Like many other baseball fans, I was sad to see a casino being put in the Sparks Marina instead of a new baseball park.
I'm sure the city got tired of waiting for a Triple-A team to be purchased and put a casino there. Like we don't have enough casinos in Sparks already?
Now the new ownership group is looking at downtown Reno to put the new stadium. Supposdly the group is looking at possible 8-acre sites. Good luck with that.
If you stroll through Reno, you just don't see that much empty space. I think downtown would be the way to go, especially if you could find a place walking distance from the casinos. You could attract some tourists to a ballgame on occasion. Success could very well depend on location. The downtown area certainly has enough parking with all the casino, and other, garages around.
Hey I have a great idea. Get rid of the bowling stadium. Bowling is a sport on the decline, at least in these parts. When the bowling world went to automatic scorekeepers, the price of a game soared through the roof, and people couldn't afford to do it much anymore.
There is some property off Highway 80 as you come into Reno that could be purchased.
Certainly there is plenty of land in Sparks, but if the new stadium, wherever it's built doesn't have easy on/off access, then why bother. Where the new shopping center at Highway 431 would have been a great site.
One spot that could possibly work is the Park Lane Mall, though I admit that could really screw up Virginia Street traffic more than it already is.
I look forward to seeing what progress can or will be made in the coming months.
Many feel that Reno should have gone after another California League team to see if there was enough interest in baseball. Heck, for a Single-A team, it could have put some more money into Peccole, i.e. bigger press box, locker rooms for both teams, more seating and maybe a luxury box or two.
The advantage of having a Triple-A team in Reno is that you would see future big leaguers on a nightly basis and maybe an occasional star doing a rehab assignment. You would see better baseball.
This column certainly isn't an indictment on the Golden Baseball League. I've enjoyed covering the Siver Sox, and whether this area can support baseball of any kind is still up in the air.
The Golden Baseball League has taken a step back, however. The salary cap for each team is lower this year, which cost Reno a chance to keep a couple of players, namely Nate Sevier, one of the top GBL relievers last year. Sevier is currently pitching for the Joliet Jackhammers even though Sox manager Les Lancaster wanted him back.
Thus far in the several games I've seen, the level of play isn't what it was last season, and I'm sure the salary cap has a lot to do with that. Some of the better players have gone to higher-paying leagues.
The league has already gone a little bit away from its league owning all of the teams philosophy. Two of the teams have been purchased by outside interests.
The league has not solved the umpiring problem that persists in Reno where you have inexperienced umpires working games. The GBL needs to pay the freight even if it means putting umpires up overnight. Many other independent leagues travel umpires, why can't the GBL?
When Tyler Ramsey threw out public address announcer Mike Murray, I thought a warning was warranted, not an ejection. The funny thing is that Ramsey wasn't the umpire that made the call. It was the first-base umpire that made the call, and he admitted that he never heard the drop-in line that Murray played over the P.A. sysytem.
Maybe Ramsey has a bad case of rabbit ears. I think what I would have done is gone to game management people and not allowed that particular line to be played. Ramsey overreacted. Again, an inexperienced umpire making a big deal over nothing, really.
And the GBL said that Murray had to umpire an inning at third base. You could tell the umpiring crew didn't want him out there, and Murray did little more than just stand around and announce the game while he was out there. Talk about making a mockery of the game.
What the GBL should have done if it thought Murray was wrong was ban that drop-in and/or suspend Murray. Very simple. It's not rocket science, but sometimes people want to make things more difficult than they should be.