Columnist Dean Juipe: 51s’ dismal year comes to close

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2001 | 10:16 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

There, it's over.

One miserable, lousy, rotten baseball season has come to a close for the Las Vegas 51s.

The curtain came down Monday, the 51s losing at Portland to finish a disappointing 68-76 in the Pacific Coast League's Southern Division.

A disclaimer of sorts, right here at the top: I used my 51s season pass a grand total of once this year, reflecting a trend that in recent years has seen me attend fewer and fewer games at Cashman Field. I like the ballpark but have little use for embracing a bad team or the sophomoric antics of those attempting to promote it.

I followed the club daily and read the newspaper accounts of its players and games, yet never felt an attachment to the guys in uniform or the nitwits behind the scenes in the marketing department.

I am in the majority, if attendance figures and letters to the editor account for anything.

Las Vegas once had a rich relationship with its minor league baseball team. Crowd counts were adequate, play was decent, a championship was a reasonable goal and media coverage was extensive.

Now this is a franchise with a ridiculous nickname and wealthy owners who come across as ingrates. They want something -- the fans' blind allegiance, to say nothing of their desire for the city to build them a new stadium -- for nothing.

Given their inability to capitalize on what should have been their greatest strength, it's no surprise to have the season ending on such a bleak note. Asset No. 1 was the team's new association with the fabled Los Angeles Dodgers, yet it was hardly noticeable this season with the team named after a remote portion of the Nevada Test Site and a hokey ad campaign that undermined a good baseball fan's intelligence.

Those transgressions could have been seen in a lesser light had the 51s done anything but lose from April on. A big part of the reason Las Vegas said goodbye last fall to the San Diego Padres after an 18-year association was to escape the doldrums, yet the Dodgers came in for 2001 and only added to the malaise.

All of the usual woe-is-me excuses, such as injuries and call-ups, were employed to explain the 51s' endless struggle, but, the truth is, they were complaints that ring familiar to every minor league team virtually every season.

With apologies to Phil Hiatt for the great season he turned in, the 51s were neither productive, interesting nor aided by the parent club in Los Angeles. As the season progressed and the obvious became apparent, they worked their way to the back pages of the sports section.

It wasn't what was expected nor anticipated when the link to the Dodgers was announced. If anything, the most valid prediction at the time was that the Dodgers would do everything in their power to ensure a great season in Las Vegas for the fans here who have been starving for a decent ball club.

Instead, they did nothing of the sort.

Are these problems correctable for 2002? Of course.

Yet that doesn't diminish what happened this summer as the city's only real professional team appeared to be comprised and run by amateurs.