This post was sent in by a reader:
While this may being up a sore subject for baseball fans in El Paso since it was directly responsible for El Paso losing its AA team, you might want to remind your readers that John Q. Hammons and Hammons Field in Springfield, Missouri are prime case studies in how rich people who care about their communities get stadiums built. John Q. Hammons payed the entire construction costs. Springfield payed exactly $0 for a state of the art AA baseball stadium that is better than most, if not all, AAA stadiums. It also came in well below the budgeted amount for El Paso. Since my father-in-law lives in Springfield, I have been to baseball games there many times. It is one of best places to watch a game. All of this without any fussing by anyone, without tax increases. Springfield enjoys all the benefits of a stadium with none of the cost. This is how all stadiums should be built.
As a further note, it should be realized that no one wanted the Tucson Padres. I know. I live in Tucson. I have followed this since Portland got evicted and sought refuge here. Somehow, El Paso got into a bidding war against itself and still managed to lose. It makes me glad Tucson didn’t have any interest in keeping them. I’ll miss baseball in Tucson, but I will carry on with MLB.tv from the comfort of my home. No heat, better baseball, cheaper concessions.
I hope for El Paso that the stadium is a success for the city, but as major league teams seek evermore control of their minor league teams, franchising minor league baseball will probably be coming to an end. I also hope El Paso can weather the coming storm.
Then came the surprise
The same reader sent me this note later:
One other nugget of information is that San Diego’s affiliate agreement with Portland/Tucson/El Paso is up at the end of the 2014 season. That means with August as the expected stadium completion date, El Paso could find itself without true minor league baseball before their minor league baseball stadium is finished.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Why am I not surprised. However, since the park is supposed to be completed and open in a couple of weeks, your reader is mistaken about no minor league ball before finish of stadium. But, I would guess we could find ourselves out in the perpetual/proverbial cold by the end of the first season, couldn’t we?
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John,
Actually the park is not scheduled to be complete until the end of August.
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You can play baseball in a stadium that is not finished. However, just like cost overruns are always a part of government building projects so are delays. If I am not mistaken April 28 Is the opening date. August is when it is scheduled for completion. Early September is when the season ends. While it is a very small chance of the loss of the team, it is a chance that was probably never mentioned before. Affiliation change is always more likely than the loss of a team. But, just like the old El Paso Diablos and the Tucson Toros/Sidewinders/Padres, it happens. We are still paying money on a stadium that was built for the Tucson Sidewinders, well Reno Aces now. So, you can see how it went for us.
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There is no chance of loss of the team. MountainStar Sports owns one of 30 available AAA franchises. MLB and the PCL cannot strip them of the franchise, so long as the owners comply with league rules. There are lots of real issues surrounding the team, stadium, etc. No need to invent other things.
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If the team is not successful here, however the owners may define that, the franchise can be sold onward for play elsewhere, no?
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Just one last thing, yes the team can be sold. The lease is with MountainStar, not the El Paso Chihuahuas. As long as the potential new owners bought the Chihuahuas and not MountainStar, the lease would be worthless at that point.
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Any owner can always sell anything. However, MountainStar has a contract with the city that states the franchise can’t be moved for 25 years. Anyone purchasing the team would have to keep it in El Paso through the duration of that contract. This is just a made-up issue.
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Mountainstar can file bankruptsy any day they want, sell the team, and move on with no further obligations since they are a Limited Liability Company ( LLC ).
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By loss of team, I was in no way talking about the disappearance of a team entirely. Sorry, I did not think that I would have to be 100% literal. Teams change hands all the time. Yes, the most likely, in order are – no changes at all, a change of affiliation, or move (loss) of team to some other city willing to be dumber than the last city. Minor league franchises do gain in value, but not because of affiliation. Contracts get renegotiated all the time. Do you really believe the team owners won’t be looking for something better as soon as they can? Unfornately business owners do it all the time. In 25 or 30 years, whatever it is now, do you think your stadium will still be up to snuff? I am not misunderstanding. And, yes, any city could have had the Portland Beavers/Tucson Padres. Escondido, California would have had them, but when they found out they would have to cover the entire cost of the stadium, they backed out of the deal. A little use of Google and not trying to be overly literal can help you a lot. If you look at successful minor league stadiums, nearly all of them were built with private money or with the blessing of the public. But, this isn’t my fight. Once again, I’m sorry I wasn’t 100% literal.
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Your poster displays a minsunderstanding of baseball affiliation. Affiliation agreements tend to last 2-4 years, with only a couple of teams changing cycles every couple of years. It is almost always the minor league team that drives a change, not the MLB team. MLB teams can only negotiate affiliation agreements with existing franchises. One key reason for that is to encourage and protect investments like El Paso just made. It is possible El Paso ownership might want to sever their relationship with the Padres at some point to affiliate with, say, the Diamondbacks because they have a following in El Paso. That’s why your poster is wrong on his assertion that “no one” wanted the Tucson team. You’re not buying the Tucson team. You’re buying one of 30 Triple A franchises. That the existing franchise agreement is soon expiring enhances the franchise value, not the other way around.
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Sorry, meant changing affiliation, not changing cycles.
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The city’s directive to people to show up two hours early for games and spend more time and money downtown before the game proves once again that our city government is sorely out of touch with both baseball fans and average working-class folks.
If you add up drive time to and from the park, the two hour early arrival and the three-hour game, you are talking about taking six hours, nearly a full day, to attend a game, not to mention the additional cost of the things they are encouraging people to do before the game. Unlike football, baseball is played more than once a week when teams are at home. Many games are played on weeknights or even weekdays. If games start on average at 6 or 6:30, that means the city is actually encouraging people to get off work early to attend games. How many people have that luxury. They must think that all businesses, like city government, have 4-day work weeks.
A 2-hour early arrival also disregards the fact that they are encouraging people to arrive downtown before 5 p.m., while many parking spaces are still being used by people trying to do business downtown. If game time is 7, a 2-hour early arrival puts people downtown right at the peak of drive-time traffic. The 11 a.m. game on the 30th means people who need to do business downtown will be competing with baseball fans for parking.
Earlier this week, the mayor made a statement that was reminiscent of the federal government’s “too big to fail” rationale for bailing out the banks. When there was discussion about the rising cost of the ballpark, he said “We can’t be the reason it [the ballpark] fails”. That sounds to me like we’re going to do whatever it takes to guarantee the success of a privately owned for-profit enterprise. As if $64 million, plus game day operating expenses, isn’t enough.
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Isn’t it way more than $64 million by now? Let’s see, tear down City Hall and Insights, buy the Times building, redo the interior of the Times building, spend $13 million or so to rehab the donated Mulligan Building, move all employees to various places around town, move quite a few of them again as buildings such as the Mulligan Building are readied, install a new telephone and IT system, arrange for parking for employees (but essentially none for those visiting the Times City Hall), what am I missing? The ballpark was not built on a vacant lot, and the cost of getting that vacant lot must be close to that of the ballpark itself by now. Anyone keeping a more complete score?
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The Police report that it will assign 18 police cars to control traffic and “HOPE” the city does not have any other emergencies during the baseball games.
Now. . . . THATS A PLAN !!!
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Won’t happen – know why? Foster is a minority owner of the San Diego Padres. Check it out.
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I lived in the Tucson area for 6 years and the team didn’t get support there. Tucson is a better city in many ways, and one is a higher average income. The citizens would come out to support their college football team, but rarely would show up to a ball game. I was recently traveling through the area and heard a lot of radio ads talking about the team, and trying to get people to come out and watch a game. Tucson never wanted the team, and El Paso is getting what no one else wanted. I am sure it will get support the first few months here (not by me), but that will die off eventually.
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