No Minor Accomplishment: The Revival of New Jersey Professional Baseball

Chapter 12: Conclusion The Community of New Jersey Baseball

I t is March 3, 2007. The late-winter chill is struggling mightily to give way to the brilliant early-morning sunshine on the campus of Montclair State University. There is nothing that looks more lonely than a ballpark in the off-season, and Yogi Berra Stadium is no exception. Viewed down the long stairway entrance, the infield is shielded from the winter cold and ice by a protective tarpaulin, and the uncovered outfield grass is the same shade of brown as the front lawn of my house. But today, 185 12 Conclusion The Community of New Jersey Baseball A rainbow settles over Commerce Bank Ballpark, Bridgewater, after a thunderstorm . Photograph by Bob Golon, 2005. hope springs eternal. In what is becoming an annual rite of spring, the New Jersey chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) prepares to hold its annual all-day conference. Named the Elysian Fields Chapter in honor of what many people believe is the birthplace of baseball in Hoboken, approximately seventy-five New Jersey baseball junkies gather for a day of speeches, panel discussions, and research presentations. Spring training is here! You can feel the air getting warmer already. For most of those dark years between 1950 and 1994, New Jersey was the baseball stepchild of New York and Philadelphia. Even the New Jersey baseball historians who wanted to participate in SABR had to belong to either the New York or Philadelphia chapters and attend their meetings, as New Jersey did not have its own chapter. With the return of professional baseball to the Garden State in 1994, as well as the emergence of institutions like the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center, baseball fans here suddenly had places to go to—a community of their own. Surely, during the baseball season, television sets at home are still tuned to the Yankees, the Mets, and the Phillies, as nothing takes the place of major-league baseball for the baseball purist. But New Jersey became proud of its new facilities and its identity as a successful baseball location of its own. New Jersey is a mixture of baseball cultures that mirrors locations nationwide. We have baseball in urban settings, much like the successful minor-league operations in Buffalo and Memphis. We have baseball in rural settings that remind us of the appeal of baseball in smaller independent leagues like the current American Association in the Midwest. Our eight clubs are sandwiched between the major cities of New York and Philadelphia and have furthered the argument that such suburban clubs can exist in the shadow of their big-city brothers, much as Lowell and Brockton, both in Massachusetts, are in the shadow of Boston. Yet, despite all of this commonality, there is an element of competition between the New Jersey clubs that is always evident. Ask any of the front-office personnel of the New Jersey minorleague and independent professional teams, and they will tell you that all of the teams are in competition with each other, and to an extent, they are correct. They all compete for fans, for families looking for affordable entertainment , for the attention of the press, and for the revenue brought in by corporate and group support that enables their survival. It is an allconsuming , twelve-month-a-year mission for the young men and women who work in the industry. Yet, the overall health of their industry is the 186 No Minor Accomplishment underlying factor that drives club ownership and front-office behavior, much different than that seen in major-league baseball. This concern became most clear to me in the collective decision by the Atlantic League owners to bail out the Camden Riversharks when the team faced financial ruin, as well as in the willingness of Steve Kalafer to attempt to help one of his primary competitors, the Newark Bears, when Rick Cerone was seeking to sell his share. The Can-Am League witnessed this all-for-one attitude when Floyd and Larry Hall brought a replacement team into Sussex County to compete with their own New Jersey Jackals. The affiliated-club owners are no strangers to difficult business decisions, as theirs is a constant struggle to balance the needs of the parent organization with their own while striving to maintain a winning club for their fans. Players come and go in both independent and affiliated...