Arizona Team Ownership an Embarrassment to Sports (please keep away if offended)

[Diamondback Jay]

Ken Kendrick. He continually bashes his players. Traded away Bauer. Traded away Drew. On edge with Upton. I don't disagree that trading those guys is bad but for crumbs? They do not spend money. They sign guys like Eric Chavez and give him 3 mil. Of all of our teams, this team has the best shot of becoming a contender. They do have a good farm system.

Not disagreeing with you on the stupidity of the Bauer trade. I don't care HOW many young pitchers you have or how big a pain in the rear he was to deal with, you don't EVER give up a kid picked in the top 5 just one draft prior, who already saw big league time and has a high ceiling for a slap ball hitting SS with mediocre ability to get on base. I also don't fault you for the arguments about the Drew trade and the considerations on trading Upton. However, Eric Chavez at 3 million dollars on a one year deal is a bargain in this day and age in MLB.

The Coyotes. I can't even tell you who the owner is. The NHL owns them. Their previous owner lost out on so much cash that he had to declare bankruptcy. This team was barely hanging on for dear life and was nearly sent packing. They have a solid team. They also have a good shot to win.

You actually can blame the city of Glendale for that one, they've chased off more than one perspective owner. Once Jamison takes over, you'll see the stability you covet in ownership.

 

[DemsMyBoys]

which is why the main board banned him.

Aw, come on, Banky. This is the main board!

(I read the other one for the first time in months last night. They couldn't begin to keep up with what we have here.)

 

[Scott MS]

I'm going to agree that Sarver and the Bidwills are pretty bad owners. The D-Backs are average.

The Coyotes are going to be great!

 

[TruCard]

I'm going to agree that Sarver and the Bidwills are pretty bad owners. The D-Backs are average.

The Coyotes are going to be great!

Hey, I like the Coyotes. I sure hope so too. I really thought they were going all the way last year.

 

[40yearfan]

40, what in the world are you talking about?

In 2001, the World Series year, the attendance figures were 33K per game, the next year it was 39k per game and the year after that it was 34K per game.

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teams/dbacks3.shtml

The capacity of Bank One Ballpark was 49,000. To only sell 33,000 seats per game during a run for the World Series is ridiculous and after winning the World Series, they still couldn't fill the stadium. Those additional seat sales could have saved Colangelo.

 

[Scott MS]

Hey, I like the Coyotes. I sure hope so too. I really thought they were going all the way last year.

The Yotes may not have an owner who's signed on the dotted line yet, but they have an experienced coach in Tippett and a great GM in Maloney. I think their lineup this year is better than last, plus we have some decent D-men and goaltending prospects in the minors.

 

[BillsCarnage]

The Yotes may not have an owner who's signed on the dotted line yet, but they have an experienced coach in Tippett and a great GM in Maloney. I think their lineup this year is better than last, plus we have some decent D-men and goaltending prospects in the minors.

Defensively they should be fine, but I still have some concerns w/ the scoring and PP.

 

[crisper57]

I've been out of touch for a couple of weeks. Anything interesting happen while I was away?

 

[Cheesebeef]

The capacity of Bank One Ballpark was 49,000. To only sell 33,000 seats per game during a run for the World Series is ridiculous and after winning the World Series, they still couldn't fill the stadium. Those additional seat sales could have saved Colangelo.

lol... you just gonna completely ignore the fact that you made up completely BS numbers and change your argument now? The fact is that for those years, the D-backs were always above the league average for attendance... and even more so after the World Series, where you said people were leaving in droves. The REALITY is that in 2002, after the World Series, the team was ranked 4TH in total attendance in the entire league.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance/_/year/2002

they deserted the team when they started breaking it up... as they should have. If a team isn't going to compete, fans shouldn't be expected to pay hard-earned money to see crap.

and even more to the point, if you asked Jerry if he'd do it all over again for a chance to win a title, he'd probably tell you he'd do it in a heartbeat because the guy wanted to WIN more than any other owner I've ever seen.

 

[82CardsGrad]

lol... you just gonna completely ignore the fact that you made up completely BS numbers and change your argument now? The fact is that for those years, the D-backs were always above the league average for attendance... and even more so after the World Series, where you said people were leaving in droves. The REALITY is that in 2002, after the World Series, the team was ranked 4TH in total attendance in the entire league.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance/_/year/2002

they deserted the team when they started breaking it up... as they should have. If a team isn't going to compete, fans shouldn't be expected to pay hard-earned money to see crap.

and even more to the point, if you asked Jerry if he'd do it all over again for a chance to win a title, he'd probably tell you he'd do it in a heartbeat because the guy wanted to WIN more than any other owner I've ever seen.

Perfect take Cheese...

And, the reality that nobody ever really likes to face is that, unless you're talking about markets like NY, Boston, San Francisco Chicago,and maybe Washington, DC - expectations need to be taken down and in fact, stadiums need to be shrunk. It's just wrong to compare markets like Phoenix, or Kansas City, or Tampa, FL, or Miami, or so many others to places like NY & Boston. Ironically, the Red Sox and the Cubs play in small parks.

But, for any sport really, expectations simply need to be made more in line with reality... which is, construct smaller parks/stadiums and find ways to actually win or make the post-season every now and then which should fill up those smaller parks. And prepare for the seasons of poor attendance when the team is losing.
Having grown up less than 25 miles from Yankee Stadium, I can tell you that even there, during the lean years of the 80's and early 90's, Yankee Stadium was often half-filled.

 

[40yearfan]

lol... you just gonna completely ignore the fact that you made up completely BS numbers and change your argument now? The fact is that for those years, the D-backs were always above the league average for attendance... and even more so after the World Series, where you said people were leaving in droves.

and even more to the point, if you asked Jerry if he'd do it all over again for a chance to win a title, he'd probably tell you he'd do it in a heartbeat because the guy wanted to WIN more than any other owner I've ever seen.

Cheese, I'm not the one who supplied the numbers. You did, remember? The baseball fans in AZ did not support Colangelo and he lost his fortune bringing a World Series title to AZ. You can't change history. But as is typical, as long as it's someone else's money, you could care less.

I don't know Colangelo personally, so I can't ask him. I do know the Suns fans saw to it that the arena was sold out on a regular basis, and he probably believed he could do that with baseball. Selling less than 70% of the seats during a season like they had going for the World Series win is pitifull. Do you truthfully expect anyone to believe selling an additional 10,000 seats per game the following season wouldn't have made JC whole again? Not to mention the concessions that go with it?

 

[40yearfan]

lol... you just gonna completely ignore the fact that you made up completely BS numbers and change your argument now? The fact is that for those years, the D-backs were always above the league average for attendance... and even more so after the World Series, where you said people were leaving in droves. The REALITY is that in 2002, after the World Series, the team was ranked 4TH in total attendance in the entire league.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance/_/year/2002

they deserted the team when they started breaking it up... as they should have. If a team isn't going to compete, fans shouldn't be expected to pay hard-earned money to see crap.

and even more to the point, if you asked Jerry if he'd do it all over again for a chance to win a title, he'd probably tell you he'd do it in a heartbeat because the guy wanted to WIN more than any other owner I've ever seen.

I like how you only post part of my reply. Don't post the part you don't have an answer for. As I said, it isn't your money, so you could care less. The fact remains that Colangelo went broke to bring this state a WS title. Any REAL fan would appreciate that fact and accept the knowledge that he wasn't supported enough to keep him from going broke.

 

[40yearfan]

Perfect take Cheese...

And, the reality that nobody ever really likes to face is that, unless you're talking about markets like NY, Boston, San Francisco Chicago,and maybe Washington, DC - expectations need to be taken down and in fact, stadiums need to be shrunk. It's just wrong to compare markets like Phoenix, or Kansas City, or Tampa, FL, or Miami, or so many others to places like NY & Boston. Ironically, the Red Sox and the Cubs play in small parks.

But, for any sport really, expectations simply need to be made more in line with reality... which is, construct smaller parks/stadiums and find ways to actually win or make the post-season every now and then which should fill up those smaller parks. And prepare for the seasons of poor attendance when the team is losing.
Having grown up less than 25 miles from Yankee Stadium, I can tell you that even there, during the lean years of the 80's and early 90's, Yankee Stadium was often half-filled.

Phoenix is the 5th largest state in the union. St. Louis is around 18 if I remember correctly. They have been going over 3,000,000 fans regularly for the last 15 years regardless of record. St. Louis is a baseball town. Arizona isn't.

 

[82CardsGrad]

I like how you only post part of my reply. Don't post the part you don't have an answer for. As I said, it isn't your money, so you could care less. The fact remains that Colangelo went broke to bring this state a WS title. Any REAL fan would appreciate that fact and accept the knowledge that he wasn't supported enough to keep him from going broke.

C'mon 40... They won the WS in 2001 and drew 2.7 Million fans that year. The previous season they drew 2.9 million and the year after, in 2002 they drew a whopping 3.2 million! In 2003 they won 84 games and drew 2.8 million - VERY respectable. In 2004 it all came crashing down on this franchise when they won 51 games and yet, still drew 2.5 million. Since then, they've never drawn more than 2.2 million.

Moral of the story - win and Phoenix will support you. Isn't that how it should be??

 

[Cheesebeef]

Cheese, I'm not the one who supplied the numbers. You did, remember?

wha? you said D-back fans LEFT IN DROVES after we won the world series and I provided numbers that showed that not only did they not leave in droves, they had a HUGE spike in attendance to the tune of 6K a game.

The baseball fans in AZ did not support Colangelo and he lost his fortune bringing a World Series title to AZ. You can't change history.

you're the one changing history saying the fans didn't support the team after the WS when the exact opposite is true. the numbers show that the fans supported the team MORE in the two years AFTER the World Series and then when the team stopped competing, they stopped supporting. How in the world are you arguing otherwise?

And where are you getting that Colangelo lost his fortune?

But as is typical, as long as it's someone else's money, you could care less.

lol... now you're putting words into my mouth. First you make a completely bogus statement aboiut fans leaving in droves... i prove that statement COMPLETELY false. You ignore actual facts presented against your bogus statement then say I'M changing history. That's amazing.

I don't know Colangelo personally, so I can't ask him. I do know the Suns fans saw to it that the arena was sold out on a regular basis, and he probably believed he could do that with baseball.

a) you're comparing the the Suns to the D-Backs which is patently ridiculous. The Suns only have to sell 19K seats per game for 42 games... as opposed to 49K for 82 games.

b) The Suns sure as hell weren't selling out jack squat from 2001 to 2004 until THEY ACTUALLY STARTED WINNING. ranking 17th in 2002-4 averaging only 16K out of 19K seats.

http://espn.go.com/nba/attendance/_/year/2004

again.. you're just making stuff up. Once the team started winning, people came back to the stadium.

Selling less than 70% of the seats during a season like they had going for the World Series win is pitifull. Do you truthfully expect anyone to believe selling an additional 10,000 seats per game the following season wouldn't have made JC whole again? Not to mention the concessions that go with it?

Um... no. He leveraged everything for a title and he got it, but he always knew he made a deal with the devil IMO. And again... that season, we didn't even look like a lock for the Series. We won 92 games. That's not setting the world on fire 40. Regardless, they were a top ten team in attendance and then 4th in the next year.

 

[82CardsGrad]

Phoenix is the 5th largest state in the union. St. Louis is around 18 if I remember correctly. They have been going over 3,000,000 fans regularly for the last 15 years regardless of record. St. Louis is a baseball town. Arizona isn't.

Glad you pointed that out as I failed to mention the impact of history, particularly a history of winning.
Phoenix has had a MLB team for how many years?? And in that time, how many post seasons have they reached??
Now, compare that to St. Louis where their franchise is even older than you buddy! And, during that long and historic tenure, how many times have they reached the post season? The World Series?

It's wrong to compare cities and franchises in places in like Phoenix, to places like St. Louis... it's apple and oranges...

 

[Cheesebeef]

I like how you only post part of my reply. Don't post the part you don't have an answer for. As I said, it isn't your money, so you could care less. The fact remains that Colangelo went broke to bring this state a WS title. Any REAL fan would appreciate that fact and accept the knowledge that he wasn't supported enough to keep him from going broke.

where in the world are you getting that he went broke? And who isn't appreciating JC for what he did? He's the best owner in Arizona history as far as I'm concerned. He did whatever he could to win a title, damn the money... something no other owner in our state's history has ever or seemingly will ever do.

you're beyond out to lunch here.

 

[Cheesebeef]

I like how you only post part of my reply. Don't post the part you don't have an answer for.

wait... I did reply to your entire point, even though I didn't post it. You said the fans treated Colangelo like crap after he won the WS and pointed to them leaving in drove after the WS, right? Well, i replied this was complete bogus and that the next two years after the WS they didn't leave in droves, they actually showed up in droves the year after the WS and still had better numbers in 2003 then they did in 2001.

what in the world are you talking about?

 

[40yearfan]

Glad you pointed that out as I failed to mention the impact of history, particularly a history of winning.
Phoenix has had a MLB team for how many years?? And in that time, how many post seasons have they reached??
Now, compare that to St. Louis where their franchise is even older than you buddy! And, during that long and historic tenure, how many times have they reached the post season? The World Series?

It's wrong to compare cities and franchises in places in like Phoenix, to places like St. Louis... it's apple and oranges...

No it's not. It just shows that Arizonans don't appreciate baseball like St. Louisans do. There is a lot more people to sell seats to here than there is there and if they had sold more seats, JC would have been rewarded for bringing a WS title to AZ. He'd probably still own the Dbacks.

 

[82CardsGrad]

No it's not. It just shows that Arizonans don't appreciate baseball like St. Louisans do. There is a lot more people to sell seats to here than there is there and if they had sold more seats, JC would have been rewarded for bringing a WS title to AZ. He'd probably still own the Dbacks.

eeeesh... we'll have to agree to disagree buddy...

 

[40yearfan]

where in the world are you getting that he went broke? And who isn't appreciating JC for what he did? He's the best owner in Arizona history as far as I'm concerned. He did whatever he could to win a title, damn the money... something no other owner in our state's history has ever or seemingly will ever do.

you're beyond out to lunch here.

And as usual, you ignore the fact that JC lost most of his fortune and wound up having to sell the Dbacks. You act like selling another 10,000 seats per game would have made no difference. You will never make much of a businessman.

 

[Duckjake]

wait... I did reply to your entire point, even though I didn't post it. You said the fans treated Colangelo like crap after he won the WS and pointed to them leaving in drove after the WS, right? Well, i replied this was complete bogus and that the next two years after the WS they didn't leave in droves, they actually showed up in droves the year after the WS and still had better numbers in 2003 then they did in 2001.

what in the world are you talking about?

Cheese you should know by now to take 40 with a grain of salt. He almost always argues points nobody made or changes his original take to make his argument sound better once someone points out he's in error.

Nidan was a master of that on the P&R board. The liberal Nidan v the conservative 40year debates were classic as neither one would ever respond to what the other actually wrote yet the debate would rage on for 2-3-4 pages.

 

[MigratingOsprey]

Colangelo overspent in the "now" at the expense of the "future" - the issue that cropped up at it's most severe point was when they had a bad team that couldn't draw carrying dead money

The stadium is way too large for this marketplace - in 2001 it was like many teams that where they were proving to the fans they could compete .... attendence picked up as the season went on and good teams coming in draw more than bad teams coming in

If you look at their games in 2001 from the start of august through the end of the regular season they played 26 home games. In 8 of them they broke 40,000 in attendance and in 13 they broke 30,000. The games that didn't? - Midweek against the expos, pirates, brewers & rockies - 2 of which were day time games

In the divisional round they averaged 42k, in the LCS 43k (only 2 games) and sold out the WS

It's always the season after a run you see the bump (unless you dump your squad) - you get to market a title team, increase your season ticket base, increase your prices and capitalize - which they did .... they even averaged 36k to see the expos in a may
series

There was also a push late season - played 28 games from the start of august to the end of the year - everyone broke 30k and 15 of them were over 40k .... many in the high 40s

Some of the games that didn't were 5 times they broke 39k but didn't hit 40 - against the marlins, reds, brewers & rockies

2nd in the NL and 4th in all of baseball in attendance .... you can't ask or expect better than that in a market the size of AZ with a franchise that didn't even have a decade of presence ... really a strong number

the issues started to really manifest in 2005 when they had a bad team, dead money and lousy contracts on the team (a shade under $25M for richie sexson, matt mantei, danny bautista and elmer dessens) - of course he got out of there right before that mess hit

he was a little reckless and unwise to go spend above and beyond to go for it .... it paid off and he got out .... to say they didn't draw is way off though and he is smart enough to know they weren't going to average 45k+ per game over an entire season - that was never going to happen .... they built big so they could use 49k days when a big team was in town to supplement the 30k you draw when a bad team rolls through

 

[MigratingOsprey]

the 2000 census MSA for phoenix was 3.25M and St. L was 2.6M .... not exactly worlds apart ... especially when you break down demographics to account - such as in 1990 St. Louis being at 2.49M and phoenix at 2.24M ..... those season ticket holders and fans in St. Louis had always been there and always been cardinals fans

Not only was the team new to phoenix - but so were the people ... they hadn't held season tickets for the past 10-20 years here

Also not to mention that the phoenix population tends to shrink in the summer and has a whole lot of really young people

For phoenix alone about 30% of the population was 17 and under in 2000 - that's at least 5% more than a place like st. louis

However, in 2002 they outdrew St. Louis

They also outdrew LA, the Mets or fans from any "baseball city" not named Seattle, NYY or SF

 

[40yearfan]

Colangelo overspent in the "now" at the expense of the "future" - the issue that cropped up at it's most severe point was when they had a bad team that couldn't draw carrying dead money

The stadium is way too large for this marketplace - in 2001 it was like many teams that where they were proving to the fans they could compete .... attendence picked up as the season went on and good teams coming in draw more than bad teams coming in

If you look at their games in 2001 from the start of august through the end of the regular season they played 26 home games. In 8 of them they broke 40,000 in attendance and in 13 they broke 30,000. The games that didn't? - Midweek against the expos, pirates, brewers & rockies - 2 of which were day time games

In the divisional round they averaged 42k, in the LCS 43k (only 2 games) and sold out the WS

It's always the season after a run you see the bump (unless you dump your squad) - you get to market a title team, increase your season ticket base, increase your prices and capitalize - which they did .... they even averaged 36k to see the expos in a may
series

There was also a push late season - played 28 games from the start of august to the end of the year - everyone broke 30k and 15 of them were over 40k .... many in the high 40s

Some of the games that didn't were 5 times they broke 39k but didn't hit 40 - against the marlins, reds, brewers & rockies

2nd in the NL and 4th in all of baseball in attendance .... you can't ask or expect better than that in a market the size of AZ with a franchise that didn't even have a decade of presence ... really a strong number

the issues started to really manifest in 2005 when they had a bad team, dead money and lousy contracts on the team (a shade under $25M for richie sexson, matt mantei, danny bautista and elmer dessens) - of course he got out of there right before that mess hit

he was a little reckless and unwise to go spend above and beyond to go for it .... it paid off and he got out .... to say they didn't draw is way off though and he is smart enough to know they weren't going to average 45k+ per game over an entire season - that was never going to happen .... they built big so they could use 49k days when a big team was in town to supplement the 30k you draw when a bad team rolls through

He didn't "get out" before the mess hit. He was forced into selling his share of the team in 2004 by the other owners. He also sold all his interest in the Suns, Rattlers, and Mercury that same year due to financial problems.