The finales of Cactus League baseball at Tucson Electric Park and Hi Corbett Field were played earlier this week, representing another loss for the “little guy” under the poor leadership of Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.
The greater metropolitan Phoenix area needs another spring training tenant like the desert needs another dune buggy, yet the Colorado Rockies and (in a particularly heartless move) the local favorite Arizona Diamondbacks will move up Interstate 10 to join the already overpopulated Phoenix baseball scene.
Just as bubblegum cards are now made for collectors and not for kids, baseball is ditching smaller-town fans in favor of more luxury suites and less travel. This move sends the message that baseball is too big for cities like Tucson, Yuma and Palm Springs (the last of the California spring training sites before losing the Angels in 1992). There was a time when travel wasn’t a concern for these clubs; in the 1930s, the Chicago Cubs made Catalina Island their springtime home because of the welcoming climate, not because of money. Are we supposed to believe that a pro sports team today can’t afford a few more bus trips in March?
I am a Padres fan still lamenting the team’s move from Yuma to Peoria in 1994, and the departures of the Rockies and the Diamondbacks from Tucson only reinforce my suspicion that baseball today is more interested in appealing to executives than to schoolchildren. Sixty years from now, grandfathers will no longer take their grandsons to ballgames, because baseball will have lost the sense of nostalgia that keeps it alive. Baseball will have no meaning to the generation of children growing up today, and people will wonder what became of the game’s fan base.
With the abandonment of Desert Sun Stadium, followed by the advent of the Arizona Diamondbacks a few years later, how many Padres fans do you suppose are left in Yuma today? A great partnership between the San Diego Padres and the Caballeros de Yuma, a pairing that began with the first Padres team in 1969, was unceremoniously dissolved years ago in favor of suburbia, and the charming town of Yuma lost part of its identity. Now the people of Tucson share the same fate, no thanks to Major League Baseball’s selfish need to have 15 ball clubs within 45 minutes of one another. The city of Phoenix can enjoy all four major professional sports year-round; what about the small-market fans who get to see nothing better than minor-league ball? MLB is losing its grip on potentially thousands of fans in those areas, while businesses in those areas miss out on thousands in taxes and tourist revenue. The Diamondbacks are especially egregious in abandoning a fan base just 100 miles away.
Whatever intrigue, innocence and splendor the Cactus League had remaining has evaporated, leaving behind the true nature of the game today. Major League Baseball has become just another cold, distant, elitist corporate enterprise with no loyalty to Middle America, leaving its small-town fans behind without so much as a tip of the cap.
John Robert Crawford is a native of San Diego, a freelance writer and a lifelong Padres fan. He has fond memories of once seeking autographs in Yuma from the likes of Tony Gwynn, Roberto Alomar and Benito Santiago.
This article appears in Apr 1-7, 2010.
Mr Crawford sounds like some bleeding heart liberal who would like to mandate business decisions made by MLB. As we all know, business is business and that is what has made America the great nation that it is! There will always be fans of our national pastime. Mr Crawford just needs to let the capitalistic system work and not try to interfer with business. Next thing you know he will try to find a cure for the health care crisis that is facing America.
You can’t run a baseball team at a loss, Mr Crawford needs to quit whinning about the small town fan leaving; that is what ESPN and big screen televisions are for, to give the this fan unprecedented access. Does he want us to return to the days of radio? How does a club leaving Tucson for a few weeks affect the loyalty of fans in Middle America? Baseball will continue and fans will still be entertained. Mr Crawford should just relax, get out a beer and the remote control, sit back and enjoy the game!!!
“Mr Crawford sounds like some bleeding heart liberal who would like to mandate business decisions made by MLB.” Where, exactly, did the author suggest a government mandate to force a baseball team to stay in a particular town? Please-quote the article. He lamented the decision, in his opinion unnecessary, of the MLB system to leave smaller towns in favor on large metropolis’. What an incredibly accusatory comment. It amazes me how some people can politicize any opinion and then cast it in liberal vs. conservative terms. The person who should relax ain’t the author.
I agree – the commentary appropriately laments the passing of a great era in Tucson. The throngs of Rockies, White Sox and D-backs fans crowding into town in March was fun, exciting and crucial to Tucson’s ailing economy.
This was clearly driven by MLB’s (i.e. the owners’) need for more revenue by drawing fans to upscale resort/casino/ballpark complexes. I understand that baseball is a capitalist business but the owners are obscenely rich and find it easier to forget the roots of the institution as time goes on.
Since the author is a Padres fan, he might find it interesting that Bud Black was quoted in the S.D. Tribune as saying that he was pleased with the decision to pull Spring Training from Tucson since it was such a pain to make the long bus trip down I-10. It’s so good to know that he and the rest of the team won’t be inconvenienced next spring.
Mr. Farnsworth can enjoy a cold one in front of his big screen TV but I shed a tear thinking of the lights going off for the last time at Hi Corbett.
“Mr Crawford just needs to let the capitalistic system work and not try to interfer with business.” Now this statement I can get behind. Because as we all know, if wasn’t government funding that built all the multi-million dollar parks that drew all those teams up north. It was the great Capitalistic System! Oh wait. No, it was the taxpayers who are paying off the bonds that built the new stadiums so rich ball team owners and rich ball players could make even more money. And now the capitalistic system has stuck the Pima County taxpayers with picking up all the debt service on the bonds that built TEP Park since there aren’t anymore teams there to draw revenue. Lord, if those bleeding heart liberals had their way they would probably force the team owners to pay for their own stadium. But as a wise man once said “You can’t run a baseball team at a loss,”. So head on down to that brand new taxpayer funded stadium, buy your $25 ticket to get in, cough up 8 bucks for a beer, and sit back and relax.