Major pain at Triple-A

Nick Christensen

Thursday, July 29, 2004 | 9:49 a.m.

As Major League Baseball closes in on selecting a permanent home for the Montreal Expos, three Triple-A baseball franchises sit, watch, and wait to see if their futures are in another city.

Las Vegas, Norfolk, Va., and Portland, Ore., have each been saddled by the Expos drama, summed up by Portland general manager Jack Cain.

"I'm kind of frustrated," Cain said. "I think they're using both Las Vegas and Portland as pawns just to try and get more out of somebody out of the Washington, D.C., area."

Norfolk general manager Dave Rosenfield echoed Cain's annoyance.

"I love the area. If I'd thought it would work, I would be the one leading the cheers before these guys ever came along," he said. "But I know this market, and the idea of drawing 25,000 or 30,000 people a day for 81 days at major league prices is beyond the capabilities of this area,"

Cain, Rosenfield and Las Vegas general manager Don Logan each has long ties to his area, but none seems to think his city is capable of supporting major league baseball.

Stalled Vegas

Logan is convinced that the Expos are not coming to Las Vegas, but his organization's plans for the future are idled until MLB makes its official decision.

"It's had the effect of putting everything on hold," Logan said. "Nobody's talking about anything. We're not getting a real comprehensive look at anything. As long as (relocation's) hanging out there it makes no sense."

As late as January, Logan was saying he expected to have an announcement by the start of the season on a new ballpark, likely in Henderson near the Galleria mall. But when conjecture about a group of investors trying to buy the Expos and move them to Vegas heated up, talk of a Henderson Triple-A ballpark cooled.

The 51s' four-year player-development agreement (PDA) with the Los Angeles Dodgers expires after this season, and the Dodgers have made it clear they don't think 21-year-old Cashman Field is a suitable home for their Triple-A club.

Baseball fans in Las Vegas would seem to agree. The team's average attendance of 4,339 is fifth-worst in the 16-team Pacific Coast League, bolstered by fireworks night crowds that sometimes exceed 12,000 but hurt by paid weekday crowds of fewer than 2,000.

While the fans' complaints are based on the rows of uncomfortable aluminum bleachers in the 9,334-seat stadium, the Dodgers are more concerned about the players' facilities.

A service corridor under the stands doubles as a weight room for players, the locker room is cramped and there are no indoor cages for prospects or rehabilitating players to practice hitting or pitching, essential in the summer months with hot temperatures and possible rainstorms.

"In terms of the location and the people, it's where we want to be," Dodgers general manager Paul DePodesta said Sunday in Las Vegas. "It's important for us to play in a facility that helps us develop players. That means having a stadium atmosphere as close to the major leagues as possible.

"(Double-A) Jacksonville and (Class A) Ogden are great facilities, and they draw great crowds. I want guys used to playing in that atmosphere."

The Dodgers are also cognizant of the impact the Expos situation has had on stadium talks. Dodgers assistant general manager Kim Ng, serving this season as the farm director, said the Expos situation is something the Dodgers will have to take into account when deciding on a renewal with Las Vegas.

As late as 2002, Southwest Sports Group, a Dallas-based ballpark developer, was in talks with the city to master-plan the vacant 61 acres adjacent to downtown Las Vegas.

Although Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman publicly opposed any plan to build a minor league ballpark on the site, the 51s pressed for a new facility downtown when the PDA was first signed, before the 2001 season.

When asked Sunday if he would support a two-year extension of the PDA, DePodesta was noncommittal.

"It's pretty important to have some progress," he said. "The last time, there was some idea or some project, and we can't keep doing that indefinitely."

Fresno, currently with the Giants and in a new stadium, and Portland are possibilities for the Dodgers.

Portland's problems

At one point, Portland was considered a front-runner for major league relocation. Now, the Portland metropolitan area of 2.3 million has a Triple-A team with no owner that almost got kicked out of its home stadium last spring.

In 1993, the Portland Beavers left for Salt Lake and a Class A Northwest League team moved to Portland's 70-year-old Civic Stadium to fill the void.

Six years later, with the Portland Rockies averaging nearly 5,000 fans a game, Portland Family Entertainment completed a deal to renovate Civic Stadium, buy the Albuquerque Dukes and move them into the new PGE Park.

It flopped. The new Beavers averaged about 6,100 fans a game in their first season, a minor improvement considering the new stadium and higher caliber of play. Despite extensive promotions ranging from cheap beer to free rides on the rail line with ticket stubs, PFE's revenue didn't meet expectations.

Last winter, the PCL rescinded PFE's franchise, making the Beavers the Triple-A version of the Expos -- the team owned by the others teams' owners. This season, Portland's average attendance is 3,900, third-worst in the PCL.

Cain, who ran the Rockies before taking a public relations role for PFE, was hired as general manager by the PCL last winter. While he blames the problems at the gate on Portland's cold, wet spring weather, he said the financial difficulties faced by the organization are more chargeable to MLB.

"We have an NBA team here, so the media thinks big leagues," Cain said. "Last night, in sports, we had a kid throw a two-hitter, a great game, and the (TV) sports guys led with Shaq and Kobe. And I think one of the Trail Blazers got a hangnail. That was the sports lead-in, 'And by the way, so-and-so threw a two-hitter.' They think we're a big league town."

Not only is the uncertainty of the Expos situation hanging over the Beavers' front office, but the team's PDA with the Padres, set to expire this fall, also looms.

"It makes it difficult to find an owner," Cain said. "Are we going to invest X number of millions of dollars and find out two years from now that MLB's going to come in? Most people in the know don't think it's going to happen, but I'm sure it's slowed some people up."

Changing Tides

Rosenfield, who has been involved in Norfolk baseball for 43 years, said he believes his team isn't at risk of losing its 35-year affiliation with the New York Mets, whose PDA with the Tides runs through 2007.

The team drew about 7,400 fans a game in 2003 to their stadium, 11-year-old Harbor Park.

Despite the success of the Tides, and the growth of the Norfolk area (population 1.6 million), Rosenfield said he doesn't think the area is ready for the big leagues. He also criticized the group trying to bring MLB to Norfolk.

"Our goofy guys here are doing a ticket sale, and everything else," he said. "It's a complete sham, because deposits are all fully refundable even if the team comes, so deposits don't mean anything. People are getting their arms twisted pretty hard to put up deposits because they think it'll make a good show, that they've gotten a lot of stuff sold. I don't think it's impressing the major league people one iota."

Rosenfield said the Norfolk boosters have also pointed to the Richmond area as a source for major league fans. Richmond, with a population of just more than 1 million, is 93 miles from Norfolk, about the same distance from the Washington-Northern Virginia area.

"It's easier for people in Richmond to go to the Dulles area than to come here, because of our tunnels," he said. "Our tunnels in the summer are so congested. It takes, in an off-time, I can get to Richmond in an hour and 30 minutes, an hour and 40 minutes. In the summer, going to a game, make it two and a half, three hours for 90 miles."

He also criticized the Norfolk group's plan to expand Harbor Park as the temporary home for a team, while at the same time constructing a major league ballpark on the site's parking lot. Harbor Park is sandwiched between a freeway and the city's harbor, and parking is limited in the area.

"It's a very cramped area," he said. "If we have 10,000 in the park, parking is really difficult. Multiply that by three or four, and I don't even want to think about it."

The next steps

With none of the three Triple-A teams expecting to look for a new home anytime soon, all three are trying to move past the Expos saga as soon as they can. MLB plans to announce the Expos' new home Aug. 19, at the end of the owners' quarterly meeting in Philadelphia.

Cain's goal is to make Portland's situation marketable to a new Triple-A owner, much less a major league owner.

"I truthfully wish MLB would have done what they said they were going to do. Even last year, they kept saying they would make an announcement by the All-Star Game, when and if they were going to relocate the Expos," he said. "I wish they would make that decision and get it over with, so we could go on with our business here."

As for Logan and Las Vegas, he said it won't be too hard to re-start talks for a new 51s ballpark "when, not if," baseball decides on Washington or Northern Virginia.

"To pull things back in, it's just a matter of revving things back up," he said. "Some people are different. The roles have changed. But basically, we'll just started stoking the fire again and we let 'er rip."

He said the potential Las Vegas investors' interest in building a $420 million stadium near the Strip hasn't deterred his vision of a new 51s park that could be expanded to host major league baseball.

"You have to take the future into account as you build the thing," he said. "It's always been our intention to build the first phase of a major league stadium.

"Think about raising half a billion dollars (for a stadium) plus buying a team. Nobody's going to pull that off. There's too much heavy lifting."

archive