Thursday, July 3, 2003 | 10:05 a.m.
"Leaving Las Vegas" is the song of choice for Cashman Field Music Coordinator Brian Elwood, when opposing pitchers are pulled for help from the bullpen.
Sheryl Crow'a song seems to also be the tune of 51s General Manager Don Logan, who apparently has given up on convincing Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman that downtown Las Vegas is the place for a new stadium for Las Vegas' Triple-A baseball franchise. Henderson is now the forerunner for a new park for the Las Vegas PCL franchise.
"From what Oscar said today," explained Logan Wednesday, "it's obvious Oscar could care less. He's entitled to his opinion, and good luck."
Goodman had previously said that he was disinterested in constructing a minor-league ballpark on the vacant 61 acres of land downtown, but a report published Wednesday said that Goodman "laughed off" the risk of the 51s moving to Las Vegas' largest suburb.
When Dodgers General Manager Dan Evans visited Las Vegas in April, he made it clear that the facilities at Cashman Field were insufficient for the needs of the Dodgers -- in fact, he called them the worst in the Dodgers' farm system, all the way down to Single-A.
"The important thing is this isn't something we're using as a negotiating ploy. It's clearly a need that we have. It's a mandate in order to do things at the level we want to do them," said Evans in April of the facilities at Cashman Field. Wednesday, Dodgers minors head Bill Bavasi reiterated that the Dodgers would end their affiliation with the 51s if the team isn't out of Cashman Field by the end of the Dodgers' contract with Las Vegas.
"If the Dodgers want to tell me they want to move here from Los Angeles, I'll talk about building a new stadium," Goodman responded in April, reflecting his belief that Las Vegas is a major-league city.
So Logan, faced with choosing between Las Vegas and the Dodgers, will look elsewhere in hopes he can find a way to keep both. He says he thinks Las Vegas and the Dodgers go "hand-in-hand."
"It's the best major-league affiliate you can have at this point," he explained. "We've carved out a nice niche here in town. We have the greatest entertainment in the world down on the Strip. I think the 51s get taken for granted, but it takes something like this to bring it to the fore. I think there's enough people that value what it brings to the community."
Logan now apparently is focusing on Henderson, which was a potential site for a spring-training facility he'd hoped to develop in the 1990s. He said he has had ongoing talks with Henderson, as well as Clark County and North Las Vegas, about a ballpark since the spring-training talks ended.
"We always have talked to them, because this whole thing comes from spring training conversation. So as this happened, the mayor's not leaning, so we're saying 'What else?' " he explained. Logan says that the City of Henderson has identified several potential sites for a ballpark, including previously researched sites for spring training, and locations in downtown Henderson's redevelopment district.
Logan, in his 12th year as the Las Vegas General Manager, said that prior discussions had been held privately in order to move the process along more quickly. But with the Dodgers keeping the issue at the forefront, Logan was pleased at the publicity the issue generated.
"I felt all along that we really didn't want to do this publicly. What I've noticed by it becoming such a big issue is that it's going to move. There are going to be things happening at a breakneck pace. That's probably a good thing to get the process moving."
As for keeping the team in a central location within the Las Vegas city limits, Logan was pessimistic at best.
"I don't think the mayor (Goodman) cares," he said. "I don't want to go somewhere where they don't care."
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