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Brewers Asst. GM calls Huntsville 'a very apathetic baseball town'
Fans are scarce at Joe Davis Stadium and the Brewers are concerned enough to consider moving the Double-A affiliate out of Huntsville
By Brad Shepard For The Times

Without more fan support, the Huntsville Stars are in danger of losing their affiliation with the Milwaukee Brewers when the current contract expires after the 2010 season, said the major league club's assistant general manager Gord Ash.

Ash was at Joe Davis Stadium for the July 4 game that ended in fireworks and drew 7,819 fans. He also witnessed the crowd of 660 on hand Sunday - a number more indicative of the Stars' lagging attendance the past three seasons.

Though the Stars won the Southern League North Division's first-half crown, Huntsville owns the worst attendance in the 10-team league - averaging only 1,540 fans entering Monday.

"This is a very apathetic baseball town, and something's going to have to change," Ash said. "They're going to be sorry in a couple of years when they don't have baseball. I don't know if they're going to lose the team, but they're going to lose our interest in being here because there's no enthusiasm."

Though attendance struggles of recent summers fueled doubt about Huntsville's minor-league future, the Brewers' front office had kept mum on the topic until Ash's comments.

"The record of the quality of clubs we've put here doesn't warrant the lack of support," Ash said.

When Huntsville reached the league championship series in 2007, the Stars were next-to-last in attendance with an average of 2,449 fans per game, ahead of only West Tenn. Last year, despite featuring five of the Milwaukee organization's top 10 prospects for most of the season, the Stars finished next-to-last again, averaging 2,389 fans.

This season the Stars are in the cellar, averaging 703 fewer fans per game than the Diamond Jaxx of Jackson, Tenn.

It's a trend that alarms the Brewers, who have cultivated a rich farm system in recent years.

"This is a player development center for us, and part of the development of players is learning to play in front of crowds," Ash said. "I mean, you could replicate this in a complex somewhere. The reason we don't do that is playing with pressure, playing with a need to win is part of development as a major league player.

"My point is, in too many communities, there's always a lot of concern after something's happened. What I'm suggesting is there needs to be some kind of proactivity before that happens."

Ash declined to discuss specifics when asked what needs to occur for Huntsville to remain affiliated with the Brewers. He said the organization has effective contact with Stars second-year general manager Buck Rogers, who discusses the Brewers' desires with team ownership and city officials.

Rogers said he cannot fathom Huntsville losing its minor-league team.

"If it happens on my watch, I'd be devastated," Rogers said. "This is the 25-year anniversary of baseball in Huntsville, and we're working as hard as we can to make sure it's here 25 more years."

Rogers said he has met with city officials to discuss the Brewers' desire for drastic stadium upgrades, including the addition of indoor-hitting facilities.

Renovations Joe Davis has experienced in Rogers' two years as general manager is an improved sound system and air-conditioning units in the pressbox paid for by the city, as well as a noticeably cleaner and decorated concourse.

"We plan to keep baseball here alive and kicking," Rogers said. "If we get our plan laid out before ownership and the city of Huntsville, we'll be OK. We've just got to get it done."

Brewers business manager Scott Martens, who also oversees the team's minor-league operations, was more blunt about the Stars' future.

"In my opinion, in order for baseball to survive and thrive in Huntsville, a new stadium is needed," Martens said. "A stadium where fans will want to come out and support the team."

Rogers claims that ticket revenue has increased from last season, but he said attendance has been impacted by inclement weather and the swine flu scare. Despite the hearty Fourth of July crowd, Rogers reasoned the Stars were hampered by home dates on Memorial Day, Good Friday and Easter - occasions when fans were more likely to travel.

He also said the club can no longer afford the popular "buyout nights" of past seasons. That promotion, whereby local companies were sold hundreds of tickets at drastic discounts, was discontinued after an audit ruled teams must pay taxes on tickets that were, essentially, given away.

Rogers insisted Monday night that "We're going to fix this operation. We're in this for the long haul."

Still, the lack of fan support is noticed on the diamond. Stars manager Bob Miscik said discussing the shortage of fans "isn't my area," but he added that "it's a lot more fun to play in front of big crowds."

His players agreed.

"You're used to an atmosphere when you're playing a game, and it hasn't been that atmosphere here," said Huntsville Stars infielder Vinny Rottino. "Absolutely (playing in front of crowds) is part of the development of players."

Diamond Jaxx second baseman Mel Stocker, who played for the Stars in 2007, wasn't surprised by Sunday's tiny crowd at Joe Davis Stadium. He has seen it in Jackson, and he saw it during his Huntsville stint.

"When a crowd is not here, as a player, not only is it frustrating, it's discouraging," Stocker said.

"If you're not in a pressure situation in the minors and don't have people yelling at you when you do something wrong, you're not going to be as ready when you get to the big leagues. This is supposed to be a dress rehearsal."

Ash said the dropoff in community support puts Huntsville's relationship with the Brewers in peril.

"Huntsville has a good history as a minor-league affiliate, but the last few years I've been here, I have to tell you it's been pretty apathetic," Ash said. "Even the players comment on it.

"When you look at this league and see the attendance in the Southern League, not only are we last, we're last by a long way. That's concerning to us. Let's get proactive and make something happen or somewhere down the line, you'll risk not having this form of entertainment, and it's better to think of it now before something happens.

(Joe Davis Stadium) is an aging facility that's been dressed up as much as it can be, and I don't think there is much more than can be done with it. It's pretty apparent that I don't spend enough time in Huntsville to know why people don't want to come here. Is it because of the facility? Is it because of the cost? I don't think so. It seems pretty reasonably priced to me. All I'm saying is there needs to be some proactivity in the concern area."

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Downtown baseball stadium or not, key thing may be that fans just want to have fun
By Patricia C. McCarter and Steve Doyle
Huntsville Times Staff Writers

When a group of 115 local business leaders was at a lunch meeting in Chattanooga Wednesday, mulling over ideas to revitalize downtown Huntsville, one concept got applause from nearly everyone in the room.

Build a baseball stadium downtown for the minor league Huntsville Stars, at a site where the Searcy Homes housing project will soon be demolished.

The group happened to be sitting in a city that has one of those new-ish, cozy downtown stadiums positioned near riverfront restaurants and bars, and minor league baseball is popular there. It's much more popular in Chattanooga than it is in Huntsville, where the large, comparably old multi-use stadium is off a busy Parkway and not in walking distance of many restaurants or watering holes.

In a scenario where cash is plentiful, a new stadium sounds great. But that construction could easily be in the $20 million range, and the City of Huntsville doesn't have the money.

But to keep Milwaukee Brewers-affiliated baseball in Huntsville, a change is necessary. The major league club's assistant general manager, Gord Ash, witnessed lackluster attendance last weekend - the worst attendance of the 10-team Southern League - and said Huntsville could lose the team.

"This is a very apathetic baseball town, and something's going to have to change," Ash said last weekend. "They're going to be sorry in a couple of years when they don't have baseball. I don't know if they're going to lose the team, but they're going to lose our interest in being here because there's no enthusiasm."

Could a new stadium fix that? And should the city be responsible for building it? Or has it done its share for minor league baseball?

Can minor league baseball in Huntsville be saved?

Deal with city

Named for a popular former Huntsville mayor, Joe Davis Stadium was built in 1984 with about $4.6 million in city tax dollars.

The Stars lease the ballpark from the city for just $10,000 a year. The city is responsible for routine maintenance - repairing broken restroom fixtures, for example - and has spent about $1 million since 2006 on stadium enhancements, including a larger home locker room, brighter outfield lights and a better sound system.

It has also replaced all 10,488 seats in "The Joe" since 2002.

The current lease is much more favorable to the Stars' management than the previous deal. From 1994 to 2006, the Stars were responsible for stadium maintenance and also had to pay the city a cut of ticket, concession and souvenir sales.

That deal pumped an average of $17,000 back into the city's coffers from 2000-06.

Former Mayor Loretta Spencer and Stars owner Miles Prentice negotiated the current lease, which will expire Sept. 30, 2010.

"Miles was driven because he was an investor, but we cooperated very well," Spencer said Friday. "We knew what their needs were to stay in Huntsville, and I thought we were extremely fair."

While the idea of a new downtown ballpark has been batted around for years, Spencer said she never seriously considered it. She said she chose to focus instead on expanding Huntsville's retail and industrial base.

A new stadium "would be great," Spencer said. "But you have to have projects that pay their way. What we get a return on is what we put the biggest investment in."

Mayor Tommy Battle has no plans to invest the city's limited resources in a new stadium, either.

"The city can't afford to do everything," he said. "We've got especially tight resources right now, and there's no guarantee that a downtown stadium would alter attendance that much."

Battle said he was surprised when he read in The Huntsville Times what the Brewers' assistant general manager had said about the Brewers possibly ceasing its affiliation with the Stars.

"In baseball terms, that one came out of left field," Battle said. "I talked with Miles Prentice and (Stars general manager) Buck Rogers this spring, and both said they're looking forward to a long relationship with Huntsville.

"We want to keep them, and they said they want to stay."

'It works for us'

For Frank Burke, president of the Chattanooga Lookouts, a downtown stadium "reintroduced" baseball to his city, and the residents have loved it. He said he's consistently doubled his revenue since he built it - with private money - in 2000.

He also built a downtown stadium for his minor league team in Portland, Maine.

"We believe in it," he said. "We've found that it keeps people downtown between quitting time and time for the game to start. It works for us, but I'm certainly no expert as to what would work in Huntsville.

"What I know most about the Huntsville team is that they usually beat us."

Burke said his team was in "fight or flight" mode when the decision was made to move from the 1929-era stadium about two miles from the current site. But he wasn't going to build it if he couldn't sell at least 1,800 season tickets and 12 suites within a 90-day ticket drive.

He ended up selling 2,300 season tickets and 15 suites.

"In the past 10 seasons it's dropped a little bit, but the profitability is still there," he said. "We're paying the city twice as much sales tax as we did in the old stadium."

Burke said people come to Lookouts games not just for baseball but for the experience.

"You don't have any control over what kind of team you have, so you have to focus on the experience for the people who are paying their hard-earned money to come to the stadium," he said.

"Minor league baseball exists to develop major league players of tomorrow. Some years, your team will be terrible, so you've got to have something else to draw the fans."

Burke said the Lookouts give away $1,000 every Thursday, and every Monday children eat free. Most every game has some sort of promotion.

"We constantly have to be working to give people a reason to choose us," Burke said.

Baseball's a business

Huntsville financial planner Phil Dotts agrees that baseball isn't the only reason people come to baseball games. He was one of 15 co-owners of the Stars for nearly 10 years before Prentice bought the team. Dotts explained that that group went in together to buy the team in 1994 "because there was a real threat of it leaving Huntsville."

"It would be devastating for us to lose the Stars, but at the end of the day, it is a business," Dotts said. "And a business has to have a return or at least the prospect of an economic return, or it's not viable."

If Brewers' management determines it no longer wants its affiliation with the Stars, "ownership could have to look for another major league affiliate, and that is a long, cumbersome process."

Dotts said although the Stars venue "could be considered a bit tired," fans come to games for expectations other than a nice stadium and good baseball.

"They want to be entertained, and that doesn't always have to do with actual baseball," he said.

He and his wife recently attended a St. Paul Saints game in Minnesota, and he said they had an amazing time "because they had something going on every minute."

The Saints are in an independent league and not affiliated with a major league team.

"The night we were there, they had more fans than the Minnesota Twins did," he said. "It was just really, really fun. If you give people enough fun, they'll show up.

"You can't blame low attendance on the stadium alone. The city has been responsive to the Stars' needs, and it has made some improvements.

"At some point, it's about the product and how it is marketed. It is a tough business, I know. We didn't break even every year we owned it."