Why do local teams often strike out?

CAPITAL REGION — David Broughton doesn’t understand why Albany doesn’t have a Double-A or Triple-A minor league baseball team.

Given the area’s demographics, Albany should be able to support a full-season AA or AAA minor league baseball team, Broughton said.

“If you look at the top 30 minor league markets, you would see markets that are smaller than Albany and have three professional teams that do well,” he said.

As research director at Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal, Broughton ranks the country’s minor league sports markets every two years in a comprehensive survey. In the 2007 survey, which looked at 242 minor league markets throughout the United States, Albany finished 79th, and Troy (which includes Schenectady) finished 138. While those rankings aren’t terrible, Broughton believes they could be better, given the population and average income of the Capital Region.

The Capital Region has long struggled to retain its minor league franchises, which have come and gone throughout the years.

The Albany-Colonie A’s/Yankees, a Double-A baseball team, left in 1994. The Albany-Colonie Diamond Dogs, which played in the independent baseball league the Northern League, folded in 2002. The Albany Attack, a National Lacrosse League team, moved to San Jose, Texas, in 2003, the result of lackluster attendance. Now the minor league basketball team the Albany Patroons — the latest incarnation of a team that left town in the early 1990s — is struggling to sell tickets. The Albany River Rats, a minor league hockey team, are experiencing a drop in attendance, while the future of the Albany Conquest, a minor league football team, is uncertain.

Jim Coyne, acting commissioner of the Continental Basketball Association and former Patroons general manager, has said the team’s future hinges on ticket sales in the next couple weeks. In a message this week, he said the Patroons had sold about 350 season tickets and that the team “has a good shot at continuing.”

As a league, the CBA is not what it once was. In 2001, the NBA announced that the CBA would no longer be its main source of minor league talent, and it folded in 2001, two years after former Detroit Piston star Isiah Thomas agreed to buy it for $9 million. The purchase was never completed, and the league filed for bankruptcy, though new investors managed to keep the CBA alive.

“If you look at the history of sports [in the Capital Region], there’s not a lot of continuity,” Broughton said.

Although he’s never heard anyone criticize the Albany sports market, Broughton said, “I’ve never heard anyone say Albany is a good market to be in.”

the big question

But just why the Capital Region isn’t a better minor league sports market may be one of the area’s enduring mysteries.

James Kenney, a professor of economics at Union College and avid sports fan, said the Capital Region isn’t necessarily unique — lots of areas have had trouble building a fan base for minor league sports. “Everyone looks at the Capital Region and says what’s wrong with us, but this is a problem everywhere,” he said. “There are areas bigger than us that have this problem. ... It’s very hard to sustain fan interest in minor league franchises of any type. The success stories are very small. It’s not just us.”

Still, Kenney suspects that at this point the struggles of the Capital Region’s minor league teams “have become a cultural thing.” In other words, people just don’t get that excited about the area’s minor league franchises, as there have been so many failures. “I’ve never sensed much of a buzz about any particular minor league team,” he said. “Look at the number of minor league franchises that have tried to make a go of it.”

One exception?

One team that is seeing some success is the Tri-City Valley Cats, the short-season Class A affiliate of the Houston Astros. The team, now in its seventh year, plays at the Joseph L. Bruno Stadium, which opened in 2002. Rick Murphy, general manager of the Valley Cats, said minor league baseball attendance typically grows between 8 to 10 percent during a team’s first five years; the Valley Cats have managed to sustain that pace through this season. “Our goal was 4,000 people a game,” he said. “We’re there now.”

When the Valley Cats made their Capital Region debut, the area was home to another minor league baseball team, the Diamond Dogs, that played at Heritage Park in Colonie. When the Diamond Dogs left, the team’s fans began attending Valley Cats games. Today about one-third of Valley Cat fans come from Rensselaer County, one third from Albany County, about 10 percent from Schenectady County and the rest from the north and the east.

The Valley Cats’ mission is to provide affordable family entertainment in a safe, clean facility, Murphy said. People who attend games also get the chance to watch major league prospects, which is also fun. Because the team is an Astros affiliate, it doesn’t compete for the affections of fans of the Mets, Yankees and Red Sox, the major league baseball teams popular in the region. “We’re trying to build Valley Cats fans,” Murphy said.

“There’s an enormous amount of baseball fans in the Capital Region,” Murphy continued. “But a lot of people are looking for value. This is not a situation where you just open the gates and sell out. The consumer of the Capital Region is a prudent consumer. You can never get complacent.”

Business basics

Murphy said he often meets Capital Region residents who have never been to a Valley Cats game, but that this doesn’t discourage him. “We know if we can get people out here and they have a positive experience, they’ll come back,” he said.

Asked whether the Capital Region could support a AA or AAA minor league baseball team, Murphy said he didn’t know. The region’s inclement springs and cool fall evenings might make it difficult to draw crowds for a full-season minor league team, he said. “We have 38 games, and every night we try to package it as a unique experience,” he said.

There are three levels of Minor League Baseball teams: AAA, AA and A, with AAA teams typically being located in larger metropolitan areas, AA teams in mid-sized cities and A teams in small cities or suburbs. Every Minor League Baseball team is affiliated with a major league baseball team. (There are also independent baseball leagues that are not part of this system.) Some teams play a shortened season that begins in June and ends in September; a full baseball season runs from April to October.

regional ranking

In the Street & Smith survey, Albany was ranked 79 out of 242 minor league markets, an improvement from 2005, when it was ranked 164. Troy was 138 in 2007, up from 182 in 2005. This leap, Broughton said, was because the ValleyCats had been around a couple more years; a team’s longevity makes for a higher ranking. Albany’s jump can be attributed to the fact that none of the minor league teams folded during the two years since the previous survey. In 2005, for instance, the city’s ranking was hurt by the departure of the Albany Attack.

On the survey, Albany is ranked lower than smaller cities, such as Hershey, Pa. (2), Boise, Idaho (7) and Binghamton (14). In terms of demographics, Broughton compared Albany to the Quad Cities, five neighboring cities in Iowa and Illinois that the Street & Smith survey called the sixth-best minor league market in the country, and said it was unclear why Albany’s minor league teams couldn’t find similar success. The Quad Cities are home to the Quad City River Bandits, a Class A Midwest League baseball team, the Quad City Flames, an American hockey league team and the Quad City Steamrollers, an arena football franchise.

The top minor league sports market, according to the survey, is Fort Wayne, Ind.

colleges leading way

In recent years, local college sports have successfully built fan bases in the community.

Several years ago, a ticket survey showed that 51 percent of season ticket holders for the Siena College men’s basketball team, the Saints, are now purchased by non-alumni. “I think that number has only grown as the team has gotten better,” said John D’Argenio, Siena’s athletic director. “People are recognizing the strength of the program. It’s a smaller school that’s able to compete on a national scale.” In addition, he said: “The college product offers consistency and stability.”

Saints’ games moved to the Times Union Center in downtown Albany in 1997. “That allowed us to go beyond Siena and attract general fans,” D’Argenio said. “Before, the feeling was that you needed to be part of the Siena community to go to a game [on campus]. Now [at Times Union Center] it’s a community event.” The team’s recent success — this year the Saints upset fourth-seeded Vanderbilt in the first round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, before losing to Villanova in the second round — combined with rising interest in college basketball, has also helped.

debating essentials

One way of building enthusiasm for a new minor league baseball team is a new ballpark, Broughton said. This can be essential, he said.

“If you get a nice ballpark downtown, that’s easily accessible to people who work downtown, you’re going to sell lots of seats,” he said. “In a market like Albany, where there’s not a big league team, there’s definitely a cachet to saying, ‘I went to the ballpark last night.’ A new facility always generates a lot of excitement.”

But Kenney wasn’t so sure.

Having a major league team does brings a certain amount of cachet, Kenney said. “But with the minor leagues there isn’t that cachet. If you’re in a community in the middle of nowhere, maybe you get mileage out of that.”

But the Capital Region isn’t in the middle of nowhere. Major league teams aren’t that far away, and the entertainment options are diverse.

“There are so many outlets,” Kenney said. “There are so many things people can do. The region may be the victim of the diversity of cultural attractions. A night out here can take on so many different forms.” Plus, “people can go north, east and south. I’m sure there are a lot of people who take advantage of that and say, ‘If I want real entertainment, I know where I can go. Why limit myself to minor league stuff in the Capital Region when I can take a little drive and see major league stuff?’”

Another factor may be that televisions have become so much more sophisticated and that viewers have access to a multitude of professional sports events. “It’s much harder than it once was to promote minor league anything when you’ve got major league anything a click away,” Kenney said.