In a New York Times opinion piece Saturday, Kevin Dowd recounts his childhood as a Washington Senators fan, attending games at old Griffith Stadium, and the pain of losing the Senators to Minnesota in 1960. Read more here.
Growing Up a Senators Fan
Filed under League & Franchise
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Losing a team regardless of the financial reasons doesn’t go down very well. I’d followed my old home town team; the AAA International League Buffalo Bisons of the International League, on radio as yearly as 5th grade. In the middle of the 1970 season, they were no more, so I can identify with the author, having experienced that same kind of losss; thereafter going without pro ball until the AA Eastern League appeared in 1979.
Buffalo’s demise is a familiar story. It was due to YEARS of horrible clubs provided by the expansion NY Mets, expansion Washington Senators (the same as in the article) and then, expansion Montreal Expos. [Do you detect a pattern?] Then, the wonderful old ball park right off Main Street and easy to get to was torn down to build a high school. An old WPA project of a football field was ‘jerry-rigged to try to fit in a ball diamond and that was in the middle of a bad neighborhood. Bad baseball clubs + bad stadium + bad neighborhood = nobody in the stands. The team was withdrawn by Montreal and finished the season in Calgary.
Can’t say as I could blame them. But such is the pain of losing a ball team for all the reasons ownership does so; be it on the major league level or when the parent club decides to pull-out of a minor league venue. Look at the number of teams coming and going; at the affiliated and Indy levels, per a daily/weekly reading of this website.
A common thread for those teams with a poor box office (as the fading Washington Senators under the mismanagement of an aging owner) may be to present a decent team on the field. That doesn’t always seal the deal — witness my hometown Alpine Cowboys of the Indy Pecos League this past season. They led the league and had the best team of their 4 years of existence in the modern era, but attendance wasn’t a good as in past years. Promotions always help to stir the drink, but then we don’t have the population base. Having said that, good clubs in large population venues have struggled, at times, to bring the fans in the door.
I just hope the Alpine team and Pecos League remain in existence and don’t break the heart of loyal fans. Why? For all the reasons baseball remains a generational activity from parents to their children and is the national sport. Ken Burns excellent documentary about baseball some 20 years ago nailed it.