Реферат: Minor League Baseball- Boom Or Bust To

Minor League Baseball: Boom or Bust to Communities?

Despite the occasional disappointment, minor league baseball provides many

communities with economic development and an improved quality of life. Communities as

small as Elizabethtown, Tennessee or as large as Phoenix, Arizona have shared the

common bond of being the homes of major league farm teams. This is referred to as the

National Association of Professional Baseball, or more commonly known as the ?minor

leagues.? As the popularity of major league baseball seems to be decreasing due to the

recent player strike, free agency, and anti-trust labor laws, minor league baseball has

generated excitement that can only be associated with baseball in the good old days. This

excitement is a purity of spirit which the majors no longer possess. ?It is baseball in its

simplest form– just ball, bats, gloves, and lifelong dreams. The parks are generally small,

the players, hardworking young men whom local fans are likely to run into the next day at

the mall or maybe the corner bar. A family of four can see a game, eat dinner–maybe

even pick up a souvenir or two–without having to consider a second mortgage. No

lockouts, no holdouts, no five-dollar beers, and the umpire is the only one who can call a

strike. ?Just the national pastime, played the game it is,? says one editor of The Minor

League Baseball Book.

There are currently 156 teams that are part of the National Association of

Professional Baseball. This number will grow in the next few years with the addition of

two expansion teams at the major league level. There have also been a number of

independent leagues formed which are said to be the ?future of minor league baseball.?

The success of these teams have shown how the value of these franchises have grown over

the past ten years. In the past, class AAA teams would sell for three hundred thousand

dollars while a smaller class A team went for fifty thousand. Today the class AAA teams

are being sold for as high as five million dollars while class A teams are going for around

one million. The best example of the fact that franchises have grown in value over the

years is the Reading Phillies. Joe Buzas, a minor league baseball entrepreneur, has owned

and operated twelve minor league teams in seventeen cities since 1956. In 1976, Buzas

bought the Reading Phillies franchise for $1. Ten years later in 1986 he sold it for

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