A local blog is getting some tongues wagging with the idea that Augusta County leaders may have been approached by a group about interest in locating a Minor League Baseball team inside our borders.
It’s been a generation since we’ve had that kind of talk in these parts.
I don’t see it getting any further this time than it did then.
Lots of reasons for that.
Primary one: we’re cheap.
You might remember the 2008 effort led by Coran Capshaw, the manager of the Dave Matthews Band, who wanted to build a baseball stadium in Downtown Waynesboro to lure the Salem Red Sox, the Low-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, to the River City.
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That opportunity drifted away when city leaders balked at being asked to put up a third of the projected $20 million development and construction costs.
With inflation, we’d be looking more at $40 million and probably more to build a comparable stadium for a Low-A or independent league team in 2026 – $40 million was the cost of the stadium that opened in Fredericksburg that is the home of the Low-A affiliate of the Washington Nationals, Virginia Credit Union Stadium, which has a capacity of 5,000.
The deal between the city and the private owner of the Fredericksburg Nationals, Art Silber, was that Silber privately financed the construction, with the city paying the ownership group $1.05 million a year for 30 years to go toward the debt service on the $40 million in bonds that a Silber-owned company, SJA Baseball, took out to get the dirt moving.
Meaning, in Fredericksburg, the local government wasn’t paying for a third of the costs, but in effect, more like 75 percent.
I know that the argument in favor here is, a baseball team gets people into town to spend money, and if you do it right, you make more in tax dollars and new jobs than you pay to build the stadium.
Baseball is a better investment, in that sense, than cities and counties that put billions into NFL stadiums, because NFL teams play eight, nine or 10 home games a year, and only so many big-name music acts book football stadiums for concerts in the downtime.
We have one of those coming to the area this weekend – Luke Combs.
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Local businesses clean up on football and concert weekends, but the other 350 days a year, the football stadium is an expensive lawn ornament.
Minor league baseball is 70 home games a year, and you can use it for downstream outdoor music events a couple of other nights a year, and for community events that don’t necessarily bring in money, but are just good for community togetherness.
I’ve always thought the Augusta-Waynesboro-Staunton region should be attractive to Minor League Baseball – because of our location at the nexus of two interstates, our local population base being at 130,000, 420,000 being within a 30-mile drive.
If we’d gotten the Salem Red Sox in 2008, local fans would have seen guys like Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers, Anthony Rizzo.
I know at least a couple of our readers who aren’t happy that we didn’t have those guys here in our backyard for a year on their way to the Majors.
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Chris Graham
