NY-P League to Morgantown

Morgantown will be getting a New York-Penn League short-season A team in the future when the new ballpark it will share with WVU is finished. The story doesn't say which franchise will be shifted, but it almost has to be Batavia or Jamestown, two underperforming franchises which coincidentally are located in two of the crappiest cities in what has become a very far-flung league.

I remember Geneva, Welland, St. Catherine's, Oneonta, Utica, etc., in the NY-P. Long-gone now.

http://ballparkdigest.com/201303266158/minor-league-baseball/news/ny-penn-league-announces-franchise-move-to-morgantown

 

That comes fairly close to nosing into Appalachian League territory, doesn't it? I wonder if that doesn't herald some sort of eventual combination. (To that end, I looked up the Appalachian League the other day as I was daydreaming about an NC-based minor-league road trip. I didn't realize it had so few teams in it.)

It's also possible that I've just read something about yet more college realignment and it's put crazy ideas in my head.

 

Bluefield is 3.5 hours from Morgantown.

 

The NY-Penn League has been focusing a lot more with towns that either have a college team or in places in metropolitan areas. The little towns that used to support teams (in addition to the ones mentioned above, Watertown, Little Falls and Geneva), are falling by the wayside in favor of areas that can build a nice new ballpark.

Kinda sad, really. But the towns just can't afford millions of dollars to build a new ballpark.

 

Yeah, fair enough. Still a lot closer than Staten Island.

 

That ballpark on Staten Island is one of the great places in America to watch a game. Remarkable views.

 

Not just the NYP. It's happening throughout the minors, usually under mild threat of losing the franchise by the parent team.

 

These burghs have begun to figure out that summer wooden bat league college ball is just as useful as affiliated minor leagues, without the hoops to jump through ... biggest challenge there is just finding suitable billet families ... be it Jamestown (where I saw my first ever sporting event) or Batavia, I'd look for a summer league team to move on in ...

 

You are absolutely correct, former Class-A minor-league cities are a perfect niche for SWBB.

Half of the New York Collegiate Baseball League is essentially half of the old post-WW II PONY League, the precursor of the NY-P: Oneonta, Hornell, Wellsville, Geneva, Olean. I'd expect Jamestown to join this group if the Jammers are moved, but my money is on Batavia. It's owned by the group that owns the Rochester Red Wings and has been a financial drag for several years.

The other (stronger, eastern) half of the old post-war PONY League is essentially the Perfect Game League.

 

It's especially irritating now because towns which DID build brand new taxpayer-paid ballparks in the late 80s/early 90s, which are utterly perfectly good parks for major league baseball (built with wide concourses, plenty of concession space, etc), still mostly in fine repair, most of which had huge attendance booms in the first decade or so of the new park but have fallen way off since, are now being blackmailed to build NEW parks (or completely overhaul the old ones) under threat of losing the team.

The fucking owners are like severely-ADD-afflicted infants given access to a room full of loaded guns. They think they have the right to point them at everybody and anybody.

Somebody needs to start pointing guns at them.

 

At what point does the league consider changing its name? I know the history behind it and all, but does the name work anymore?

 

The Big 10 thinks the name is just fine as it is.