Minor League Baseball: Boom Or Bust To Communities? :: essays research papers

Minor League Baseball Boom or Bust to Communities?Despite the occasional(prenominal) disappointment, baby league baseball providesmany communities with economic development and an improved quality of life.Communities as small as Elizabethtown, Tennessee or as large as Phoenix, Arizona take a shit sh bed the common bond of being the homes of major league farm teams. Thisis referred to as the National Association of Professional Baseball, or to a gr downer extentcommonly known as the minor leagues. As the popularity of major leaguebaseball seems to be decreasing due to the recent player strike, free agency,and anti-trust get laws, minor league baseball has generated excitement that back end only be associated with baseball in the good old days. This excitement is apurity of tang which the majors no longer possess. It is baseball in itssimplest form-- just ball, bats, gloves, and lifelong dreams. The parks aregenerally small, the players, hardworking young men whom local fans are l ikelyto run into the next day at the mall or maybe the corner bar. A family of fourcan see a game, eat dinner--maybe even pick up a souvenir or two--without havingto consider a second mortgage. No lockouts, no holdouts, no five-dollar beers,and the umpire is the only one who can call a strike. Just the nationalpastime, played the game it is, says one editor of The Minor League BaseballBook.There are shortly 156 teams that are part of the National Associationof Professional Baseball. This number will grow in the next few years with theaddition of two elaboration teams at the major league level. There have also beena number of independent leagues formed which are said to be the future of minorleague baseball. The success of these teams have shown how the value of thesefranchises have grown over the past ten years. In the past, class AAA teamswould sell for three century thousand dollars while a smaller class A team wentfor fifty thousand. Today the class AAA teams are being sold for as high asfive million dollars while class A teams are going for around one million. Thebest example of the fact that franchises have grown in value over the years isthe Reading Phillies. Joe Buzas, a minor league baseball entrepreneur, hasowned and operated twelve minor league teams in seventeen cities since 1956. In1976, Buzas bought the Reading Phillies franchise for $1. Ten years later in1986 he sold it for $1,000,000.The addition of minor league baseball to communities can provide manybenefits. The greatest benefit is the overall economic lift that minor league