645
10-29-2004, 11:39 AM
Bud Selig's promise that the Milwaukee Brewers won't be leaving the city for the next 26 years is reassuring, but it shouldn't be necessary. The question isn't what's keeping the team here, but why would it go anywhere?
It's not the system, and it's not the stadium that makes this a baseball town, it's the people, but we keep forgetting that. If the events of the last couple of weeks don't remind us, then we're not paying attention.
We had three different buyers browsing in our market, and one of them even went away mad. Now it seems local investors are lining up for a piece of the action, and it's not as if they've spent the last 34 years snoozing on Bradford Beach.
They know the team is $100 million in the red, that it dived like a frightened dove after the all-star break, that it hasn't made it to average even once in a dozen years and that people just like them have had to reach in their pockets to bail it out so many times that their suspenders are sagging.
They understand that even with the league's lowest payroll the talent isn't the least bit underpaid, and that beautiful Miller Park will be up to its bogeys in attorneys for years while they decide who brain locked on the roof.
But they also know that this train wreck drew 2 million people on the slightest hint that it might be on the right track. That's not curious, that's mind blowing, and it doesn't have a single thing to do with market size, TV revenues or baseball's new Mr. Wizard economic system.
It's just about people in this neighborhood loving big-league ball, and the very second that the Brewers offered a reasonable facsimile thereof, the customers jumped all over it. They always have.
With the worst 12-year performance of any major sports franchise in North America and a microscopic season ticket base eroded by the nastiest food fight in organization history, the Brewers outdrew places like Toronto, Cleveland, Kansas City, Miami and yes, even Minnesota.
Their three-time division repeaters are averaging about 2,000 people a game fewer than our 12-time losers. There are no front runners here. The people have paid just for the chance to jog in the middle of the pack.
And let's not hear any more about an influx of Chicago fans cooking the books. Every major city gets help from its suburbs.
Sure the system will benefit the Brewers in the long run, but it didn't do anything for them this year, and the fans came anyway. Selig said the Milwaukee franchise wouldn't have survived under any system without Miller Park, and that's probably true. But Major League Baseball could have turned George Steinbrenner upside down and shook him until all of his money rained down on Milwaukee, and it wouldn't have mattered if people here weren't in the habit of going to the ballpark.
So let's not get too caught up in who's sharing what with whom or whether the Seligs will have made a mint, a mess or a miracle when they leave. Remember, the Angels had been on sale since the gold rush, and the Expos were a community charity before they were shipped off to Washington, D.C., over the protests of a neighbor and with no guarantee that the city will build them a new place to play.
Meanwhile our struggling little product drew a crowd of shoppers and was off the shelf in less than a year. Maybe Selig's influence as commissioner had something to do with that, and maybe Milwaukee's track record with baseball had more.
We'll be happy to have Mr. Attanasio as the new owner in this city. And he should be damned happy to have us.
It's not the system, and it's not the stadium that makes this a baseball town, it's the people, but we keep forgetting that. If the events of the last couple of weeks don't remind us, then we're not paying attention.
We had three different buyers browsing in our market, and one of them even went away mad. Now it seems local investors are lining up for a piece of the action, and it's not as if they've spent the last 34 years snoozing on Bradford Beach.
They know the team is $100 million in the red, that it dived like a frightened dove after the all-star break, that it hasn't made it to average even once in a dozen years and that people just like them have had to reach in their pockets to bail it out so many times that their suspenders are sagging.
They understand that even with the league's lowest payroll the talent isn't the least bit underpaid, and that beautiful Miller Park will be up to its bogeys in attorneys for years while they decide who brain locked on the roof.
But they also know that this train wreck drew 2 million people on the slightest hint that it might be on the right track. That's not curious, that's mind blowing, and it doesn't have a single thing to do with market size, TV revenues or baseball's new Mr. Wizard economic system.
It's just about people in this neighborhood loving big-league ball, and the very second that the Brewers offered a reasonable facsimile thereof, the customers jumped all over it. They always have.
With the worst 12-year performance of any major sports franchise in North America and a microscopic season ticket base eroded by the nastiest food fight in organization history, the Brewers outdrew places like Toronto, Cleveland, Kansas City, Miami and yes, even Minnesota.
Their three-time division repeaters are averaging about 2,000 people a game fewer than our 12-time losers. There are no front runners here. The people have paid just for the chance to jog in the middle of the pack.
And let's not hear any more about an influx of Chicago fans cooking the books. Every major city gets help from its suburbs.
Sure the system will benefit the Brewers in the long run, but it didn't do anything for them this year, and the fans came anyway. Selig said the Milwaukee franchise wouldn't have survived under any system without Miller Park, and that's probably true. But Major League Baseball could have turned George Steinbrenner upside down and shook him until all of his money rained down on Milwaukee, and it wouldn't have mattered if people here weren't in the habit of going to the ballpark.
So let's not get too caught up in who's sharing what with whom or whether the Seligs will have made a mint, a mess or a miracle when they leave. Remember, the Angels had been on sale since the gold rush, and the Expos were a community charity before they were shipped off to Washington, D.C., over the protests of a neighbor and with no guarantee that the city will build them a new place to play.
Meanwhile our struggling little product drew a crowd of shoppers and was off the shelf in less than a year. Maybe Selig's influence as commissioner had something to do with that, and maybe Milwaukee's track record with baseball had more.
We'll be happy to have Mr. Attanasio as the new owner in this city. And he should be damned happy to have us.