My first thought on hearing that the Double-A Rock Cats’ owners agreed to move to a new stadium in Hartford was, why isn’t Triple-A the main goal?
This was the dream of the late Mayor Mike Peters, famously, and on the surface it seems to make the most sense. Central Connecticut is not a viable major-league region in any of the four big American sports — sorry, Whalers fan club — but its population, wealth, location, history and aspirations place metro Hartford perfectly in the Triple-A International League, right below the majors.
Ranked by population, metro Hartford — comprising Hartford, Tolland and Middlesex counties — is larger than all but 13 of the 28 Triple-A markets that do not also have a major league franchise. And ranked by economic size, or share of gross domestic product, this region is larger than all but 10 of those 28 markets.
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And yet, there’s been barely a mention of Triple-A in all the talk about this deal. The $60 million outlay would give the capital city one of the finer double-A stadiums, with 6,600 seats and room for 9,000 fans in all, including outfield berms, luxury boxes and cafe seating. It would be a bit small by triple-A standards, which tend to hold at least 10,000 people.
In double-A, metro Hartford — which includes New Britain under the federal designation of metropolitan statistical areas — is one of the largest markets. Among the 28 double-A locations that are not also in a major league franchise market, metro Hartford ranks fourth in population and second in economic size, after San Antonio, which leads in both categories.
The February report by the city of Hartford’s consulting firm, Brailsford & Dunlavey, defines double-A markets as a half-hour drive from the stadium. In that ranking, Hartford compares well with a list of double-A markets, but not at the very top because teams such as the Trenton Thunder and Bowie Baysox include much of Philadelphia and Baltimore, respectively, in their half-hour-drive radius.
But if the capital city were to build a stadium, why shouldn’t it consider paying a bit more for a triple-A-ready palace? That would keep alive the hope of luring, say, the Las Vegas 51′s, who might like to be much closer to their New York Mets major league affiliate.
As it turns out, double-A might just suit Hartford perfectly because of the economics of the capital region and the way minor league baseball has evolved. Triple-A could be great but there’s no compelling need to sweat out the difference at higher cost, and higher risk.
There are several reasons for this, beside the fact that $60 million is a steep enough price for the city to bear. First, even though major league affiliation agreements typically run for only two or four years at a time, moving a team is very hard, especially in triple-A. As ESPN baseball analyst and former player Doug Glanville points out, Rule 56 of the Major League Rules spells out the ways a team may talk with other ownership groups, and it’s highly controlled.
And for the Solomon family, which owns the Rock Cats, selling the double-A team, for which sources said they paid between $14 million and $16 million in 2012, would not be easy.
Once in place, a triple-A team has higher costs due to a larger stadium and longer travel, typically by air. (Major league clubs pay all salaries so that’s not a factor). Hartford, despite its size, has a mixed history of supporting sports teams so it’s not a slam dunk (home run?) that the city could draw 8,000 to 12,000 fans a night, night in and night out.
And in the end, the class of baseball just doesn’t matter as much as it did in the old days. Triple-A is closer to the majors and has some former major-leaguers moving down, while double-A is where you see the fast-moving, up-and-coming stars — who aren’t as far from the majors as they used to be.
As for the quality of play, “I would say they’re very close,” Glanville said echoing other baseball people.
As a center fielder drafted in the first round by the Cubs out of the University of Pennsylvania in 1991, he spent a year and a half at every level before breaking into the majors during the 1996 season. Now, said Glanville, who lives in Hartford’s West End and is active in the local baseball community, “If you’re in double-A and you’re a prospect, you can move pretty quickly.”
Even more important than the quality of play, minor league baseball — which always featured non-game sideshows between innings — has become ever-more a business of family entertainment, not just sports.
Especially if the team is not in the shadow of its major league team, Glanville said, “There’s so much more going on that the team itself can be its own brand and it will be its own brand.”
That has led cities and stadium planners to realize that what matters is not matching the size of a metro to the baseball level, but marketing a team and a stadium to fit the region where it’s located. Some of the biggest-drawing and most valuable teams are double-A, despite the size of the metro area.
Jay Sloves, whose Farmington marketing firm, Elkinson + Sloves, has worked for the Rock Cats, Whalers, Travelers Championship, St. Andrews and other sports clients, recalls when former Rock Cats’ co-owner Bill Dowling came to town from the Yankees.
“He said, ‘I’m going to run this like a major league team,’” Sloves recounted. “I said, ‘With all due respect, it’s minor league baseball. It’s a picnic with a baseball game next to it.”
Dowling and co-owner Coleman Levy kept the Rock Cats name and doubled attendance over the years, reaching the top of the Eastern League. “He and Coleman delivered on the promise of the slogan, ‘These Cats Rock,’” Sloves said.
So that’s what we’re buying, and for $60 million it ought to be a very nice picnic. Glanville focuses on baseball’s power to unify people, a “poetic longevity” that could work well in his new hometown.
As for the difference between double-A and Triple-A for Hartford, “I don’t think it’s hugely significant,” he said, but he added, “You always have to look at all options and if that presents itself it could work out nicely.”