The Home Town Team

By Stephen C. Smith
Publisher
December 22, 2009

 

The Viera Nationals won the GCL pennant, but almost no one was there to watch.

“Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don't win it's a shame.”

— Jack Norworth, Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Does Brevard County have a home town team?

The Washington Nationals are based in Viera. Their spring training games are at Space Coast Stadium. Their minor league complex next door hosts their Gulf Coast League team, extended spring training and fall instructional league.

The GCL Nationals won the pennant on September 3.

Brevard shrugged.

Maybe twenty people were in the stands, and most of those were players' relatives or team officials.

The Brevard County Manatees of the Advanced Class-A Florida State League play in Space Coast Stadium during the summer. They're a Milwaukee Brewers affiliate.

In a stadium with Nationals logos.

The Manatees sold 68,596 tickets in 2009 for 70 homes games, although 12 were lost to rainouts. They averaged 1,183 tickets sold per game, good enough for seventh in their twelve-team league.

The Florida Winter Baseball League lasted all of three weeks before it folded, unable to meet its first payroll.

The Space Coast Surge, playing in aged Cocoa Expo Stadium, reported 713 tickets sold for their three home games, or 238 per game, although any observer could see the number in the stands was far less.

Brevard County has plenty of baseball fans.

Stroll through a mall, along the beach, any public event and you'll see plenty of Yankees caps, Red Sox, the occasional cap for another team.

But they're far more common than Manatees caps.

Florida Today covers the Nationals year-around, as if they were a third Florida team along with the Rays or Marlins. But you don't see many of those caps either.

Having moved here from Southern California last June, I scratch my head wondering why baseball doesn't draw here like it does back there.

In addition to the Angels and Dodgers, So Cal supports five minor league baseball teams — Rancho Cucamonga (Angels), Inland Empire (Dodgers), Lake Elsinore (Padres), High Desert (Mariners) and Lancaster (Astros).

With its 8,000-seat capacity, Space Coast Stadium would be the biggest park in the California League. The Manatees' 1,183 average would have ranked ninth in the league this year, ahead of only Bakersfield (952) which is a derelict franchise owned by the league, playing in a derelict ballpark. Rancho Cucamonga averaged 3,811, Lake Elsinore 3,458 and Inland Empire 2,896.

Sure, population density is one reason why the Manatees' number is lower, but would it help if they affiliated with the Tampa Bay Rays or Florida Marlins?

The Manatees were once a Marlins affiliate. Space Coast Stadium was built for the Marlins, who joined the National League in 1993. Their first spring training was at Cocoa Expo, then they moved to Viera for 1994.

As a Marlins affiliate, the Manatees routinely led the league in attendance. In 1994, their first year, the Manatees averaged 2,153 tickets sold per game. They led the league in attendance as recently as 2001, with a 2,151 average, which was the last year they were over 2,000.

The Manatees switched affiliations in 2002, from the Marlins to the Expos. As part of a three-team ownership dance, Montreal owner Jeff Loria sold his franchise back to Major League Baseball, then bought the Marlins from John Henry, who became part of an ownership group to buy the Boston Red Sox.

Brevard County was part of the collateral damage. Loria switched the Marlins' affiliation to Jupiter, leaving the Expos nowhere to go but Space Coast Stadium.

The average attendance plunged from 2,151 in 2001 to 1,420 in 2002.

The number crept up a bit in following years, to 1,602 in 2003 and 1,822 in 1994. That was the year MLB went on strike on August 12. Minor league baseball historically benefits when the big boys shut down, as fans are disgusted by billionaire owners squabbling with millionaire players over zillions of fan dollars.

The Expos relocated to Washington, D.C., for 2005, and you'd think they'd keep their Advanced Class-A affiliate in Viera, but the new owners thought differently. They wanted an affiliate near the parent club, and signed with Potomac, which had been a Cincinnati Reds affiliate.

The arrangement is similar to what the Angels, Dodgers and Padres have in California. None of those parent clubs own their affiliates, but they can send major leaguers to those teams to rehabilitate injuries under the supervision of the team's doctors and trainers.

So how did the Manatees wind up affiliated with the Brewers? Why not the Yankees or Red Sox or (fill in the blank of your favorite team)?

The Professional Baseball Agreement between Major League Baseball and the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (commonly known as "Minor League Baseball") requires MLB to provide enough players to stock six minor league levels — Triple-A, Double-A, Advanced-A, Low-A, and two short-season leagues starting in June, known as Short-A or Rookie-A.

The PBA was structured this way in 1991 to create some stability for minor league operations. A parent club could terminate their affiliation, and the minor league team might be left without an affiliate. They could sign their own players, or they could scrape together castoffs from multiple clubs and operate as a "co-op." It wasn't unusual for minor league franchises to move from town to town, or simply fold, due to instability.

The new agreement guaranteed a major league affiliation, in exchange for giving up independence and more revenue to Major League Baseball. It was a Faustian bargain, but it stabilized Minor League Baseball and opened the door for an era of new ballparks as cities were convinced their franchise would be around if they subsidized stadium construction.

But this also left little flexibility in the affiliation process.

Affiliations, known as Player Development Contracts or PDCs, run for two years or four years, always terminating in an even-numbered year. Either side can file a termination notice during a small window in the fall of an even-numbered year. Major League Baseball gathers together the lists of parent club and minor league teams seeking new affiliations, releases them, and it's up to both sides to find new partners.

The Florida State League is an Advanced Class-A level. There are three "High-A" leagues — the FSL, the California League and the Carolina League.

The FSL has little turnover, because nearly all its members are affiliates playing in their spring training ballparks. That rules out affiliations with parent clubs like the Yankees, Phillies, Mets and Cardinals.

It's unlikely that West Coast teams such as the Angels, Dodgers and Padres would leave the California League, nor would there be much local interest in a West Coast team.

So that leaves Midwest or East Coast teams that don't have a spring training complex in Florida.

You can rule out operations that have a High-A team close to home, such as the Nationals in Potomac, the Baltimore Orioles in Frederick, Maryland and the Atlanta Braves in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

There's also the complication of basically playing in another major league team's facility. Space Coast Stadium is leased by the Nationals from Brevard County. The Manatees sublet the park from the Nationals.

If the Manatees left for a smaller stadium elsewhere in the Space Coast, they could establish an independent identity, but no such park exists.

The Red Sox and Astros are intriguing possibilities. They were the last two affiliations with Lancaster in the California League. Why? Because they were the last team standing when everyone else found a minor league partner. The Red Sox are now in Salem, Virginia. But if those teams were interested in the FSL, they already have spring training operations here — the Red Sox in Fort Myers, and the Astros in Kissimmee.

The Manatees could also pursue the Cincinnati Reds and Chicago Cubs, but those teams have long-standing affiliations with Sarasota and Daytona.

So if they filed to terminate their affiliation with Milwaukee, it's likely the Manatees would wind up right back where they started — back with the Brewers.

Study after study done by the NAPBL has shown the typical minor league baseball customer doesn't know which affiliate he's watching, or particularly care. Most fans come out for cheap entertainment in the open air.

The lack of interest in the Gulf Coast League Nationals isn't unusual. These "camp" teams usually play on practice fields at the parent club's spring training complex. Other than one or two aluminum bleachers, there's no place to sit and watch a game. Local press almost never cover camp games, although Florida Today was there to report the GCL Nats' championship.

A Gulf Coast League pennant proudly flies today over the Nationals' minor league complex office on Stadium Parkway, but it's unlikely passersby even notice, much less know what it is.

The Space Coast has a long and proud minor league tradition.

Cocoa had minor league teams in the 1940s and 1950s, long before the Astros set up camp at Cocoa Expo. The four-team Florida Rookie League operated out of there in 1964. Melbourne hosted a Florida East Coast League team for the Twins in 1972.

So what will it take to get the Space Coast excited again about a home town team?

Good question. I wish I had the answer.