with all 30 teams’ 2010 average attendances, locations, and MLB affiliations.

Filed under: Baseball,Baseball: MiLB Double-A — admin @ 11:56 am

Please note: there is a more recent map of this (2016) here…
Affiliated Double A minor league baseball (MiLB): location-map of 3 leagues, the Eastern League, the Southern League, the Texas League (2015 attendances)/+ the 3 new teams in Double-A baseball since 2011 (Pensacola, Biloxi, Hartford)/+ illustrations for the 4 highest-drawing Double-A teams in 2015 (Frisco, Birmingham, Richmond, Reading).
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milb_aa_double-a_baseball2011_post_c.gif
Double-A Baseball map – 3 leagues/30 teams, with 2010 attendances and each team’s MLB affiliation
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Below – list of Double-A teams’ metro-area populations
[Note: click on image below to enlarge]…
milb_metro-area-populations-of-double-a-teams_2010attendances_.gif

The map shows the location of all 30 Double-A teams. There are 3 Double-A leagues in Organized Baseball. Each Major League Baseball team has one of the 30 Double-A teams in its farm system. The Double-A, or AA level of baseball, is two steps below Major League Baseball. These days, however, Double-A baseball often is the launching pad for young talent that is on a fast-track to the Major Leagues.
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Each team’s home ball cap logo is placed on the map next to the ball club’s location.
The regions in the United States that the 3 Double-A leagues themselves are based in can be seen via the thin black lines on the map which serve to separate, geographically, the three leagues’ teams.
The 12-team Eastern League covers all of the Northeastern USA, plus eastern Ohio, Maryland, and Virginia. The Eastern League averaged 4,663 per game last season.
The 10-team Southern League covers the region of North Carolina west through Tennessee, and south to include Mississippi, Alabama, and northern Florida. The Southern League averaged 3,188 per game last season.
The 8-team Texas League covers the region of south-western Missouri, south through Arkansas, south-west through Oklahoma, and, of course, Texas. The Texas League averaged 5,264 per game last season.

The teams’ average attendances are within their league attendance list. Next to each team’s 2010 home, regular-season average attendance is their home ball cap logo, and the logo of their Major League Baseball parent-club. [At the very top, center of the map page are all the MLB teams' logos - listed alphabetically with the team name under it (in case you are not familiar with MLB iconography).]

Below, the highest-drawing Double-A ball club – the Frisco RoughRiders…
[Note: to see a full-screen view, click on images below.]

frisco_roughriders_dr-pepper-ballpark_i.gif
Photo credits – Skyscrapercity.com thread ‘Little Ballparks‘. Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye view. FriscoMovers.info.

Of the 3 leagues, the Texas League draws the highest these days. The Texas League pulled in an average of 5,264 per game in 2010. It must be pointed out, though, that 3 of the 8 teams in the Texas League come from pretty large metropolitan areas (the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex; San Antonio, Texas; and Tulsa, Oklahoma). That being said, no one has ever called Springfield, Missouri or Corpus Christi, Texas large cities – and the Springfield Cardinals and the Corpus Christi Hooks (an Astros farm team) both draw above 5,000 per game. Both these two Texas League teams share the marketing advantage of being a farm team of a relatively close-by MLB team – Springfield, MO {metro population ~430,000) is 191 miles south-west of the St. Louis Cardinals in St. Louis, MO; and Corpus Christi, TX (metro population ~431,000) is 184 miles south-west of the Houston Astros in Houston, TX.

The Frisco Roughriders, a Texas Rangers farm team, are extremely close-by their parent-club. Frisco is located 23 miles north of Dallas, and 34 miles from the Texas Rangers’ home in Arlington, TX. The Frisco RoughRiders drew the highest of all 30 Double-A teams in 2010, pulling in 7,886 per game. That is now the sixth-straight year that the Frisco RoughRiders led all 30 Double-A teams in average attendance. Furthermore, Frisco had a higher average attendance than 20 of the 30 Triple-A teams last year, and had the 12th-highest average attendance among all minor league teams in 2010 [Note: list of entire 2010 minor league teams' average attendances (334 teams) is linked to at the end of this post.]. The second highest-drawing Texas League team in 2010 was the Tulsa Drillers – a Colorado Rockies farm team, who drew 6,185 per game last season.

The Eastern League draws the second-best of the 3 leagues, with an average of 4,663 per game in 2010. Like the Texas League, the Eastern League also has some pretty large metro areas, including the Greater Washington, DC/Baltimore, MD metro area (where the Bowie Baysox of Bowie, Maryland come from); the Greater Cleveland/Akron, Ohio metro area (where the Akron Aeros come from); the Greater Richmond, Virginia metro area (where the Richmond Flying Squirrels come from); and the Greater Hartford, Connecticut metro area (where the New Britain Rock Cats come from). Also, like the Texas League, there are several mid-sized cities in the Eastern League with 300,000 to 600,000 metro areas (4 teams). Unlike the Texas League, the Eastern League has teams that come from small cities with metro areas lower than 300,000 (4 teams).

In the Eastern League there is a factor that on first glance might seem to deflate attendances but seems to increase fan interest and attendance. That is the fact that every Eastern League ball club is within less than a 2-hours’ drive to one or more Major League ball clubs, with the exception of the Binghampton Mets (who are about 2 and a half hours away from the New York Yankees and about 3 hours away from their parent-club, the New York Mets). The near proximity to MLB teams that Eastern League teams have does not seem to depress attendances, especially when you compare gate figures with the lower drawing Southern League. I think easy proximity to an expensive outing at, say Fenway Park (home of MLB’s Boston Red Sox), encourages many folks in New England to instead follow the Red Sox on television and actually go to a ball game in Manchester, NH or New Britain, CT, or Portland, ME – for about one-quarter of the expense. But the Eastern League’s decent gate figures despite being surrounded by so many Major League teams might be more a case of the fact that sports fans in the Deep South don’t really follow baseball as much as sports fans in the Northeast do.

Having said that, it is ironic that the Eastern League’s best-drawing team last season was a team from the South – the brand-new ball club called the Richmond Flying Squirrels – a San Francisco Giants farm team, who drew 6,626 per game. [The Richmond team came from Norwich, CT, where they were a NY Yankees affiliate. They moved to Richmond, filling the gap left when the city of Richmond lost their Triple-A team after the 2009 season, when the Atlanta Braves moved their Triple-A team to Gwinnett, Georgia - a county adjacent to Atlanta.] The Reading Phillies are the second-best drawing Eastern League team. Reading pulled in 6,615 per game last season. The Reading/Philadelphia Phillies’ partnership has gone on for 45 consecutive seasons, and the Reading Phillies now have one of the two longest-running-affiliations with one Major League ball club (the other 45-year partnership is the affiliation of the Lakeland Tigers of the Class-A Florida League with the Detroit Tigers). [The previous longest-running affiliation was the Appalachian League (Rookie League) Bluefield Orioles with the Baltimore Orioles, which lasted 53 years, from 1958 to 2010. The Bluefield Blue Jays, as they are now known, were dropped by Baltimore over the winter and are now part of the Toronto Blue Jays farm system].

With teams such the Reading Phillies and the Frisco RoughRiders, MLB teams have seen the synergistic effect of placing a minor league farm team close to the parent-club’s location – Reading, Pennsylvania is just 47 miles west of Philadelphia. Other Eastern League teams that drew above 5,000 per game last season were the Portland (Maine) Sea Dogs – a Red Sox farm team (that is 99 miles north-east of Fenway Park); the New Hampshire Fisher Cats – who are a Toronto Blue Jays farm team; the New Britain Rock Cats – who are a Minnesota Twins farm team; and the Trenton Thunder, a New York Yankees farm team (that is 64 miles south-west of Yankee Stadium).

The Southern League draws the lowest of the three Double-A leagues, averaging 3,188 per game in 2010. Southern League ball clubs generally come from 400K to 600K metro-areas, with 3 locations – Jacksonville, FL (the Jacksonville Suns); Birmingham, Alabama (the Birmingham Bulls); and Raleigh/Durham, NC (the Carolina Mudcats) being the only relatively large-sized metro-areas in the Southern League. The only Major League team at all close-by for 90% of the teams in the Southern League is the Atlanta Braves, with the exception of the western Tennessee team called the Jackson Generals being closer to St. Louis than it is Atlanta. Jackson, TN is also the smallest Double-A city, with a metro population of around just 107,000. Even the Jacksonville Suns are closer to Atlanta than their parent-clubs’ location in Miami, Florida. The Jacksonville Suns, a Florida Marlins farm team, were the highest-drawing Southern League team last season, drawing 5,141 per game.
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In the following weeks, I will have posts on each of the 3 Double-A leagues, with ball club profiles including ballpark photos and metro-area populations.
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Here is an interesting list, from the Ballpark Digest site, ‘2010 Baseball Attendance by Average [Minor Leagues]‘.
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Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘Minor league baseball‘.

Attendance figures from NumberTamer.com/ -Numbertamer.com’s Minor League Baseball – 2010 attendance analysis [pdf] (Note, league attendances begin on page 28 of the 60 page pdf.)

March 31, 2011

Major League Baseball: Attendance map for 2010 regular season, with percent changes from 2009, and percent capacities.

Filed under: Baseball,Baseball >paid-attendance — admin @ 9:05 am

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2010 MLB attendance map



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Please note: to see the most recent MLB paid-attendance map-and-post, click on the following: category: Baseball >paid-attendance.
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On the far left of the map page you will find, for all 30 MLB teams, four statistics – A). 2010 attendance figures (for home, regular season games). B). 2010 versus 2009 percentage change in average attendance. C). Ballpark seating capacity. D). 2010 percent capacity [average attendance divided by ballpark capacity].

The map shows each ball club’s location, and their home cap. Each cap is sized to reflect the ball club’s 2010 average attendance.
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From the Biz of Baseball site, from March 29, 2011, by Maury Brown, ‘Is MLB Poised to see an Attendance Rebound in 2011?‘.

The New York Yankees drew the highest in 2010, supplanting 2009 attendance leaders the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers had an off-season, and attendance plummeted -5.3 %. Before the New York Yankees new stadium was built (and their capacity shrunk from 56,936 to 50,086), the Yanks were average attendance leaders year-in, year-out for a five-year period (from 2004 to 2008). Before that, the Seattle Mariners were the best-drawing ballclub, from 2001 to 2003. And if that is not surprising enough in context of where the Mariners are today (Seattle was the 19th best draw in the Major Leagues in 2010), then how about the fact that a decade ago, in 2000, the best-drawing ballclub in North America was the now-hapless Cleveland Indians {see this, 2000 MLB attendance, from Baseball-reference.com}. The Cleveland Indians have gone from the best-drawing MLB team to the worst-drawing MLB team in the space of 10 years.

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The largest percentage increase from 2009 to 2010 was with the Minnesota Twins, who had a 35.1 % increase. Second best percentage increase was the 17.9 % increase at the turnstiles that the Cincinnati Reds produced. Third highest increase was the 11.9 % produced by the Texas Rangers. All three of those teams had playoff-qualifying seasons. For the Twins, both playing in their brand new Target Field and being in yet another playoff run contributed to a 100.1% capacity. That made Minnesota one of 3 teams in Major League Baseball to play to full capacity in 2010 [the other two were the Philadelphia Phillies and the Boston Red Sox].

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Minnesota ended up with an average attendance of 39,798 per game – which was 10,332 per game higher than the Twins drew in 2009 in their last season at the dreary Metro Dome. Minnesota had the sixth-best average attendance in Major League Baseball last season. Listed below are the top 10 draws in MLB last year.

Here are the top 10 highest-drawing teams in Major League Baseball in 2010…
1. New York Yankees, 46,091 per game (92.0 % capacity); up +0.4 perecent from 2009.
2. Philadelphia Phillies, 45,027 per game (103.2 % capacity); up +1.3 percent from 2009.
3. Los Angeles Dodgers, 43,979 per game (78.5 % capacity); down -5.3% from 2009.
4. St. Louis Cardinals, 40,755 per game (92.7 % capacity); down -1.7 percent from 2009.
5. Los Angeles Angels, 40,133 per game (89.1 % capacity); up +0.3 percent from 2009.
6. Minnesota Twins, 39,798 per game (100.1 % capacity); up +35.1 percent from 2009.
7. Chicago Cubs, 37,814 per game (91.9 % capacity); down – 4.5 percent from 2009.
8. Boston Red Sox, 37,610 per game (100.6 % capacity); down -0.5 perecent from 2009.
9. San Francisco Giants, 37,499 per game (89.5 % capacity); up +6.2 percent from 2009.
10. Colorado Rockies, 35,940 (71.3 % capacity); up +9.2 percent from 2009.
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Thanks to ESPN, for attendances, here.
Thanks to MLB.com/shop, for ball cap photos.

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