When Tucson lost the Sidewinders last decade, it looked like the end of minor league baseball, and deservedly so. Attendance was pathetic, despite a team affiliated with the big-league Diamondbacks and which under former UA star Chip Hale had some pretty exciting teams.
Then, through some stroke of freaky luck, we got another team, albeit likely only on a temporary basis. But when California’s financial woes caused a planned stadium in suburban San Diego to get scrapped, there seemed like a real chance Tucson could again be a permanent minor league baseball city.
But then you all fucked it up again by not patronizing the team. Whatever your reasons were, they were wrong. And as a result, the Tucson Padres are going away. And minor league baseball is never coming back here.
Can I say it more plainly? YOU LOST A TEAM TO EL PASO. NO CITY WORTH ANYTHING LOSES ANYTHING TO EL PASO. ]
Ok, rant over. For now. The whole point of this post is to remind you that, after Thursday night, the Tucson Padres’ short tenure here will end, as the team finishes up the regular season on the road.
The T-Pads’ local management, led by the tireless efforts of Mike Feder et. al, have been pulling out all the stops in terms of promotions and special events for these last few minor league games, and the Thursday finale is no different.
Along with being Thirsty Thursday — that’s $1 beer and soft drinks, for all of you that think Kino Stadium is ‘too far’ or ‘in a bad part of town’ or some other bullshit reason for not going — Feder’s wife, Pattie, will be throwing out the first pitch before the game pitting the T-Pads and the Reno Aces.
Yes, there is some poetic irony to the fact the final opponent is the team that used to be here before but smartly went to where it was more appreciated and draws 4,900 fans a night as opposed to 2,700 here.
A Facebook event page was set up for the final game, with Feder (and, subsequently, others) sending out invites to more than 1,800 people. As of Tuesday night, though, only 125 people had RSVP’d as planning to attend, a far cry from the 10,000+ people who have ‘liked’ the T-Pads’ team page.
Let’s get that RSVP number bumped up a bit, huh? And let’s get a decent crowd out there for the sendoff of pro sports in Tucson, why don’t we? There’s nothing else really going on Thursday, unless you’re attached to one of the handful of high schools playing football that night.
Just bite the bullet, conquer your fear of ‘the south side’ and go have a couple-seven beers and enjoy some baseball on a late summer evening. But if you don’t, by all means stop complaining that there’s nothing to do in this town.
This article appears in Aug 22-28, 2013.
You are mad at the wrong people bro.The fault lies with that stupid Kino Stadium.I can get lost or pissed getting out of it sober let alone on dollar beer night.
What fool placed the ballpark on Ajo Rd? It belonged at Hi Corbett or better yet downtown.
Many of the usual suspects will complain about team moving away, but ask them how many games they attended? Talk is cheap. We’ll miss the Padres, just as we miss the Sidewinders.
Right. They built a totally unnecessary stadium a few miles to the southwest of the existing one. Yes, it was an ugly mistake, brought on in part by the ugly territoriality and ambitions of certain members of the board of supes at the time. AND, they made it expensive, to fit in with the fad of having mini-major league looking stadiums with a bunch of weird amenities because just going to see ball and having a hotdog and a beer were no longer enough of a “sports-entertainment experience.” But at the time just about all major league teams were pushing their minor league affiliates to extort better and better digs out of cities. Chances are, we’d have been crying in our beer over losing the team back in 1998 rather than three years ago and now if Kino were never built in the first place.
But what’s done is done, and it was done a LONG time ago.
One thing that I find utterly outrageous is the fantastic amount of whining and baseless complaint about the location of Kino. For god’s sake it’s 3 miles and change from Hi Corbett. That’s not far. Not far at all. No, it’s not PHYSICAL distance that mortifies far eastsiders, foothills-dwellers and above all far northwest-siders, it’s the PSYCHOLOGICAL distance. Reid Park sits in the buffer zone between Broadway and 22nd St. For much of the white middle class, 22nd street and below is a no-go zone with the exception of the airport. Psychologically, Kino Stadium might as well be 80 miles away.
Jay Zucker and Mike Feder tried everything. Zucker kept parking free when it’s AT LEAST $5 at just about every other PCL stadium, more in some places. The park in Reno, where we lost the Sidewinders to, doesn’t even have parking of its own! He tried promotion after promotion for kids and adults alike. Tickets were among the cheapest in the PCL! There’s just no excuse for people not to go. All this business of not going because Kino this or Kino that, Ajo Way this or Ajo Way that, is just a load of rot. Tucson doesn’t even deserve a team if people just complain about how scared they are about going to the games at Kino. What the hell do they think is going to happen to them????? What plague of reprobates is going to descend upon us? The parking lot is guarded. There’s nowhere to stop on the way back north. After the game you either go to Kino Way or to Palo Verde, make your turn toward home, ¡y ya!
I even read a B.S. complaint from someone saying Kino sucks because it’s across the street from juvy. Really? I mean, really? Someone actually is bothered by the fact that there’s a juvenile hall across the street, and it distracts them so much that they can’t enjoy the game? How is it that no one ever bitched that they just couldn’t go to games knowing that there were people in agonizing pain, incontinent, thrashing and screaming until they took their last breath at the hospital next door, back when it was still a regular, full-service hospital way back when?
I just don’t buy many of the precious, “us vs. them” arguments that people spout as an excuse for giving up on seeing baseball in Tucson. I didn’t like the move from Hi Corbett to Kino either, and I really don’t need misters, or silly amenities and creature comforts for a ballgame to be enjoyable, but the mere fact that the new place was three miles to the south west of the old one was nowhere near enough to keep me and my friends (bless their hearts) from attending at least five games a year.
It’s heartbreaking to know that Tucson sports fans gave up on minor league baseball. And it’s infuriating that many of those people think that it was the other way around.
See ya Padres ! Don’t let the door hit you in the #ss My $$ will be spent on Az wildcat baseball at hi Corbit .#Beardown
I’ll be at the game tonight. As I was for 20 games this season.
@Brian22: Where’s hi Corbit?
@Rat T: I remember the suggestion that the ballpark be built downtown, and that few in city government thought it viable because the middle and upper-middle class people that baseball is now marketed to were shit-their-pants scared of downtown (this is, of course, much of the same demographic that’s terrified of going to Kino), and nothing else was downtown. The idea was that it would anchor redevelopment and attract new stuff, making downtown better. This has worked in some cities like Oklahoma City but has not panned out in others, like Fresno. OF course, there wasn’t even the possibility that the park would attract new cool stuff around it on Ajo, since there was already a hospital and juvy there. But at that time it was widely believed that downtown would be a losing proposition. Hindsight doesn’t necessarily prove the non-believers wrong, since it’s only been in the past few years that the people who have traditionally held an irrational fear of downtown have been going down there. Whether the development and “upscalification” of downtown would have occurred sooner is left open for debate, because it’s far from certain that it would have.
Re: Al Tam — it’s not the distance between Hi Corbett and Kino, it’s the fact that Kino is a PITA to get to, park and escape from after the game!
Yeah, it’s SO inconvenient that it’s located next to a freeway that leads to the northwest side, Vail and also another freeway down to Sahuarita, Green Valley …
I’m in New York for a week and went to the Brooklyn Cyclones v. Staten Island Yankees on Thursday night at MCU Park on Coney Island. This is Class A Short Season baseball. There was a jersey giveaway and the place was packed, over 8,200 on hand. Ticket prices were comparable to Tucson, $16 for the best seats. No $1 beers here on a Thursday night – bring your money. Getting there was a long subway ride.
This team is very involved in the Coney Island community, a place that has a reputation for being a little rough. At least 100 little leaguers ran the bases as a group before the game and talked with players and had pictures taken, members of the Ebbets family were on the field for a ceremony celebrating the 100th anniversary of Ebbets Field, the Brooklyn Borough President spoke before the game giving credit to everyone who helped the area come back from Hurricane Sandy and the Brooklyn historian was among several people who threw out a ceremonial first pitch. I’d never been to a game that had so much going on before the players even took the field.
The place had everything you’d expect at a minor league game: on-field stuff for kids between innings, t-shirt tosses by the team mascot (Sandy the seagull), outfield fences full of local business advertising. The team’s cheerleaders, the Beach Bums, did occasional dance routines on top of the dugouts and on the field. Occasional ads were read by the announcer between innings though nothing like the 60-second Rosemont Copper propaganda spots that drove me away from the Padres during their first season. Nothing controversial here, the most memorable audio ad was for a company called Send In The Clowns, the team’s official party provider.
If another team ever comes to Tucson the owners should take a trip to New York and go to a Brooklyn Cyclones game, they might learn something about how to involve the community to build support for the team.