Newburgh, N.Y.—On a hot August night in this blue-collar city by the Hudson River, the new minor-league baseball team, the Newburgh Night Hawks, is whomping its opponent, the Yonkers (N.Y.) Hoot Owls. But the thrill of the 9-3 victory doesn’t last long. Despite county-sponsored renovations, Delano-Hitch Stadium has no locker rooms or permanent restrooms. Attendance this evening is reported at 545 fans. After a recent losing streak, the Night Hawks manager, former big-leaguer Ron LeFlore, said he would tell his players to go get drunk. And while a beer might make losses projected at up to $100,000 go down easier, the city banned alcohol at the park.
“If they make it through the next month,” says Night Hawks general manager Mike Patrick, whose shirt bears the logo of his previous team, “it’ll be a miracle.”
So you think it might be fun to run a baseball team? Think again.
To be sure, minor-league baseball is booming. Attendance is at its highest level in 45 years. Franchise values are approaching $10 million. Communities like Trenton, N.J., and Wilmington, Del., are pouring millions of dollars into stadiums that sell out nightly to fans craving cheap seats and cheaper beer.
That’s in the “affiliated” minors, which consist of 180 clubs in North America, nearly all of them subsidized by the 28 major-league organizations. Their success has spawned a copycat craze that includes teams like the Night Hawks: independent baseball.
Operating outside the farm system, “indie” leagues are bringing professional baseball to areas ignored or abandoned by the bigs. They’re also feeding get-rich-quick fantasies among backwoods George Steinbrenners who want to capitalize on the minor-league frenzy.
But behind every field of dreams lies a mountain of bills. Indies have to pay players, insurance, equipment, travel. Communities must be large enough to attract fans. Rookie owners don’t know how to sell the sport.
“They say, `Let’s put together a team. We’ll sell some popcorn, we’ll open the gates and they will come,’“ says Mike Veeck, president of the St. Paul Saints of the independent Northern League and scion of the baseball impresario Bill Veeck. “In reality, it’s specialized. It requires great passion for the game, great respect for it, great knowledge of its history.”
The Northern League is the leading light of independent baseball. Formed in 1993 by a group of experienced baseball operators disgusted by the sordid politics of the major leagues, its six cities boast populations exceeding 100,000, and its talent has included former major leaguers Pedro Guerrero and Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd. St. Paul, next door to the major-league Minnesota Twins, in Minneapolis, regularly filled its 6,311 seats.
Imitators haven’t fared as well. The Northeast League, where Newburgh plays, staggered to the end of its season last week. But four of the 11 other independent leagues that started the year didn’t make it through July.
The Minneapolis Loons of the Prairie League were booted from their stadium in a rent dispute; over two seasons, the club lost $400,000, Loons president Roger Nieboer says. The Mid-America League completed its regular season but scrapped the playoffs. Mark Dimmich, an auto body shop franchisee who owns the league’s Lafayette, Ind., club, lost about $40,000. “I’m a little bit ashamed that I didn’t research this,” he says.
The Northeast League in upstate New York is a study in what can go wrong, short of collapse. Half of its six clubs reported average attendance below 700. Four owners had little or no baseball experience. Three cities previously had lost affiliated clubs. Some teams arrived just weeks before the season.
Credibility is a problem. League founder and club owner Jay Acton, a New York literary agent who has operated other minor-league teams, subbed for the umpires one evening when they didn’t show. Fed up with critical coverage, Mr. Acton banned a local newspaper from the park he is spending about $1 million to build.
In Yonkers, manager Paul Blair left for a week to tour with ex-big leaguers in Japan. The infield had no grass. Players took taxis to and from the stadium during a road trip because the club couldn’t afford to rent a bus for three days.
The problem with most independent leagues, says Craig Stein, owner of a Philadelphia Phillies farm team in Reading, Pa., is “they are undercapitalized, run by nonbaseball people, in markets that were failures as [affiliated] cities, with inadequate facilities. The blueprint for failure.”
That isn’t stopping anyone. While the eight-team Western League will lose almost $1 million this year, it plans to expand in 1996, charging new members $250,000 apiece. “We’re flooded with inquiries,” says founder Bruce Engel, a Portland, Ore., timber executive.
Why the rush to lose money? Independent baseball is a cheap route to the skybox. Clubs at the triple-A level, just below the majors, are valued at $7 million to $10 million. Harrisburg, Pa., recently paid a double-A record $6.7 million to keep its team. Even small-town Class-A franchises fetch more than $1 million.
By contrast, joining a new indie typically requires a $50,000 fee plus operating capital. Players earn peanuts. In the Frontier League, a rookies-only Rust Belt circuit, for example, the pay starts at $450 a month — about half the minimum in the affiliated minors. Leases are cheap, staffs small, corners cut.
“You get in at bargain-basement prices, you struggle to make it for a couple of years and you hope that 10 years down the road the club that was worth a $100,000 investment in 1995 is worth a million dollars,” says Jeffrey Kunion, a commercial real-estate investor and owner of the Mohawk Valley Landsharks in Little Falls, N.Y.
Communities get low-priced entertainment. Fans get players who belong to them, not some big-city parent. And players, most of them farm-system rejects, get a second chance.
“The worry,” says minor-league guru and Northern League founder Miles Wolff, “is that if it’s a bad operation it may kill the town on professional baseball.”
That concerns the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, the affiliated minors’ governing body, which wants to preserve potential markets. Also, there is talk of eliminating some low-level minor leagues. That would improve the credibility—and enhance the value—of stable independents. The idea unnerves the establishment.
But like it or not, the indies seem here to stay. The two-year-old Texas-Louisiana League lost $1.5 million in 1994, but ownership has committed $10 million or more. Billing itself as an alternative major league, the United Baseball League plans to play ball next spring in eight cities, including Washington, D.C., and Vancouver, British Columbia. The Atlantic League targets a 1997 start with big plans for hiring minor- and major-league players.
Struggling indies persevere. Expansion fees soften losses; franchises relocate. The Northeast League is optimistic that shifting its two worst draws, Mohawk Valley and Yonkers, will reverse its fortunes. And a year’s experience should help.
If they keep building, independent boosters theorize, eventually fans will come. But owners can’t wait forever.
Amid mounting debts and bouncing checks, Bill Cummings, Newburgh’s majority partner, is looking for a buyer. “We knew it was a business,” he sighs. “It’s a bigger business than we thought.”
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