I ran across an article about wanting to put a new Pro team into Charlotte, NC. It got me thinking to what other cities might be able to sucessfully support teams
Seems to me baseball has done a pretty good job representing areas geographically. Maybe a new team in Washington DC.
But trying to be fair and representative I can’t really think of another place but Charlotte (or DC) that could support a team. Any ideas?
Oh bother. IMO, expansion will just ruin a sport. I know, I know, they’re never going to stop adding teams. But I hate to envision a day when MLB has 40 teams. Pretty soon, they’ll add a fourth round to the playoffs, and…ick. I’m a purist. No expansion for me.
BUT, if they’re going to add more teams, there are many places that could support a new team.
Charlotte sounds good.
Portland.
San Antonio.
Salt Lake City.
D.C.
IMO, I think they should take the Expos, and relocate them. It’s a disgrace to see highlights of Montreal games, and see 7,000 people in the seats. Montreal has their Canadiens. They don’t seem to care about baseball.
Adam
“Life is hard…but God is good”
Expansion is a terrible idea. I think some cities should get teams, Charlotte is atop the list, but ARG is right move the Expos, don’t expand things any more. The expanded the two Florida teams and neither can pull a crowd. Some cities that may support teams: Vancouver, DC(kinda close to Baltimore though), Nashville, Salt Lake City, Portland,. San Antonio couldn’t support a team. Houston and Texas already have a rough time filing the parks and they’re both in first place. Putting a team in SA would thin out the fan base more.
Great, more expansion teams, more pitchers who should be in Triple or Double A ball getting to pitch to McGwire, Sosa, and other sluggers. With the NL screwing around with the damn strike zone again, it’s going to take pitchers time to catch up to the hitters.
“…send lawyers, guns, and money…”
Warren ZevonMarxxx writes:
I think that any city with enough money and community (taxes) support can get a baseball (or any sport) expansion team.
The Carolina’s have a football team (Carolina Panthers), a hockey team (the Hurricanes), a basketball team (the Hornets), and next…a baseball team. They’ve got big money and so does Wahington D.C. I even think Washington D.C. had a baseball team once before, the Washington Senators.
I went through all of this in South Florida. Since I’ve been here we’ve had the Heat, the Fl. Panthers, and the Fl. Marlins. This is all thanks to taxes and us.
Confusious Say:
-Man who stand on toilet,
Is high on pot-
With inter-league play they should get rid of the DH, first off. Anyone who has played baseball usually agrees with this. As far as potential markets are concerned, here’s a list of viable ones I think might make due:
Portland, Salt Lake City, Sacramento, Albuquerque (believe it or not!) and Raleigh-Durham.
This is IMHO, of course.
Brother Haus, as a matter of fact, Washington D.C. had the Senators twice before. Those teams are now known as the Minnesota Twins and the Texas Rangers.
I consider myself a baseball purist also. I love the nuances of the sport–pitcher and batter trying to outguess each other, the beauty of a well executed DP or sacrifice bunt, etc…
That is why I hate to see expansion, realignment, interleague play, and such. I hear that the Diamondbacks are going to be put in the AL and the Devil Rays in the NL in order to mix things up once again.
But if expansion is inevitable, I think Charlotte is a good place. I lived in NC for 5 years; I think a team would do well there.
Souvenieeeeers, nov-elties, par-ty tricks
I agree. Nothing is worse than watching a pitcher in interleague or Series play flailing around in the batter’s box, resembling Jerry’s Kids. Make them hit, retire if you can’t field the ball, and bring back some of the strategy to this game. One of the things I love about the Braves is that they make their multimillion dollar pitching staff earn their keep in the batter’s box, consequently they have a great record of hitting pitchers.
I love a good minor-league game with it’s cheap seats, intimate atmosphere, and no million-dollar prima donnas and executive skyboxes. It is probably what baseball was in a bygone era. Even though I’ve been a Braves fan for a long time, I love taking in a good Triple A game with the New Orleans Zephyrs or Double AA ball with the Mobile Baysharks. Minor league ball has some great traditions in the Carolina area (the Durham Bulls and Charlotte Knights) as well as the established Carolina League. Some of the other cities proposed like Salt Lake, Nashville, San Antonio and Albuquerque have had solid, traditional support for their minor-league ball. I’d hate to see that go.
I also agree, it’s a shame watching totally lackluster support for the Expos. Basically they’ve been an extra major league farm club for the big-money teams, like the old Kansas City A’s used to be for the Yankees. A lot of good ballplayers came through their system like Gallaraga, Walker, and Grissom. I’ve admired Felipe Alou for doing an excellent job with the players that he’s had. After another promising Expo goes off into the big-money world (look for Vladimir Guerrero to go next), Felipe just spits into his hands and builds another great one from raw talent again. Now that’s baseball.
“…send lawyers, guns, and money…”
Warren ZevonI used to be a huge baseball fan. I love the game itself, but all of this expansion, and now this intra-league play has gotten me hopelessly confused. Now, I’ve never been a stats person, but the way things are now has made it even more difficult for me to understand.
I got it when there were two divisions in a league, East & West. The leaders played each other, and the winners went to the Series. Simple. But now it’s just too complicated. I just root, root, root for my home team, and leave it at that.
The idea that the DH eliminates strategy from the game is clearly a myth. If your team is down by 2 in the 8th, you have men on first and second with one out, and your pitcher is up next, clearly, you are going to pull the double-switch. No strategy involved there; the pitcher is NOT going to bat for himself.
On the other hand, in the AL, managers can monkey with their lineups to a greater degree, causing the opposing manager to make all sorts of decisions about when to go to the bullpen and who to use. The degree of strategy is approximately equal.
Anybody have the stats available for AL pitchers’ BA in interleague play vs. NL pitchers?
Interleague play is a terrible idea IMO. Before, a team played most of its games against teams in its own division. Those games really counted, because a team could gain (or lose) places in the standings faster.
Now, if you’re in second place, you have to try to gain ground by playing outside your league. Furthermore, they now play a “balanced schedule” so that even the games in your own league are weighted toward opponents in the other divisions. Oh, wait, second place is okay now because of the wild card. Argh!
Cities that could support a new (or relocated) major league baseball team:
Charlotte, NC
Washington, DC or northern Virginia
Buffalo, NY
New Orleans, LA
Las Vegas, NV
Vancouver, BC
Cities that could not support a new (or relocated) major league baseball team:
Cheyenne, WY
Sioux Falls, SD
Santa Fe, NM
Fargo, ND
Des Moines, IA
St. John’s, NF
Charlottetown, PE(I)
Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@schicktech.com
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
Chaim, I can’t tell you how much it would mean to me to have a team called the “Fargo North Decoders.” 
pldennison:
I’m holding out for the “Idaho Potatoes.”
Chaim Mattis Keller
Instead of expanding, do what others have probably mentioned: move the teams.
Move the Expos, now! Pick any two of these three to move: Minnesota Twins, Milwaukee Brewers, Detroit Tigers. Get at least one team each out of Florida and California. Now move these teams to other places like Charlotte, Washington, Nashville, Oklahoma City (the Bombers ), somewhere in the Four Corners region, somewhere else in Canada, etc., make them AAA teams, or disband them altogether. Put the teams in two divisions, East and West, and drop the wild cards and interleague play. In other words, make the league like it was about 10 years ago.
::stepping down…::
Alright! Who left that soapbox here?!?
“Of course, that’s just my opinion; I could be wrong.”–Dennis Miller
Expand?
SI just reported there is no longer total opposition to reducing the number of teams. The Expos and the Royals top the list of teams to disband. Buy out the owners and sell the players to other teams. Or just move Montreal to Charlotte or something. But let’s not expand even further, when we have cities all ready that aren’t supporting their teams. Plus the aforementioned factor of diluted pitching.
[[The idea that the DH eliminates strategy from the game is clearly a myth. If your team is down by 2 in the 8th, you have men on first and second with one out, and your pitcher is up next, clearly, you are going to pull the double-switch. No strategy involved there; the pitcher is NOT going to bat for himself. ]] PLD
Thank you, Phil – while I don’t care for the DH, my stomach turns listening to some NLers wax rhapsodic about the joys of the freakin’ double switch.
cmkeller: When I played in a APA league in Junior High, my team was known as the Pocatello Potatoes!
As for the great debate (it really belongs there IMHO) about expansion, I say that if a region can support a McDonalds, it willl have one, and if not the McDonalds will close, so sports teams should operate on the same premise.
(I know McDonalds is a chain, but most of them are franchises, which does not hurt this point at all, as all teams are franchises under the MLB heading.)
Now, I have difficulties when we speak of “small market teams” which are shafted in baseball. This is because the criteria makes no sense given that the Orioles, in the 23rd largest market, are big-spending evidence of that “big markets have all the money and buy WS titles” mentality, whereas Oakland, in a market so large it has two teams (#5) is considered a “small market success story” by the media and fans.
Excuse me?
We should call it “owners who want to spend vs. owners who do not” and leave market size out of the equation.
If Montreal cannot support a team, they should move. But since Toronto was not hurting for money, had great crowds and won two championships in a row this decade, I don’t think it’s fair to indict all Canadians for the failure of the Expos.
Fact is, the Expos were on tieir way towards a World Series triumph with the best record in baseball and one exciting team when the World Series was washed out in 1994.
Traditionally, the groundswell of support comes the year(s) after championships are had, and they didn’t have that in 1995.
They also didn’t have the players, as they let them go, pleading poverty. If I lived in Montreal, hell no I wouldn’t go and support a team that wouldn’t put up their money to keep a championship-level team together! Why should I pay MY hard earned money if THEY didn’t reciprocate?
As for places that would accept a team, I was in heaven thinking the Twins were gonna come down here a couple years ago, since that meant I would have been able to see my beloved NY Yankees in my own backyard.
Instead I get hockey. Yay.
The controlling and domineering Peter Angelos will never let DC get a team as it will cut into his fanbase in Baltimore tremendously. But I think the area could support two baseball teams as it dod for many years - it’s supporting two football teams right now, after all.
As for other markets (and even these two) the sad fact is that only a municipality ready to offer tax breaks, build a stadium, and basicly strong-arm it’s constituants into accepting tax increases for the above will be in the hunt for any team.
Let’s use the alegory as a sports franchise to a retail outlet.
If you were offered the following, how do you think you’d do:
With these advantages, how could you NOT be happy in business? You’d have to be really clueless to fuck that kind of set-up up. And though they claim that x-amount of teams lose money every year, I think if you take everything into account, they are wrong because that is an awful high percentage of multi-millionaires to be stupid, and most of them didn’t get to be multi-millionaires to begin with by being that stupid.
Brian O’Neill
CMC International Records
rockuniverse.com/cmc/cmc.html
ICQ 35294890
AIM Scrabble1
Yahoo Messenger Brian_ONeill
I like you guys!
I’m sick of McGwire and Sosa-> guarantees a bunch of idiots who talk about stock and their kids’ grades until one of em recognizes a name and they watch, “Hey, I hope he hits a home run.” Moron.
I hated interleague from the start-> One of the fiercest rivalries is between my Giants and the A’s. I went to the Coliseum in SF gear, and, wow. I haven’t seen fans so riled up even at a SF/LA game. Lots of 1989 comments. But the heat is diluted, if the two were ever to play another Bay Bridge Series. I would imagine the same with Chicago, New York, etc.
Montreal is a disgrace, baseball-wise-> Tony Gwynn hits his three thousandth goddman hit. THIRTEEN thousand saw it. 13,000! That game should have scalpers asking for hundreds of bucks. When I heard that number, I was disgusted.
I hear we’re gonna have another round of playoffs-> This sucks. Remember when the postseason meant something. As it is, most postseason players are above .500. But if you bring 16/32 teams to the postseason, methinks they won’t be all that good. Plus, with another round, they risk really screwing up the term “October Classic.”
Yeah, I know, I’m an asshole, but I am frikin passionate about baseball. Rivalries and respect for great people, and having sucky teams NOT make it to the postseason are things that should be common sense, no?
Well, if I were to continue talking baseball, I’d start in the Pit, so I digress for now.
All hail Dusty!
–
JMcC from SFCA
http://members.tripod.com/~weirdstuff/index.html <fixed link!