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generation J · 06-27-2014, 04:42 PM

My baseball thoughts…

1. Jax isn’t ready for an MLB team and would not be ready for at least another 10 years. In addition to the reasons already stated you also have to consider sponsorship. In (MLB) baseball, it is way more important to have big time corporate sponsorship deals than in the NFL. Money from the sponsors fills the void of all the unsold seats. Tampa, which has a way bigger corporate community in their metro than Jax still has trouble getting enough of them to pick up the slack from all the unsold seats. Also, the lack of a real salary cap means that small market teams will always have a hard time against the big market teams. We’re lucky that the one major league team we do have is in a league where our market size doesn’t keep us from putting together a team that could dominate the league for sustained periods of time.

2. The Suns should move up to AAA ball. I know that AA ball may see slightly more future MLB players but (1.) the stadium was built by the city with AAA ball in mind and (2.) going to triple A ball puts us more in the company of cities similar to us (i.e., Buffalo, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, Sacramento, Las Vegas, and Salt Lake City). We should be in that group. All of these cities (except Las Vegas) have major league teams in some other sport (i.e., NFL, NBA, NHL, or MLS), and all are million+ metros like we are. We lead the Southern League every year because the rest of the Southern League is made up of the likes of Mobile, Montgomery, Pensacola, Huntsville, Perl MS, etc. Except for maybe Birmingham the other markets of the Southern League aren’t on our level and we all know it. Also, you can’t have aspirations of someday getting a MLB team when your minor league team hasn’t shown it can do well at the top level of minor league. In short, we have the market, enough corporate presence, and stadium to play at the top of the minor leagues along with other cities like ours.

3. I wish the stadium was on the shipyards property now where the outfield was toward the downtown skyline. How awesome would that be?!?! I say use the current Baseball Grounds property for a 17,000 seat stadium for the Armada (expandable to 30,000 in case we get MLS upgrade) that could also host big high school football games, JU, EWC, UNF (when/if they get a team) football games, lacrosse, rugby etc. This stadium could do so much for Jax since EverBank is truly too big for some events that need a stadium.

# EVEN IF HE'S RELEASED