The summer collegiate Watertown Wizards (Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League) are apparently not in danger of being pushed out of Alex T. Duffy Fairgrounds as the local paper implied this week. The league is denying that another PGCBL franchise owner is gunning for the park, and there’s been no further noise about the potential suitor from Green Bay (WI). The club is reportedly close to finalizing a ballpark lease extension.
In follow up news from this week, the Wizards are indeed changing their name to the Rams. At first blush, we hated it. However, we now know that the name change is a result of a sponsorship/partnership deal with a local car dealership. The Rams will wear black and silver uniform colors with the Dodge Ram symbol as the team’s logo. From a business perspective, it passes muster with us, but we would rather see an original mark as the primary logo with the Dodge Ram symbol somewhere prominent on the jerseys and/or caps, like the Shell Oil Company logo donned by “Shelly” — the mascot for the Double-A Arkansas Travelers (Texas League). Read more here.
Ummm…. not loving a commercial logo on a baseball uniform… reminds me of the little league team my dad sponsored when I was little! Not loving the idea…
Obviously, there are two different types of summer collegiate leagues in play here. It looks like the New York league is just giving college kids a place to play in the summer and the Perfect Game league is trying to present a minor league style product using college players. Two different concepts, both valid and good. I’ve been to games in both the Atlantic Collegiate League (place to play league) and the Northwoods League (minor league style) and had a good time at both of them. Obviously, the minor league style requires a higher quality of player with ticket prices being higher, and promotions and concessions being more robust than place-to-play leagues. The minor league style also requires a larger (and fully paid) front office. Many place-to-play teams are run by volunteer staffs with one or two people getting paid.
Agreed. And leagues with different philosophies can certainly co-exist. The big challenge comes when a league has franchise owners/operators with different philosophies.
Alan
The PGCBL seems to be spiraling downward and fast. in the last two months they add a team in Utica Brewers that ran out of money and forfeited the last 7 games of the season in the NYCBL last summer then add a team from Boonsville then they lose Oneonta to NYCBL then the lose another franchise to the NECBL in Saratoga then you have the Watertown fighting off others from taking their lease. For all of their bragging they are nothing more than a bloated NYCBL
@PGCBL spiraling downward/Gotta love Saratoga/Seem childish/GM/NY Baseball Fan/Pete,
“Spiraling downward”? C’mon…that’s just silly. (1) Utica is a 62,000-people, former minor-league market worthy of developing. It also has a workable ballpark. (2) The Oneonta situation is more about the owners not being capable of or interested in truly running a minor league-like operation, than the same looking to run to greener pastures from a troubled league. (3) The PGCBL didn’t lose Saratoga. (4) The recent Watertown situation appears to have been over reported by the newspaper. One of the other suitors was reportedly another current or potential “PGCBL” franchise owner (no, not a NYCBL or NECBL franchise owner), and the other was some unnamed person in Green Bay, who reportedly made an inquiry. The most recent news out of Watertown is that a renewal for the existing team, now known as the Rams after partnering with a local car dealership (selling Dodge vehicles), is close at hand. If you have been paying attention, there have been issues in Watertown since before the 2011 season, so this is not a new spiraling indicator.
Alan