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On a mostly unrelated note, I was stunned to see Ken Schrom referred to as a key member of any baseball team.
I don't mean to hijack the thread, TdiEE, because baseball in my hometown (Canton) has been victimized by horrific management and I can identify...
But that said, is Ken Schrom the worst player ever to be named to an All-Star game?
How's the stadium in El Paso? The article says it's 14 years old, but is it a decent place to watch a ballgame?
The reason I ask is that Canton's ballpark is 15 years old, and it's a piece of crap.
Oh, by the way, Bud Selig called, and he says that the Diablos would be just fine if baseball had a salary cap.
He was an Indian, and he had a gaudy W-L record and a halfway-decent ERA. Schrom was 8-2 heading into July, 11-3 on July 31. The weird thing is, Tony Bernazard had a monster year, Joe Carter led the league in RBI, and Schrom was the all-star.
Right. My bad.
Maybe he had compromising photos of Dick Howser?
If they left, it seems to me someone else would move in. I know it wouldn't be the same - the Diablos have a lot of history. But still, that park is way too nice to stay vacant for long.
I live in Columbus now, and the Clippers keep saying they need a new ballpark or they'll leave. But, like in El Paso, losing the Clippers doesn't mean we won't have minor league baseball...it just means we won't have the Clippers. I'd think ownership groups and the Midwest League or Eastern League would jump at the chance to put a team in a city this big.
Now, Las Vegas -- there's a team that needs a new yard. And not for big league baseball either.
I drove by the Columbus ballpark a couple of weeks ago, and it looked like a perfectly fine ballpark to me.
Columbus and El Paso. Columbus is #15 and El Paso #22. Sort of ironic that they're moving down in the sports world instead of up.
I would think the answers to all of those questions would be "yes", but I'm not 100% sure.
It's my understanding that the folks in the Bronx aren't totally thrilled with the facilities in Columbus, but that might just be the way Clippers management is spinning it in order to get a free stadium.
It looks like it's going to work, too...the discussion seems to have changed from "will the city/county build a stadium" to "where and when will the city/county build a stadium".
It looks like the new stadium's likely going to be funded by the county, which is unfortunate, because I live in adjacent county but still inside Columbus city limits. (I could vote against city council members who approve a stadium, but I can't vote against Franklin County commissioners.)
I drove by the Columbus ballpark a couple of weeks ago, and it looked like a perfectly fine ballpark to me.
It is. It's a decent place to watch a game. Nothing special, but nothing that needs to be replaced. Sean's right, it could stand to be closer to the rest of the city's attractions, and it's in a crappy neighborhood, but it's good enough for AAA ball.
Columbus and El Paso.
Blue Jackets.
Looks like the honor is all yours.
Well, if you go by the population inside the city limits, yes. But that's largely irrelevent, since most of the attendees will be from the larger metropolitan area, not just inside the city limits. Which means that the two largest are Norfolk (1.570 million in 2000) and Las Vegas (1.563). Columbus has 1.540 million as well as the Blue Jackets and El Paso is WAY down the list at only 670 thousand. Of course, if you included Ciudad Juarez, it would probably be the largest.
-- Chris
-- Chris
I don't know about that - the CBJ is almost certainly profitable. There's no indication they'd be one of the casualties of contraction.
Juarez's population has never been determined with any degree of accuracy, but the best guesses run from 1.5 million on the low end to 2.5 million on the high end. Which means 2.25-3.25 million potential customers total in the area. However, there are several catches to that:
1) El Paso is by far the most impoverished big city in the U.S.
2) Juarez is even poorer than El Paso.
3) In the post 9/11 world, Draconian measures and long lines at the international bridges make it much more of a hassle for people from Juarez to attend games in El Paso.
eric, I have no excuse for overlooking Austin; I lived there for 4 years, so I know darn well they don't have any major professional sports, unless you count UT football.
It's not my geography that needs work, but my knowledge of other sports. When the heck did Columbus get a hockey team anyway, and what worthy Canadian metropolis did they steal it from? :)
The main problem, though, is the lack of local representation in the management team, and the resulting lack of understanding of the community that the team is located in. It's hard to connect with your community when some ###### in Spokane (no offense, Werr) is blindly calling the shots.
When Jim Paul ran the team, and it became the first AA team ever to draw 300,000 fans, he did it with an aggressive promotion schedule and a lively, fan-friendly atmosphere at the ballpark. He was so successful with that approach that every other minor league team in the country emulated him, and they became successful too. He even started an annual seminar wherein every winter, dozens of minor league owners would come to El Paso and pay thousands of dollars to find out how they could model their franchise after the Diablos.
Ever since Paul sold the team, they've moved away from that approach and it's gone steadily downhill.
Brandon Webb, Chad Tracy, Scott Hairston, Lyle Overbay, Mike Koplove, Josh Kroeger, Sergio Santos, Jose Valverde and Oscar Villarreal are all "shitty"?
News to me.
So you named 8 good players they had, spread out over a 5-year period. Obviously that wasn't enough to get the job done, since they've been losing pretty consistently.
This, it appears, is not true. The Clippers' first season was 1977, and they were Pittsburgh's AAA affiliate. They didn't join the Yankee system until 1979.
My understanding of Double-A and Triple-A affiliations is that those teams are owned independently (not by major league teams) and are located by their owners. Thus, El Paso would have a Double-A team for as long as whoever owns the team wants to keep it there, and the D-Backs, Cardinals or whoever have no say in the matter. And if John Q. Hammons of Springfield, Mo., wants a team in his shiny new stadium, he has to buy one and not merely find a major league team willing to affiliate.
I think of it as a game of musical chairs. There are 30 chairs and each major league team can occupy one. But after the first, say, 28 teams have signed affiliation agreements, the final two have to pick one of the two cities that remain. They can't go just anywhere they want to.
Is my rambling making any sense?
In this case, it's the Diablos owners who have declined to renew their contract with the DBacks because they are still entertaining relocation opportunities. Once they sign or renew a contract with the parent team, they're locked into their location for the duration of that contract.
The implication in the article is that the Brett Brothers have reached an agreement with (or are currently negotiating with) Hammond to sell him the team. Which is why the Brett Brothers have refused to re-up with the Diamondbacks.
I don't think it's quite that simple.
While MLB organizations may not always own their minor league affiliates, historically there have often been at least minority-owner investment stakes by MLB teams in the minor league operations, not only to make money but also to be able to ensure some measure of stability. I don't know El Paso's situation, but we can't always assume that the minor league teams are completely independent, in an ownership sense, from major league organizations.
Moreover, even if they aren't "owned" by their major league organizations, minor league affiliates receive very substantial financial subsidies from their major league partner. It's in their interest to remain on good terms with their major league partner.
The relationship between a major league team and its minor league affiliates is symbiotic, and may be complex. It's in neither party's interest for their to be a lot of instability and season-to-season shuffling of partnerships, the kind of "musical chairs" you describe. It occurs, but it really isn't optimal for anyone when it does.
While El Paso's attendance has been slumping, they were still 18th out of 30 AA teams last season. Sure they don't draw like Round Rock, but at least they drew 70,000 more fans than New Haven, Orlando, or Wichita.
I've done a road trip to El Paso to watch a couple of weekend games and had a great time. They had free squeeze ball giveaways, a blind taste pepsi/coke taste test on the concours, player autograph booth before the game, and free t-shirts tossed out of the press box everytime a Diablo player walked, and a dozen local high school hotties as cheerleaders. I only wish I had gotten there back in 1999(?) when they had the trained pig who delivered baseballs to the home plate umpire.
Hey, I love the Crew. When I lived in Toledo, I drove 5 hours round-trip to every game for two years.
I just didn't feel like arguing about whether it was "major league" or not. It was a lot easier to just mention the CBJ and leave it at that...
Actually, no, they were in the last 5 years like I said. Overbay arrived in 2000.
Durazo, Cabrera, Cust, and all those guys were great, and the attendance was good while those guys were there. It's mostly the last 4 years or so that the attendance has slumped because the team has been losing.
In any case, naming a litany of individual players means little. 99% of minor league fans care whether the team is winning, not who the players are. The star system is not in effect in the minor leagues. The more important question is, have the players the Diamondbacks send to El Paso been winning games? And the answer is, no, not lately.
Also, Eric, it's a bit unfair to judge the AZ minor league players who've passed through El Paso just yet. The organization is so young, it hasn't had that many years to send some really good talent through there.
Plus, over the first few years, AZ lost a lot of draft picks for signing washed out free agents, and then spent their picks on bad players (Corey Myers, anyone?). Lately, the organization's been doing much better job drafting.
Some really good players are gonna be in AA later this year and next year too; in terms of hitters, we're talking Conor Jackson, Carlso Quentin, Jamie D'Antona, Jesus Cota (all on the Lancaster team right now).
In terms of pitchers, AA will get the likes of Matt Chico, Jered Liebeck, William Juarez. It's quite unfair to blast the AZ organization for not providing the fans of El Paso with great talent, with all due respect.
I mean, how many great players have the fans in Columbus or Trenton seen over the last 4-5 years? Erick Almonte? Puhleez.
That's certainly been my experience in 30+ years of watching minor league games in San Jose. Most fans have very little idea what the players' names are, but when the guy with the "SJ" on his cap gets a hit or makes a good play, they cheer like crazy. The fans want to see the hometown team win, much more than they really know or care who the individual players are. They players come and go season after season, but the same fans keeping coming out to root the team on.
I'm not judging it exactly, I'm just saying that it hasn't been good enough to win games. When you're talking about minor league attendance, the prospect status of the players means zilch. It's winning that matters. Bottom line, people won't go see a team that loses games like it's going out of style. That's all I was trying to say.
I have no idea what the field conditions are like in EP. It wouldn't surprise me if they were bad, though. The reason is, grass doesn't grow in El Paso, period. To get any grass to grow at all, you have to water it an obscene amount. And the city is going through a very severe water shortage that has caused very strict restrictions to be put in place. Watering your lawn is pretty much illegal. There are exceptions for businesses, of course (aren't there always?), but I'd guess the Diablos are still not allowed to use as much water as they'd like.
(30 years? You must go back to the Bad News Bees -- Darryl Sconiers, Mike Norris, Ken Reitz, Derrel Thomas, Steve Howe and the rest of the outcasts)
I go back a long ways with the old Bees, my friend. When they were an Angels farm team in the late 60s, and a Royals farm team in the early 70s.
Well, your original point was that there were "shitty" players down there and that was one of the "big problems" facing the team. Your words, not mine. And they were patently false.
I hope that your assertion about 99% of the fans of minor league baseball is just hyperbole for rhetorical effect. While minor league baseball doesn't have the MLB "star system," it does have a significant proportion of fans, certainly more than a meager 1%, who are there chiefly to follow the hot prospects.
Sadly, these are exactly the sorts of fan-friendly activities that Jim Paul instituted, and that are being phased out by the current owners.
So it's not like they've finished at the bottom of the Texas League the last 4 years. They've actually had quite good teams in 2000 and 2002.
I've never been to El Paso, but I spent some time in Tucson two years ago, and the infield grass there was in horrible shape.
Nice stadium, great atmosphere, horrible infield grass.
I have no idea if that's a permanent issue, but it was pretty bad in 2002.
Well, none here except Nick Johnson, but nobody actually goes to Clippers games.
I live in Tucson, so I know what you're saying. It seems like the field is in great shape for spring training, but they use golf course type methods to groom the field for "tournament conditions" in March. That means heavy doses of chemicals in February to get it in shape, and cutting the grass short during March to appease the major leaguers. By the time the AAA team starts playing games in April, the grass has heavily worn areas on the infield turf and brown patches everywhere.
I hope that your assertion about 99% of the fans of minor league baseball is just hyperbole for rhetorical effect. While minor league baseball doesn't have the MLB "star system," it does have a significant proportion of fans, certainly more than a meager 1%, who are there chiefly to follow the hot prospects.
I feel like Bill James getting ready to write one of his "Dear Jackass" letters.
OK, first of all, the original comment was one freaking sentence. People are trying to read more into it than is there.
Second, you're intentionally distorting what I said. Or did you miss the part where I wrote that shitty players were "not the biggest problem by any means" ?
Third, it's not "patently false" that the DBacks have sent shitty players to El Paso. I never said that all the players were shitty; certainly many of them were good. But there have been more shitty players than good ones in the last 3-4 years, as evidenced by the team's losing record. Proving the existence of good players does not disprove the existence of bad ones.
Fourth, I've been to several hundred games in El Paso, which I would guess is several hundred more than anyone else here. I know the town, I know the people, I know the ballpark. I think I've got a pretty good idea of why people attend games. And, in my experience, 99% of them -- no hyperbole -- care far more about whether the team wins than they do about whatever individual prospects might be on the team. They could care less who's a hot prospect and who isn't. If that's not the way it is in all minor league towns, fine. But I can tell you with absolute certainty that's the way it is in El Paso.
I played in El Paso in the mid nineties when the Brewers were there. What a great place to play. Alot of fans, great suportive crowds. Kind of a pinball type place to pitch when the ground got hard during the summer, but the park played fair for both pitchers and hitters. A good CF helped out flyball pitchers tremendously running down everything in the deep gaps.
Mr. Paul was a great owner, did alot for the players. Every home run the fans would line-up down the home team concourse and give money for home runs; some guys made 200-300 bucks for a well timed home run when the Chicken visited. Beautiful golf course about 7-10 miles from the stadium.
Didn't hurt that at the furthest west corner of the Texas League we got to fly everywhere, where as the rest of the league had some nasty bus trips. By the end of the season everyone had earned a free ticket on Southwest.
Hopefully a new ownership group can come in and get things straightened out. Maybe they can hire Mr. Paul as some form of consultant to help turn it around.
(a) That's a cool handle you've got, although I hope it didn't come true, and
(b) Who are you? I might remember you. (That's OK if you don't want to say.)
(b) Since I know you're an El Paso guru, check the '96 stats. I was a sp/mr with an about league average ERA and about a BB too many per nine innings and K too little per nine innings to be taken seriously, although I did earn a trip to the AFL after my inconsistent season there. Too many first names....
(c) Your web site is great. The pictures are terrific.
It may have been that way in the past, but not anymore. I've worked for a couple minor league teams, and they are all independently owned and receive no cash from their parent club. That's why you see all the zany promotions and other advertising taken to the extreme--to pay the bills.
The only recourse clubs have is to leave at the end of the contract. For many minor league clubs that may not matter, but for some with close ties, it does. For example, the Rockies were threatening Colorado Springs with leaving unless they made improvements to the field, and eventually the Sky Sox did, getting a new infield and padded walls. And they paid for it themselves, with no help from the Rockies.
The only thing the big league clubs pay for is player saleries. That's it. When Tucson renewed, supposedly they begged the D'Backs for help with marketing and sponsorships, since they struggle to draw fans and get businesses on board. Apparently the deal was done quickly because the D'Backs agreed to do so, perhaps as thanks for the Sidewinders improving their end of the bargain--field has been much better since 2002, although not perfect.
As for Tucson, #53, you are spot on. It's a complicated situation, but the local county controls things like the groundscrew, and doesn't give the Sidewinders much negotiating room if they don't feel like watering the field as much as they do for the D'Backs/Chisox.
"I was looking through my 97 Brewers media guide, and from the information he gave, it's still too hard to figure out who he is. Possible candidates might be Steven Whitaker (145 IP, 4.58 ERA, 87 BB 85 K), and Andrew Paul (95 innings, 4.72 ERA, 43 BB 72 K). My guess is Paul (because of the "too many first names" clue). BTW, Jeff D'Amico and Brian Tollberg also started on that 96 Diablos team."
Whoever you are in reality, I do want to say that I am sorry injuries derailed your career.
OK, it took me a while because I don't have the '96 stats handy, but I'm pretty sure your name appears on this page. Right?
What's with the ad hominem?
OK, first of all, the original comment was one freaking sentence. People are trying to read more into it than is there.
You made the statement. People have corrected it. No big deal.
Second, you're intentionally distorting what I said. Or did you miss the part where I wrote that shitty players were "not the biggest problem by any means" ?
No, I didn't. The implication of your original statement is that there weren't good players there and that was a big reason why the team was in trouble. Later, when more than one person pointed out how foolish this statement was, you changed your argument to "players don't matter, it's winning which matters."
Third, it's not "patently false" that the DBacks have sent shitty players to El Paso. I never said that all the players were shitty; certainly many of them were good. But there have been more shitty players than good ones in the last 3-4 years, as evidenced by the team's losing record. Proving the existence of good players does not disprove the existence of bad ones.
If you didn't mean that the D-Backs had filled El Paso with shitty players for several years running, you should have been more clear in your original statement. Also, you shouldn't have been so defensive in subsequent posts when myself and Levski pointed out numerous quality players in El Paso over the last several years.
Fourth, I've been to several hundred games in El Paso, which I would guess is several hundred more than anyone else here. I know the town, I know the people, I know the ballpark. I think I've got a pretty good idea of why people attend games. And, in my experience, 99% of them -- no hyperbole -- care far more about whether the team wins than they do about whatever individual prospects might be on the team. They could care less who's a hot prospect and who isn't. If that's not the way it is in all minor league towns, fine. But I can tell you with absolute certainty that's the way it is in El Paso.
I don't doubt that you know El Paso. However, your original comment about 99% of fans was not specifically in reference to El Paso and was not accompanied with this information about your specific El Paso knowledge. I responded to your sweeping generalization about ALL minor league fans.
Yes, I might appear on that page...Sadly, in the uniform I wore the next season after turning the AFL into the White Sands Missle Range during my tenure there. St. Paul was a great place and organization to play for...but that is another story.
That Diablos team was great. Todd Dunn (Brewers) won the MVP, Sean Maloney (Brewers/Orioles) was the pitcher of the year, D'Amico moved up during the season, Travis Smith (Milwaukee/St. Louis) was our #2 starter after getting called up from Stockton. Brian Tollberg (Padres) wasn't Tollberg yet, just an soft tossing control innings eater. Brad Seitzer (Kevin's brother) was our great 3b, Ronnie Belliard (Brewers) played 2b, and Jonas Hamlin had 90 RBI's at the break (but 9 after). After Bobby Hughes (Brewers) luckily got hurt at catcher "org soldier" Bill Dobrolsky took over and our staff era went down a run. Greg Martinez (Brewers) played CF and Geoff Jenkins was with us for awhile before he hurt himself, I guess a harbinger of future problems. We got bounced in playoffs by Wichita by a team led by Jed Hansen and Larry Sutton...I was supposed to start Game Five and we lost in four...
Our coaching staff was great. Dave Machamer was the manager and Mike Caldwell was the pitching coach, who broke more bats in batting practice than any pitcher in the league.
And the fans there were great. I agree that a winning team, not just the individual stars, makes the fans excited. As per my tenure with the Brewers they routinely kept El Paso stocked with players who would be considered "a little old" for the league and El Paso was always competitive, if not stocked with alot of blue chip prospects.
Well, too much answer but a smiling trip down memory lane for me. I made the clues too easy for major league talent like you guys. Thanks again. Keep up the good work.
That was the year D'Amico got called up to the bigs and pitched a two-hitter against Roger Clemens in his major league debut, right? I remember that because I'd been at his final minor league start a few days earlier.
That was a good Diablos team. They were pretty good the next year, too, with (I think) Mike Kinkade and Antone Williamson hitting the crap out of the ball.
Anyway, thanks for joining us and I do hope you make it a regular thing.
Well, it's been 18 years since I lived in Austin. As I recall, the major sports at that time were:
1.) Smoking weed
2.) getting stupid drunk on E. 6th St., Wed-Sun
3.) Smoking weed
I may have missed a few things, though.
Eric Enders,
If you ever have the time, I'd love to hear about the stadium prior to Cohen. I never saw it, but heard it was something of a bandbox? I remember back in the early '80's, when my hometown still had a Texas League team, they went out there and got smoked by the Diablos one time, like 35-20. And that wasn't the only game like that.
You modestly neglected to mention that you played in the Southern League All-Star Game in '96
So even though the Diablos had the best record in their division in 2002, and made the playoffs in 2000 while going 22-9 at home in the 2nd half, they've still been a crappy team all 4 years? Sorry, but the record over the last 4 full seasons contradicts what you're saying to some extent. Are they consistently putting a winning team on the field? No, but then most minor league teams are that way as the nature of the draft is highly speculative. I think El Paso has been fortunate to see 2 good teams in the last 4 years.
As for the Tucson Sidewinders, they suffer from being in a town that is University of Arizona centric. If it isn't a Wildcat sport, they don't support it.
Fair enough. However, I did say the last 3-4 years, meaning 2001, 2002, 2003, and the partial 2004 season. If you add up their record in those four years it's well below .500. They did have some good teams and players in the Durazo-Cabrera era from 1998-2000, but that's not the time period I was complaining about.
1.) Smoking weed
2.) getting stupid drunk on E. 6th St., Wed-Sun
3.) Smoking weed
When I was there (95-99) it was still pretty much the same. God, what a great town.
If you ever have the time, I'd love to hear about the stadium prior to Cohen. I never saw it, but heard it was something of a bandbox? I remember back in the early '80's, when my hometown still had a Texas League team, they went out there and got smoked by the Diablos one time, like 35-20. And that wasn't the only game like that.
Oh, man, don't get me started on that. The Dudley Dome -- what a hell of a ballpark. It wasn't really a dome, but was called that because rainouts were few and far between. It was pretty much your prototypical intimate, colorful minor league stadium, straight out of Bull Durham except with everybody speaking Spanish instead of Southern. It opened in 1929 and hosted the likes of Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and Satchel Paige, among many others.
The visitors clubhouse was actually located behind the grandstand, so the players had to walk from the clubhouse through the stands to get to the playing field. This made it a gold mine for getting autographs when I was a kid. Among the players I met and talked to there were Roberto Alomar, Paul Molitor, Robin Yount, Sammy Sosa, Juan Gonzalez, Ramon and Pedro Martinez, John Wetteland, Kevin Brown, Gary Sheffield, Mike Piazza, and tons of others.
It was a notorious hellhole for pitchers, not so much because of the dimensions, which were fairly typical, but because of the high elevation, extreme heat, and dry air. Double-digit scores were routine, and I saw many a game where one team collected 20 or more hits. Orel Hershiser tells a story about getting his brains beat in while pitching for San Antonio in 1982 or 83, then going back to his hotel room, crying all night and swearing he was going to quit baseball. Guys like Glenn Braggs, Joey Meyer, and Billy Jo Robidoux put up obscene numbers there. A guy named Lavell Freeman hit .395 there in 1987 and all it got him was a brief cup of coffee with the Brewers.
There's a little bit about the park in this article, and a lot about it in David Lamb's wonderful book Stolen Season. I highly recommend it if you haven't read it.
There are also a couple of good trivia questions involving El Paso baseball.
Q: What's the only baseball park ever featured on the cover of National Geographic?
A: Cohen Stadium in 1990. (Although pictures of both Cohen Stadium and Dudley Field accompany the article inside.)
Q: What do the last two players to bat over .380 in a full season of pro baseball have in common?
A: They both played for El Paso: Lavell Freeman in 1987 and Mike Kinkade in 1997. (Two others also did it in partial seasons -- Dave Nilsson in 1995 and Durazo in 1999.)
Because of that, after a couple of years they changed the rules. After that I was only allowed to win once a game.
That's definitely immoral, Eric Enders.
Minor league attendances have very little to do with the success of the team or the hot prospects that may be on the field. It has to do entirely with promotions and aggressive marketing. There is a reason why teams like Charlotte and Columbus struggle to draw despite being the farm clubs of two consistent winning franchises. They have bad ballparks and poorly run front offices that don't know how to connect with their communities.
A survey taken last year by former employer team (AAA) showed that the the average fan at a game was a 37 year old female with 2 children. It's all about being affordable, family entertainment, which is something the minor leagues can do. If a team can make their stadium a safe and fun place for a family of 4 while not taking a hundred bucks out of their pocket, they can succeed.
When my team made the playoffs the last 2 years, we had to scratch and claw (and give away a lot of tickets) to get our stadium half full (5,000 was the best we could do) so we could have some sort of home crowd advantage. We averaged around 7,000 per game during each regular season. When we won the league championship to give the city their first championship in 35 years, we had about 5,000 fans in attendance on a gorgeous Thursday in September. Last year, with less time to advertise since we were hosting games 1+2 of each best-of-5 series, we struggled to get 3,000 fans per game, which would equate to our absolute worst crowds of the season, such as a Monday night in April with rain in the forecast.
Fans want fireworks and free T-shirts, if the home team wins, all the better, but they won't care who won a week later, but they'll remember the fireworks and have the T-shirt.
Of course, I have 2 pretty sweet championship rings :) Thank you Paul Hoover and Jonny Gomes.
I sent him a PM (at another forum) with this thread URL, since it's probably the only time the poor guy'll ever be mentioned on Primer :)
Minor league playoff games just sound like a bad idea. I assume it's all walkup sales, and it's walkup sales on an event that gets almost zero hype.
Torn cuff has hinted at a problem with any minor league team in El Paso. The travel expenses have to be pretty steep when you're 600-1000 miles away from everybody else in the league. It's not ideal for pitcher development either.
Columbus really has an old stadium. According to a program I got from a game there a couple of years ago, Landis called it the finest stadium in the nation.
COLUMBUS CLIPPERS RING YOUR BELL!
I loved going to Clippers games for their crazy promotions (dime a dog night), but that stadium is atrocious. And its in a horrible location. The team could (a) move it closer to campus so students will go to more games, or (b) move it downtown so state workers and businessmen will go to more games. Right now its right by Columbus State and a few housing projects..not exactly prime location.
And Springfield has long deserved a minor league team. I'm not sure El Paso should be the team moving (Wichita has been struggling for years), but some team needs to move to Springfield.
Stephen M., I've passed by Chope's many times, but never actually eaten there. That's because most of the times I passed by, I was on my way to La Posta in Mesilla, which is one of my favorite restaurants in the world. (You're confusing 2 different little towns; La Mesa, where Chope's is, and Mesilla, which is about 15 miles further north.)
Columbus and El Paso. Columbus is #15 and El Paso #22.
Doesn't Columbus have a hockey team. And I know they have a soccer team - why not count that as a major sport? (ducks, but gets hit by a bottle of
Frenfreedom wine anyway)In terms of metro area, according to my trusty World Almanac, Columbus is 29th & El Paso is 64th.
What pro team's in Austin? That's city #16.
1) El Paso is by far the most impoverished big city in the U.S.
Looking again at my trusty World Almanac, it has an unemployment rate of 8.3% & a per capita income of $19,186. Cities in the top 100 which can claim equal/worse:
Unemployment:
Chicago, IL 8.3%
Bakersfield, CA 8.7%
Tacoma, WA 8.7%
Grand Rapids, MI 8.8%
Portland, OR 9.0%
Milwaukee, WI 9.6%
St. Louis, MO 9.6%
Buffalo, NY 9.7%
San Jose 9.8%
Jersey City, NJ 10.0%
Modesto, CA 10.2%
Oakland, CA 10.6%
Miami, FL 11.1%
Stockton, CA 11.8%
Detriot, MI 11.9%
Newark, NJ 12.3%
Cleveland, OH 12.5%
Fresno, CA 12.9%
Phoenix, AZ 38.7% (gotta be a typo, right?)
Per capita income:
San Antonio $6,887 (again, that's gotta be a typo)
Also really bad per capita incomes:
Fort Worth, TX $20,420 (with an 8.1% unemployment rate)
Lincoln, NB $20,872 (6.3% unemployed)
Bakersfield, CA $21,021
Honolulu, HA $21,115 (only 3.9%)
Fresno, CA $21,463
Modesto, CA $22,677
Fort Worth is close, but not as bad by either measure. I'd say Fresno's its only real competition for most impoverished city in the nation.
See this study.
Also, the keyword here is big city -- mentally I was cutting it off at the 30 most populous cities in the U.S. Almost all of the poorest cities in the country are small cities, with the exception of EP.
Stephen M., I've passed by Chope's many times, but never actually eaten there. That's because most of the times I passed by, I was on my way to La Posta in Mesilla, which is one of my favorite restaurants in the world. (You're confusing 2 different little towns; La Mesa, where Chope's is, and Mesilla, which is about 15 miles further north.)
Dammit! I'm at least six months from my next trip to La Posta! Quit brining it up!
I've been to Dudley and the atmosphere there bore a striking similarity to the DAP in Durham (where I saw more games). Both were great places to see a game.
It's a shame to see this happening to the Diablos as every game I've been to, I've had a wonderful time. I haven't been since 97, though....
Yeah, it's a shame that so many of the players the D-backs have sent to Phoenix are shitty. Er, I mean El Paso.
So, Juarez has the buying power of what? Three or four high school girls? I don't think we need consider them in the equations.
Well, Fresno's #36 so it ain't missing by much. It terms of metro area, it's actually bigger than El Paso - 922,516-679,622. To be fair, I have no idea how well off Fresno's suburbs are, but the phrase "Fresno's suburbs" really doesn't create images of massive wealth in my mind. I could be wrong. The point is on the edge of your own standards for what is/not a "big" city.
At any rate, they both stink.
Juarez has a very substantial upper and upper-middle class population. It's a city of extremes. Their rich people are richer than El Paso's, and their poor people are poorer.
In the early 1990s one of the high-rise banks in downtown El Paso -- one of the tallest buildings in the city -- was owned by Juarez's richest citizen. Problem is, the guy was head of the Juarez Drug Cartel. He's dead now and the cartel has been taken over by his brother. Not sure if the brother still owns the bank or not.
Hmmm. . . . looks like you're right. An extra 100,00 while Fresno's pop doubles with the metro area. Strangely enough both are growing at a good clip - El Paso metro by 14.9% in the 1990s & Fresno metro by 22.1% (!) Both had only minimal gains in the city environment itself.
Yeah, I guess El Paso is worse off. Maybe that can be the basis of a new Fresno civic slogan: Fresno: Not Quite As Bad Off as El Paso!
I'm reminded of what Conan O'Brien suggested New York City's motto ought to be after one of those crime rate surveys came out ... "New York: Now With Ten Percent Less Murder!"
Fresno is actually kind of an interesting place. It has long been something of a dreary crime-ridden armpit. But the burgeoning growth of the rest of California is now having its impact; more and more middle-class types from the LA area and from the SF Bay Area are moving into Fresno and its suburbs (and yes there are some), and having quite a "gentrifying" impact. For most new home-buyers there, it's the only place they can afford to buy, and with telecommuting options, they can do it and still hold down jobs in the LA or SF areas.
In my little 12-employee business here in Los Gatos, 2 of our employees now have bought houses in Fresno, and continue to work here via sometime commute, sometime telecommute arrangements.
Retired people?
A: They both played for El Paso: Lavell Freeman in 1987 and Mike Kinkade in 1997. (Two others also did it in partial seasons -- Dave Nilsson in 1995 and Durazo in 1999.)
Tony Gwynn hit .394 in 1994 (though I suppose that's a partial season).
The Mexicans have invaded & are about to take East St. Louis!!
I'm guessing Phoenix's actually unemployment rate is 3.8%, not 38%.
Cruces is a really nice place to live, very affordable, but the economy was horrible for many years and is just recently making a recovery with corporations moving there in search of cheap land and cheap labor.
And Cormac McCarthy's there, which just adds to the mystique.
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