You better not pout, I’m telling you why
Collegiate-level baseball is coming to town.
Having signed a five-year deal to play at Robin Roberts Stadium at Lanphier Park, all the Springfield Sliders need is a league. It seems the choices are between the four-team CICL, of which the now-defunct Springfield Rifles were part, or the 14-member Northwoods League. The choice seems pretty obvious to me.
As other bloggers have already pointed out, I think it will be nice to be able to spend a summer evening at Robin Roberts Stadium watching some baseball. No, the facility isn’t the nicest nor most up-to-date, but for watching college players for 17 games (Northwoods teams played 34 games this past season), the old ballyard will be adequate. Plus, the kids will enjoy stomping their feet on the metal grandstand as much as we did when the Single-A Springfield Cardinals ruled the roost (if you’ll forgive the expression) two decades ago.
Another run in the Sliders favor is that a night at Robin Roberts Stadium isn’t going to require a second mortgage. I checked single-game ticket prices for some of the teams and found that they go for $5-$7, with discounts for kids. That should leave plenty of cash for beer soda, beer hotdogs, beer peanuts and beer souvenirs. Oh, and beer, too.
And because an outing would be relatively inexpensive, you could introduce kids to baseball at their pace. Oftentimes it seems that because a major-league outing is so expensive, kids should remain steadfast in their attention to the playing field in order to get your money’s worth. And let’s face it: Baseball isn’t the most riveting sport for the unlearned. The joy of seeing a rightfielder hit his cutoff man with a perfect throw to keep a runner from advancing is one of baseball’s innumerable nuances, which can’t all be learned within nine innings.
The optimist in me (which is constantly belittled by the much bigger realist) hopes that this five-year Northwoods experiment could be an audition of sorts for an actual MLB-affiliated minor-league team. That would require a new stadium as well as a forward-thinking visionary with lots of good ideas.
