Minor League Identity

Baseball 2009, Game 71: Charlotte Knights 9, Columbus Clippers 1

Charlotte Sloppiness: 1
Columbus Sloppiness: 7
Most batters in one inning: 12
Hitter of the Game: Daryle Ward, Charlotte (rating: 42)
Pitcher of the Game: Jack Egbert, Charlotte (rating: 92)
Time of Game: 1:51
Mid-game temperature: 77 degrees
Attendance: 5,454 (Level II sporting event)


In big-time sports, Major League Baseball teams carry the pride of a city and/or the state, drawing passionate fans who feel the glory for a championship. These teams winning for their cities give the local residents pride in the guys that the local owner bought from most likely other areas of the country and perhaps Latin America and Japan as well. Then these players will then move on to the next team and city that is able to pay their high salaries, leaving their old fans behind.

But this is Small Time Sports, and Minor League Baseball teams do not have the luxury of promoting championship teams or star athletes. For one, these players especially in baseball are not hyped as much as their MLB counterparts by the mainstream national media. Rising stars in both football and basketball get more hype than rising baseball stars, even though baseball is arguably more popular than basketball and close to matching football in the eyes of American sports fans. And the second reason is that like their major pro counterparts, these players don't stay around to become local heroes, as they hope to move to the next level within a year.

That gives minor league owners two choices: promote the promising talent in these young rising stars (which a lot do but not as much as the should), or make a family entertainment event (which some clubs take to the extreme and forget a sporting event is taking place).

But the core foundation that a Minor League Baseball team needs to strives is this: a modern stadium that serves as a community baseball center with plenty of amenities to please its fans.

And the Charlotte Knights of the AAA International League struggle with this foundation, in a large part due to its identity crisis involving the location of Knights Castle. Knights Castle seats 10K in the Charlotte suburb of Fort Mill, 15 miles south of downtown Charlotte across the state line in South Carolina. Knights Castle sits off of I-77 in a location that has become more devloped since the stadium first opened in 1990, but gives fans the feel of being in a less urban area, not the norm for AAA baseball. Due to downtown traffic, making the drive to South Carolina for a ball game is not a pleasant thing to do often for those in the northern suburbs of Charlotte. As a result, many of the local ads around the ballpark are for either Fort Mill or Rock Hill businesses within York County, South Carolina. York County has around 190K residents, but that isn't going to be enough to support a AAA team. Mecklenburg where Charlotte is has about 900K residents, but the northern half isn't going to want to come down, nor are Gaston and Iredell Counties. Cabarrus County is another populated county in the Charlotte metro that isn't going to produce many Knight fans either, although they already have competition from the Class A Kannapolis Intimidators (which struggle to draw fans a well).

Knights Castle is not a bad stadium, although it does feel a bit generic. Charlie O'Reilly, who has seen nearly every pro baseball park in the U.S., rates the stadium 4 of 5 (although other reviewers have tended to give Knights Castle lower marks). The problem is that while Knights Castle is a very good stadium for one built in 1990, fans these days want new stuff all the time. Knights Castle is not as outdated as Capital City Stadium even though the two were built around the same time, but the stadium feels its age at time as evidenced by a scoreboard that is falling apart. The team names on the scoreboard were once digitized before they stopped functioning and the Knights put in placecards reading "Visitors" and "Knights". In addition, the scoreboard malfunctioned frequently over the first half of today's game. The PA announcer apologized for problems with the line score, although the actual score and the count weren't working either.

As a result of all this, the Knights average 4,249 fans, making most Knights games a Level III event when most AAA games are Level II (as was tonight, although the official attendance was certainly overstated). This average is the bottom of the IL and the 4th worst of 30 teams in AAA baseball. Fortunately for the Knights, they aren't an endangered franchise like many other poor drawing teams are. Those numbers are far better than failed franchises like the old Ottawa Lynx, and there is promise of a new downtown ballpark. The downtown ballpark, which should open in a couple years, may be what the franchise needs to flourish. But while Charlotte has many entertainment options, York County does not especially during the Summer. This certainly is somewhat of a shame.

The Knights aren't the only minor league team with an identity crisis. Their opponent tonight, the Columbus Clippers, have a different identity problem. For many years, the Clippers were affiliated with the New York Yankees. But when franchise agreements fell apart in the IL following the move of the Ottawa Lynx to Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, the Yankees went after the Northeastern Pennsylvania market in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. The Clippers then became affiliated with the Nationals, and with an aging stadium the franchise needed a jumpstat. The Clippers got that this year with a new stadium and a new affilation in the Cleveland Indians who are seeking to lock down the central Ohio market in a battle with the Cincinnati Reds. The Clippers now average 8,981 fans a game, tops in Minor League Baseball so far.

Tonight's game was a scheduled double-header, with two 7 inning games. But the Knights which don't get good crowds anyway had to deal with a 5:15 P.M. start on a Friday, and certainly no more than 1K of the official crowd of 5,454 saw the early innings of the game. Many Cub Scout groups were in attendance tonight, but they showed up when you would expect them to for a regular 7 P.M. start. The Knights put up an 8 spot on the board (which didn't go up right away due to the scoreboard malfunction), as they took advantage of some Clipper Sloppiness and got the big hits. Daryle Ward got the biggest, topping the inning off with a 3 run bomb that barely stayed fair down the right field line. The Clippers did manage 5 hits off of starter Jack Egbert in the 5th and 6th innings, but only managed one run and the Knights cruised to a 9-1 win, making this the 6th straight ball game I've been to with a home team win.

One thing that is fun at sporting events sometimes is to listen to what other fans have to say. My seat was in the middle of the section and in a big puddle, so I sat on the aisles. Sitting two rows behind me was a couple with thick New York accents, who appeared to be season ticket holders and knew the Knights staff and players very well. They talked about players recently called up to the big-time in Chicago, and were very much into the game unlike your average minor league fan. After a couple who had tickets on the aisle showed up in the 2nd inning, I moved to the other aisle in front of an African-American couple. This couple did not seem to be regulars like the other one was, but the husband seemed to be into watching the game. His wife compared everything about the atmosphere to the Knights' IL counterpart in the Durham Bulls, which had more entertainment she liked. But the Knights are much more in the way of pure, simple baseball; the kind I like. After rain started in the 5th, I moved to the top of the lower deck under cover. This time I was behind a few Cub Scouts fighting with their foam fingers; this experience was not as much fun.

Turns out that most of the late arriving crowd didn't get much baseball. This is because of a problem that prevented me from going anywhere last night and was why we had a doubleheader tonight: Rain. Rain is a big problem in baseball, and while the last two innings were played in light to moderate rainfall they decided to not start Game 2 until the system passed. But the system never passed tonight, and thus only 1 game, the game few people saw, was played. If this was football where a wet field isn't a problem, play would have gone on. But baseball can't be played on a wet field, which creates problems during the rainy summer months. The sport of baseball is going to have to get less weather dependent. It can't be played in the Winter due to the cold, but they won't play in the rain which makes Summer difficult as well. The perfect baseball climate is the dry and warm West Coast. This maybe why West Coast schools have been the best in college baseball the past few years.

After the game ended around 7:10, the tarp went on the field. It never went off, and it wasn't until 9:15 that the 2nd game was called off. Knights officials kept everybody under cover, even if they didn't care about getting rained on. Stadium ushers sent everyone from kids and adults back under cover if they went into the lower portion of the seating bowl even though there was no lightning. This seem very odd and perhaps over protective. No one wanted the game called, as the Knights and Clippers won't meet again this year and many fans especially the kids saw little of the first game (also known as tonight's game). But if they weren't pulling the tarp in the rain, they weren't starting until after 10. The Knights showed good-will in giving rain checks even though a game was completed. That means that we will be back to see the Knights again soon. This will be done once it can be fit in with our CPL schedule.