Friendly Confines

For this month’s issue, I had the pleasure of writing about the Charlotte Stone Crabs (p. 24), a new minor league team that’s enjoying a successful inaugural year, both on the field and at the cash register. Given the people involved in the venture, it’s not surprising that the club is doing well.

I attended a game at Charlotte Sports Park, which was recently refurbished to accommodate the Tampa Bay Rays’ spring-training camp. The experience reminded me a bit of my youth as a Major League Baseball fan, only on a much smaller scale. And that, to me, is a significant strength of the Stone Crabs’ business model.

When I was a kid my father used to take my family to Wrigley Field in Chicago at least once a year to watch our St. Louis Cardinals play the Chicago Cubs. (Despite living in Northern Illinois, Dad raised us as Cardinal fans.)

We may not have cared much for the Cubs, but Wrigley was—and still is—one of the most beautiful and iconic parks in the major leagues set in a bustling, North Side neighborhood with its ivy-covered outfield walls and thousands of screaming fans.

The early 1970s at Wrigley were magical for baseball-crazed boys like me. If we could elude the vigilant Andy Frain ushers, we sometimes had luck snagging autographs; at one game, I snagged Joe Torre, Steve Carlton and announcer Harry Caray when he was with the Redbirds. And a trip to the ballpark was easy on Dad’s wallet. Tickets ranged from $1 to $3.50, hot dogs cost under 50 cents and soda was a quarter. For a Cardinals-Cubs game today, tickets run between $25 and $350, and a red hot is $2.50. Autographs? If you can get close enough to a player and get his attention, he might charge you for the honor.

But minor league teams like the Stone Crabs and the Fort Myers Miracle strive to keep things affordable and entertaining. Tickets run from $5 to $11, and players are more than happy to sign autographs for the fans. The staff at the park is so meticulous, ushers carry a bottle of spray cleaner around before the crowds arrive and wipe spots off of the seats.

It’s all part of Stone Crabs co-owner Cal Ripken Jr.’s philosophy: “Minor league baseball is about affordable fun in a family atmosphere.”

Fortunately, we have plenty of opportunities in our own back yard to enjoy baseball that’s as fan friendly as it was decades ago. It’s more about creating family memories than crass commercialism.