The Myrtle Beach Pelicans were spared the might of MLB’s downsizing wrath last winter, but they did get sideswiped by another part of the majors’ forced takeover of the minors: The Pelicans’ stadium, 22-year-old I’m Not Even Going To Dignify Its Dumb Corporate Name Field, was ruled to have 210 “deficiencies” that needed to be addressed in the next two years, or else you’ll be really sorry, mister. Among the ways in which the stadium was deemed not up to official snuff:
The fixes will cost $15 million, team officials said. Problems include home and visitors’ clubhouses that are too small, the lacks of on-site weight and training rooms, and inadequate field lighting and fencing along the outfield walls and bullpens.
And even then, noted Myrtle Beach Mayor Brenda Bethune, the stadium will at best be minimally cromulent. “Even if we invest $15 million in the current stadium, that only brings it up to the bare minimum for Minor League Baseball standards,” Bethune told the Myrtle Beach Post and Courier. “And that’s not going to get us through the next 20 years. I believe that looking at an investment like this, we have to look longer term and think more generationally.”
The Post and Courier reported that Bethune “wouldn’t go as far as fully backing the construction of a new stadium,” but did say that she wanted to “explore those opportunities and keep these conversations going with developers so that we may find that perfect partner that steps up and says, ’This is where we want the stadium and here’s what we want around it and here’s the contribution that we’re willing to make to make that happen.’” That is at least partially backing the construction of a new stadium, surely.
So, okay: Yes, MLB would like its minor-league teams to have schmancier digs, with things like modern weight rooms and bigger clubhouses. And yes, a 22-year-old stadium with renovations will in ten years be a 32-year-old stadium with ten-year-old renovations. (The Myrtle Beach stadium has already gotten $3.46 million in city-funded upgrades since 2012.) But you know who else would love to get more space and a free weight room? Me, that’s who! My apartment was built in 1956, already, and most of it hasn’t been renovated in much of that time — I mean, you should see our kitchen cabinets — and while I know that other people in our building have paid out of their own pockets to redo their kitchens, really isn’t it the local government’s responsibility to “think generationally,” by which I mean provide me with a weight room? Do I have to remind city officials of all the economic impact I have?
A new stadium, observes the Post and Courier, could cost as much as $50 million. Bethune noted that a lot of new baseball stadiums are also “event spaces” and have “apartments or condos,” and that without those revenues “you’re pretty much landlocked where you are right now to do some of that.” (I do not think Bethune meant “landlocked.”) It’s always possible that the Pelicans owners will somehow agree to give up future revenues that will pay for a new or renovated stadium, or to increase their rent from its current rate of about $60,000 a year, or to otherwise pay out of their own pockets for a modernized workplace, but somehow I’m not exactly holding my breath.
This is precisely what should’ve been feared with Major League Baseball’s hostile takeover of the minors: having raped and pillaged as much of the Major League-level markets they can, at least until they can be freed of the legal shackles Vince Naimoli put the Tampa Bay Devil Rays into back in the mid-1990’s, they’re going to bide their time and try to reap financial windfalls from shaking down Minor League markets.
Thing is, a lot of the governments in these markets are going to tell MLB, under no uncertain terms, to pound sand. And unlike Major League Baseball the threat of moving a Lansing Lugnuts out of town isn’t going to be seen as hurting the prestige of the city in the eyes of, well, basically anyone; Minor League teams have relocated all the time. So what happens when these smaller markets wake up, I wonder?
“a lot of the governments in these markets are going to tell MLB, under no uncertain terms, to pound sand”
This does not seem to be the trend so far, to say the least.