A big hit

Posted by Mark Chapman on June 15th, 2010 at 6:50 pm

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It’s the nature of minor league pro­fes­sional sports — play­ers come and play­ers go, and it’s tough for fans to develop the kind of long-term rela­tion­ships they have with their big-league heroes.

It is also the nature of the beast that teams come and teams go, although that is less true with base­ball than it is with, say minor league hockey.

When it comes to the Char­lotte Stone Crabs, how­ever, one gets the sense that the only thing that could move the Florida State League team out of the Char­lotte Sports Park is politics.

The team started as the Vero Beach Dodgers, play­ing in the fabled Dodger­town com­plex on the East Coast. When the Rays  bought the team it became the Vero Beach Devil Rays. Then Cal Rip­ken and Rip­ken Base­ball bought the team and moved it to El Jobean Road.

There are a few good rea­sons that the Stone Crabs have to love play­ing at Char­lotte Sports Park. It is rel­a­tively close to the big-league club in Tampa, and there aren’t many lines at restau­rants this time of year.

But the big rea­son is atten­dance. Last year, in their first sea­son, the Stone Crabs drew an aver­age of 2,855 fans per game, tops in the Florida State League. This year, they are aver­ag­ing 2,938. Those are excel­lent num­bers for Sin­gle A ball no mat­ter how you slice it.

“As with any sports fran­chise, our crowds on week­days (espe­cially before the school year is over) are usu­ally going to be lower,” said Stone Crabs mar­ket­ing chief Jonathan Gantt. “Our Mon­days through Wednes­days gen­er­ally see about 1,500 fans per game. But we make up for it with big Fri­days and Sat­ur­days with pro­mo­tions like fire­works, enter­tain­ment acts, etc. We also have a very large sea­son ticket-holder base that helps boost our week­end dates.”

A quick check of ran­dom single-game atten­dance fig­ures from around the league show that some teams are doing a whole lot bet­ter than oth­ers. Lake­land, for instance, seems to fre­quently draw fewer than 1,000 (or fewer than 500) fans.

““We’re not like most teams in the FSL” Gantt said. “A major­ity of the teams draw less than 1,700 fans per game, with three draw­ing less than 1,000 per game. We pride our­selves on being the pre­mier fran­chise in the Florida State League, and we’ve done that so far. The goal is to lead the FSL in atten­dance for the sec­ond straight year and bring in more total peo­ple than last year, which ended up at 171,000.”

It doesn’t hurt that the Stone Crabs are one of the best teams in the FSL. In fact, as I write this, they are the sec­ond best, record-wise, and may be the hottest team in the league. They sent eight play­ers (tops in the league) to Saturday’s  All-Star game. Henry Wrigley is tied for the league lead in homers, sec­ond in RBI and is in the top 10 in bat­ting.  Isa­iah Velasquez is sec­ond in stolen bases. If Stephen Vogt had a few more at-bats to qual­ify, he’d be lead­ing the league in hit­ting. And the bullpen — I think Barack Obama has been to the Gulf Coast three times since the ‘pen gave up its last run.

But all of this suc­cess comes with a price for the hard-core fans. There is one rea­son and one rea­son only that these young ballplay­ers are in Char­lotte, and that is to get OUT of Char­lotte and up to, say, Mont­gomery, Ala., and Dou­ble A ball, or per­haps the famed Durham Bulls (Triple A) before mak­ing the leap to Tampa. So while fans may get attached to a Wrigley or a Vogt or a Velasquez, it is likely that they could be gone before the end of the sea­son. It is a bit­ter­sweet situation.

“Play­ers com­ing and going is def­i­nitely com­mon in the Minor Leagues,” Gantt said. “Guys could be car­ry­ing the team one day and at Dou­ble A the next. But I think a decent amount of fans real­ize that the goal for these guys is to make it to the big leagues, so the pos­i­tive feel­ings for the play­ers mov­ing up always out­weigh the neg­a­tive feel­ings of los­ing one of our star guys.”

The Crabs are close to clinch­ing the first-half divi­sion title, which would guar­an­tee post-season play. If there are pro­mo­tions in the sec­ond half, that could mean the team that clinches might not be the one that goes into the playoffs.

“While it’s cer­tainly pos­si­ble that sev­eral of our play­ers will be pro­moted, the Rays farm sys­tem is packed with tal­ent right now and there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of spots for guys to get moved up,” Gantt said. “That being said, I’m sure you’ll see some of our stand­outs moved to Mont­gomery before season’s end. But we had the same sit­u­a­tion last year with most of our star play­ers and still made it all the way to the Cham­pi­onship Series. While we’ll lose some guys, we’ll also get some guys from Low-A Bowl­ing Green who are also very tal­ented. So, it’s bit­ter­sweet to see guys go, but we’re very happy to see them closer to their career goals and we’re happy to see fresh faces come to play for us, as well.”

But doesn’t that move­ment hurt atten­dance? Gantt says no.

“We always say that base­ball is the back­drop for the fam­ily enter­tain­ment that we pro­vide, and, while most fans who come enjoy base­ball, we think you can have a great time at the ball­park even if you don’t watch a sec­ond of the game. But for our most loyal sea­son ticket– hold­ers who are here on a daily basis, they def­i­nitely develop rela­tion­ships with the play­ers and come to see them on a daily basis. Although they’re sad to see them go, they under­stand it’s what best for the player.”

For infor­ma­tion about the Stone Crabs, go to http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t2730

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