GOO
by Joseph
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V -4-
V M
The majors seem
uneral services were
held last year for
the professional base
ball clubs in Tyler, Port
Arthur, Galveston, and Waco,
Tex.; in Lafayette and Lake
Charles, La.; in Lawton, Muskogee,
and Ardmore, Okla. These were
only a few of 1957's casualties. These
teams were laid to rest in a burying
ground already overcrowded, and they will
undoubtedly be joined by others at the close
of the '58 season.
The demise of professional baseball in these
family weekly cities is symptomatic of the head
long destruction of minor-league teams all over the
nation. In the past decade, 33 leagues have died,
depriving 268 cities of professional baseball. During
that time, attendance has skidded from 40,949,028 in 1948
to 15,496,684 last year in those leagues that survived.
Yet, in this picture of general pessimism, a number of
cities have shown their determination to keep professional
baseball alive by coming up with some remarkable examples
of civic ingenuity and cooperation. It appears that if minor
league teams are to survive, it will take this sort of community
action to save them.
Local merchants, particularly, can give the local team a boost
and augment their own business at the same time. Consider the
case of Dubuque, la., which led Class D teams all over the nation
in attendance last year.
John Petrakis, Dubuque's volatile general manager, says, "A
club in the low minors should be civic-owned and should have
local business manager who feels a personal responsibility for
operation of the club. He should see that the cold drinks are
the hot drinks hot, and the foul balls retrieved."
Dubuque made money last year by good business organization
By paying youngsters to retrieve foul balls, the team lost
only 48 dozen in contrast with 150 dozen the previous year.
r.. II: aIi ii .1 t i .
y seiimg vickcis mrougn local stores tor a dime apiece
on special nights, interest was built up in the team and
the concession take was highly profitable. Programs were
given away, increasing the circulation cowiderably and
thereby Attracting
ball J f
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cold. 1 V., A
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three tunes as many advertisers. And the
number of season tickets was materially
increased by selling them on time pay
ments, well in advance of the season.
The Atlanta team in the Southern
Association made a deal with a
chain of supermarkets to use
baseball tickets as sales
boosters. The stores paid the
Atlanta club $405 per game
for the privilege of giving
away general-admission
tickets with each $7.50
grocery purchase. The
tickets were subject to
a 50-cent service
charge at the gate.
Even so, more than
118,000 such tickets
were taken ir. during
the season and
thousands of full ad
missions were paid by
people who accompa
nied the guests of the
grocery chain. Many
new baseball fans
were created, and the
ball club, the erocerv
-
chain, and the community
all profited as a result.
One of the more im
aginative minor-league
programs has been under
way for several years in
Winston-Salem, N.C., where
the club made a $40,000 profit
last year with a fifth-place
team. The best Winston-Salem
gimmick is built around a
losing team. A clown, dressed
as a Winston-Salem Red Bird,
wanders th streets of' the
city daily, showing up in residential,
business, and industrial districts.
When the club is winning, he sells
tickets to the game that night at full
price; but when they're losing he
offers his tickets at a cut rate. Once,
during a 17 -game losing streak, the
tickets skidded in price to a quarter.
The clown knows where to find his
best markets, and he does a prodigious
business.
The Winston-Salem club also works
closely with barbers whom it con
siders baseball's best friends. All the
barbers in town get a knockdown on
a season ticket for themselves; in
return they promise to mention the
local game to customers at least three
times a day. Winston-Salem crowds
last year averaged 2,200 in a 4,000
seat park.
At Bakersfield, Calif., general man
ager Dave Rosenfield of the
Bakersfield team is taking full
advantage of California's most market
able commodity girls. He has a corps
of beauties dressed in Bermuda shorts
escorting customers to their seats and
serving them food and drink. And
they love it.
A number of minor-league teams
are working "Company Nights" into
their schedules. A block of seats in the
best section of the ball park is offered
to a local company at a reduced rate.
The company gives the tickets to its
employees, often with a concession
chit' entitling each one to a dollar's
worth of food and drink at the park.
Sometimes the company even pro
vides a band and party gifts for
participating employees. One appli-
2v
Family Weekly. Jul 13, IBS!
C 0
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MINOR-LEA
DOOM
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determined to kill it, but many communities are proving the national pastime can survive on a paying basis!
ance manufacturer distributed 4,000
tickets for a Columbus, Ohio, game
last year, and put up $3,000 worth of
prizes to be given away at the game.
The game that night drew 12,000
spectators with only 2,500 of the free
tickets used.
Camera night is another park-filling
promotion in several minor-league
cities. Camera enthusiasts are per
mitted in the park two hours before
game time and are allowed on the
edge of the field. The players are all
on hand, in uniform, ready to pose for
any shots the "photogs" want to take..
Local camera shops put up prizes for
the best pictures and also act as
judges in the contest. New fans are
attracted, they get to see and know
the players close-up, and considerable
interest is stirred up by the pictures,
which appear in shop windows all
over town for days afterward.
A number of civic groups in minor
league cities are also organizing Base
ball Booster Clubs. These business
men's organizations are supplied with
Booster Books of 11 tickets for the
price of 10, which they sell among
their friends and business associates.
Thus the baseball team has operating
money in advance of the season and
strong community support is built up.
Through the use of Booster Clubs,
the Knoxville, Tenn., team, which
finished fourth last year, led its league
in attendance with 30,000 more spec
tators than the league leader.
These are only a few of the intense
local efforts being made to save
minor-league baseball. The Amarillo,
Tex., team doubled attendance one
night by staging a three-inning game
between the players and their wives
with the wives using a softball and
the husbands batting and throwing
opposite their normal way. The Nash
ville, Tenn., club - gives prediction
sheets to fans entering the park, and
, the spectator who comes closest to
predicting the final totals wins a cash
prize. The Lincoln, Neb., club stages a
preseason Breakfast Drive with most
of the local business and professional
men participating.
I t's unfortunate that these things
often must be done in spite
of, rather than in cooperation
with, the people who stand to profit
most from healthy' minor leagues: the
owners of the 16 major-league teams.
They have already hurt minor-league
baseball badly by withdrawing sub
sidies, depleting farm teams in the
midst of hot minor-league races,
poaching on minor-league territory,
and giving their sanction to network
radio broadcasts of major-league
games in minor-league areas. Now
they threaten the surviving minor
leagues with lethal draughts of net
work television of major -league
games on both Saturdays and Sun
days throughout the nation.
This action was resisted violently
but without success. Minor-league
officials, led by George M. Trautman,
president of the National Association
of Professional Baseball Clubs, ap
pealed to Reps. Emanuel Celler and
Kenneth Keating of the House Judici
ary Committee to prevent major
league encroachment of minor-league
territory with antitrust legislation.
They received only "deep sympathy."
Both Congressmen agreed that it
was up to the major-league owners
themselves to take the necessary
self-discipline. Celler said, "The big
leagues will have to stop eating their
own young. The time has come for
action, not more hearings."
With the Congressional door closed
to them, Trautman and his committee
appealed to the Justice Department.
Again, sympathy was all they re
ceived. The Government has taken
the apparently irrevocable position
that baseball, regardless of its com
mercial aspects, is not a business but
a sport, and therefore not subject to
antitrust regulations.
On this point, Larry MacPhail,
former general manager of the
Yankees, Dodgers, and Redlegs, said
recently, "When I broke into baseball
in 1931, the sports aspect of the game
overshadowed the commercial aspect.
Today, major-league owners don't
care. They just want to sell razor
blades, beer, and gum."
Baseball commissioner Ford Frick
usually has aligned himself on the
side of the minor leagues in this
internecine dispute.
"I sincerely hope that the minors
can get Congress to pass legislation
enabling us to put restrictions on
radio and TV," Frick said recently.
"That's what we want. I would put
a ban on Sunday TV tomorrow if I
could. But if we were to try it now,
the Justice Department would sue
us." Individual clubs can decline to
televise games as they please. How
ever, under Government ruling, any
uniform decision on TV or radio in
volving a number of clubs would
violate the Federal antitrust laws.
Even from a purely selfish view
point, the attitude of the major-league
owners is inexplicable. The minor
leagues are absolutely essential to
the continued success of major-league
baseball. Only once in a thousand do
youngsters come directly out of high
school or college ready for major
league competition. The other 999
must be carefully coached and sea
soned, often for five or six years.
Only the minor leagues can provide
this training. Without them, the
majors would be lost; yet the big
leagues continue to "eat their young"
and pick their teeth dispassionately
with the bones of dead teams.
But the minor leagues aren't going
down without a struggle and a good
many of them aren't going down at
all, thanks to imaginative and in
genious promotion.
George Trautman is trying to dis
sipate the gloomy outlook for the
minor leagues with a positive program
of action. He says, "Maybe we're
making too much commotion over the
fact that we're in a tail spin because
of big-league television and radio.
There's still no substitute for real live
ball players competing in God's fresh
air and a seat in the grandstand where
you can share the electric tension of
the crowd."
In the face of such determined
optimism, even the short-sightedness
of major-league owners can be over
come. Surviving minor-league teams
are proving today that any city that
wants a professional baseball team
badly enough can have one hut only
by concerted and enthusiastic tttim.
Q
Family Weekly, July 13, 1958