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Ladies and gentlemen, your London Rippers!

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Huggy, Nov 16, 2011.

  1. Rusty Shackleford

    Rusty Shackleford Active Member

    There are two Frontier League teams within driving distance of my home in STL. Isn't this a Midwest-based league? Why the f- did they think a team in Canada would survive in such a league?
     
  2. Bradley Guire

    Bradley Guire Well-Known Member

    Sounds like something we could have seen from the XFL 11 years ago.
     
  3. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    From the article, it looks like the biggest issue, likely, is that the Rippers weren't allowed to sell beer at their games. That's a killer.

    As far as geography, the trip from London, Ontario, to Crestwood, Ill., (home of my neighborhood Frontier League team, league stalwart Windy City Thunderbolts) is only an hour longer than the trip from Traverse City, Mich. (home of your Frontier League Beach Bums). So travel isn't an issue. Though, yeah, six of the 14 teams are based in Illinois, and two more are just over the border.

    By the way, the home office in Sauget, Ill., already has converted its web site to reflect the London Rippers are now the "Road Warriors." Alas, the team symbol is not a punked-out, post-apocalyptic Australian fuel thief.

    http://www.frontierleague.com/teams/roadwarriors.php
     
  4. Huggy

    Huggy Well-Known Member

    Buddy of mine lives in London, went to a couple of Rippers games and he doesn't think there were enough fans to worry about not being able to sell beer. Things were bad right off the bat with the stupid name and the idiotic justification for it.

    Minor league baseball has had an up-and-down history in Ontario in recent years. The Tigers AA team was in London for a few years and the Jays had their New York-Penn team in St. Catharines (believe the Tigers had their team in that loop in Welland for a bit) and the AAA Ottawa Lynx did very well for a while. But aside from Ottawa those other teams play in older, smaller facilities that lack the bells and whistles of many of the new minor league ball parks. Even the Ottawa park - potentially to be filled down the road by a Blue Jays AA affiliate - is nothing too special, just a little more modern.
     
  5. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    I don't know whether London ever succeeded in this, but it seems to me for the minorest of minor leagues, especially, if you don't find ways to link to youth baseball in the area for mutual support, you're done. The Windy City team has fundraisers for seemingly every baseball league in the area, with a portion of tickets sold on a certain night going to a certain team. My kids' baseball/softball league pushes those hard, so you can get a few hundred fans off the bat just from that. Plus, there are all sorts of things they do with the schools. My 9-year-old got to walk around the field (and, as a bonus, get handed one player's old batting gloves) because of a reading promotion.

    And the $1 beer nights for the grownups don't hurt, either.
     
  6. Huggy

    Huggy Well-Known Member

    Sadly there will never be a $1 beer night at any baseball stadium in Ontario.

    London has - I believe - four minor baseball organizations but having a name and logo like the Rippers would make any involvement with minor baseball a dodgy proposition. Have no idea whether the semi-pro London majors have made any inroads in that area but they have been around for many years and would have a much higher profile than the new guys.
     
  7. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    It seems like, too, beyond the stupid name, that the failure of minor league baseball to take hold probably stops a lot of people from reaching for their wallets, because why throw money after this again? It doesn't help that, in this case, the owner was basically a doctor trying to have a little fun (and/or tax loss) with his money, rather than someone with community ties who had a long-term strategy.
     
  8. Huggy

    Huggy Well-Known Member

    No question, I suspect a local owner would be essential to the success of any minor-league baseball operation, in Canada or the US. There is plenty of competition for the sporting dollar - for both fans and the corporate community - in London. The Knights of the Ontario Hockey League are the biggest fish in town and the football team at University of Western Ontario (alma mater, I believe, of our own Elliotte Friedman) is one of the more successful ones in the country.
     
  9. Rusty Shackleford

    Rusty Shackleford Active Member

    When I was in newspapers, I covered the local Frontier League team a few times and the owner or GM or whoever it was I spoke to told me that his team's competition was not other local sports teams, it was local movie theaters and mini golf courses and things of that nature. People go to Frontier League games not to see the pros (or future pros, or never-gonna-be pros), but to have a fun night outdoors with the family in a kid-friendly atmosphere.
     
  10. Double J

    Double J Active Member

    The Rippers' media guy is a buddy of mine. Ouch.
     
  11. BNWriter

    BNWriter Active Member


    Huggy, I cover the CornBelters. The only assumption I can make because I have lived here on-and-off a total of 34 years is because we are surrounded by corn fields. Not to mention Illinois Corn Growers is the team sponsor. The CornBelters play in a stadium called The Corn Crib. One of our HS sports conferences is called the Corn Belt Conference, too.
     
  12. KYSportsWriter

    KYSportsWriter Well-Known Member

    I loved that logo. One of the sweetest in minor league ball.
     
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