City baseball weighed,
found not so wanting
Sac Bee Excloo
MARYSVILLE 9/11/02 (YSN) – Chances the city-owned Yuba-Sutter Gold Sox baseball team will survive to play another year are like the town’s own future: not so bleak after all.
Uncertainties remain and some rolling with the punches will be needed, but, "we're operating on the assumption there will be baseball in Marysville in 2003," City Administrator Steve Casey told advisory baseball commissioners this week.
Which was a good thing, because, "If there's no baseball in 2003, there will be never be baseball in Marysville ever again," Gold Sox fan Art Chick predicted.
The Gold Sox finished its 43-47 inaugural season Sept. 1 with a dramatic three-game sweep over the Solano Steelheads.
The Sox – the only municipally-owned professional baseball team west of he Mississippi – could have “won” the series without lifting a bat. Sheduling problems within the troubled Western baseball League provided for a default.
But Sox General Manager Scott Blackwood and his players would have none of that. They dragooned an opponent to close the season the old-fashioned way.
“We did it for the integrity of the team. We did it for the integrity of the game,” Blackwood said.
With the balls and bats of 2002 now silent and the last rosin bag put away, it is time for the bookkeepers to determine whether Marysville can go on being the team angel.
The Gold Sox did not make a profit, but today’s financial situation is a far cry from the chaos in 2000 when the predecessor Feather River Mudcats sank into bankruptcy, taking with it thousands of dollars in broken vendor contracts and canceled season tickets.
The complicated legal issues involving the bankruptcy have been resolved, but the ill will the Sox and the city inherited from the Mudcats debacle lingers.
Attendance for Gold Sox averaged 899 a night in 2002, with a season total of 40,468 -- less than half what it was the first year.
Blackwood blamed the low attendance on grudge-holding fans. “It’s really cost us,” Blackwood admitted.
But those gray skies may be clearing. “You could see the resentment early in the season, but towards the end, it calmed down,” Baseball Commissioner Ed Fleming said.
Already, 2003 season tickets are on sale – this time buttressed the city’s money-back guarantee -- and people are buying them, Blackwood said.
At the same time, the #538,000 deficit the city reported for last fiscal year is expected to shrink to roughly $139,000 this year, Casey estimated.
City auditors will soon be looking at how much it cost to run the Gold Sox this year, and what it might be for 2003.
“There were a lot of one-time expenses, like legal expenses, before. We have to figure out what those are. I don’t expect to have a report before the first week of October,” Casey said.
Casey declined to make any early forecasts on what that report might conclude other than to say, “We expect the team would break even next year.”
Additionally, it was unclear what role current Gold Sox President Bob Bavasi will play in team management next year. He is not expected to be president, but likely will hold some marketing position, Casey said.
More of a concern was the fate of the Western Baseball League, Casey said. With four of the league’s 10 teams sitting out the 2002 season and one of the teams filing bankruptcy, Casey worried there might only be three or four opposing teams for the Sox to play in 2003.
“And that’s no way to run a league,” he said.
WBL President Sam Pepper dismissed Casey’s concerns. Two of the unused franchises were not supposed to come on line until 2004, a third franchise-owner hoped to field a team in 2003 and the Sonoma Crushers’ bankruptcy filing was a tactical move directed at the stadium’s ownership, not at the team, he said.
“We’re confident the WBL will play in 2003,” Pepper said.
Still, Casey outlined the city’s options should the WBL fail to materialize on opening day. The city could:
join with the remaining WBL teams to “reconstitute the league” in some way
affiliate with a different league – even a summertime collegiate league, if it came to it
find a community group or business to take over Gold Sox operations
or, sell the team outright.
And that last option would surely break the hearts of diamond diehards in a town that’s fielded hometown and semi-pro baseball teams off and on since the 1880s.
found not so wanting
Sac Bee Excloo
MARYSVILLE 9/11/02 (YSN) – Chances the city-owned Yuba-Sutter Gold Sox baseball team will survive to play another year are like the town’s own future: not so bleak after all.
Uncertainties remain and some rolling with the punches will be needed, but, "we're operating on the assumption there will be baseball in Marysville in 2003," City Administrator Steve Casey told advisory baseball commissioners this week.
Which was a good thing, because, "If there's no baseball in 2003, there will be never be baseball in Marysville ever again," Gold Sox fan Art Chick predicted.
The Gold Sox finished its 43-47 inaugural season Sept. 1 with a dramatic three-game sweep over the Solano Steelheads.
The Sox – the only municipally-owned professional baseball team west of he Mississippi – could have “won” the series without lifting a bat. Sheduling problems within the troubled Western baseball League provided for a default.
But Sox General Manager Scott Blackwood and his players would have none of that. They dragooned an opponent to close the season the old-fashioned way.
“We did it for the integrity of the team. We did it for the integrity of the game,” Blackwood said.
With the balls and bats of 2002 now silent and the last rosin bag put away, it is time for the bookkeepers to determine whether Marysville can go on being the team angel.
The Gold Sox did not make a profit, but today’s financial situation is a far cry from the chaos in 2000 when the predecessor Feather River Mudcats sank into bankruptcy, taking with it thousands of dollars in broken vendor contracts and canceled season tickets.
The complicated legal issues involving the bankruptcy have been resolved, but the ill will the Sox and the city inherited from the Mudcats debacle lingers.
Attendance for Gold Sox averaged 899 a night in 2002, with a season total of 40,468 -- less than half what it was the first year.
Blackwood blamed the low attendance on grudge-holding fans. “It’s really cost us,” Blackwood admitted.
But those gray skies may be clearing. “You could see the resentment early in the season, but towards the end, it calmed down,” Baseball Commissioner Ed Fleming said.
Already, 2003 season tickets are on sale – this time buttressed the city’s money-back guarantee -- and people are buying them, Blackwood said.
At the same time, the #538,000 deficit the city reported for last fiscal year is expected to shrink to roughly $139,000 this year, Casey estimated.
City auditors will soon be looking at how much it cost to run the Gold Sox this year, and what it might be for 2003.
“There were a lot of one-time expenses, like legal expenses, before. We have to figure out what those are. I don’t expect to have a report before the first week of October,” Casey said.
Casey declined to make any early forecasts on what that report might conclude other than to say, “We expect the team would break even next year.”
Additionally, it was unclear what role current Gold Sox President Bob Bavasi will play in team management next year. He is not expected to be president, but likely will hold some marketing position, Casey said.
More of a concern was the fate of the Western Baseball League, Casey said. With four of the league’s 10 teams sitting out the 2002 season and one of the teams filing bankruptcy, Casey worried there might only be three or four opposing teams for the Sox to play in 2003.
“And that’s no way to run a league,” he said.
WBL President Sam Pepper dismissed Casey’s concerns. Two of the unused franchises were not supposed to come on line until 2004, a third franchise-owner hoped to field a team in 2003 and the Sonoma Crushers’ bankruptcy filing was a tactical move directed at the stadium’s ownership, not at the team, he said.
“We’re confident the WBL will play in 2003,” Pepper said.
Still, Casey outlined the city’s options should the WBL fail to materialize on opening day. The city could:
join with the remaining WBL teams to “reconstitute the league” in some way
affiliate with a different league – even a summertime collegiate league, if it came to it
find a community group or business to take over Gold Sox operations
or, sell the team outright.
And that last option would surely break the hearts of diamond diehards in a town that’s fielded hometown and semi-pro baseball teams off and on since the 1880s.
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