It hurts to lose a baseball game. It hurts even more to lose your entire team.
Richmond, Virginia lost our baseball team and people are pretty upset about it. The Richmond Braves (AAA minor league) announced they are moving to Gwinnett County, Georgia (a suburb of the Braves home in Atlanta). Even people who haven’t been to a Richmond Braves in ten years are torked. To some in Richmond, this seems to be a bigger deal than the fact that we’re in a war overseas.
Sometimes you have to lose something to learn something. Richmond lost a baseball team. So what did we learn?
We learned that action speaks louder than words.
We learned that, unlike your business, cities will go to great lengths to placate a sports franchisee (or not, in Richmond’s case)
We learned that baseball means a lot more when the opportunity to not go to a game gets taken away.
Truth is, seldom was the stadium full except on July 4th, when fireworks stirred up a capacity crowd and the neighborhood with opposite feelings. In 2007, the Richmond Braves won the Governor’s Cup and there were tickets available. Did you go? Did you even know? Uh huh.
Maybe the small crowds were a function of the stadium (said to be the worst in AAA). Maybe it was because we like the idea of baseball more than the reality. Maybe we just hate the feeling of egg on our faces for losing a team that had called Richmond home for more than 40 years.
If you live in Richmond and really miss baseball in the wake of this announcement, sooth your wounds by going to a VCU basketball game. They have a national caliber coach in Anthony Grant and they’re winning (undefeated at home this season as of this writing). It just might be more fun than avoiding a Richmond Braves baseball game.
If we’re all honest with ourselves (and we seldom are) we have a major league sport in Richmond to replace minor league baseball immediately:
Complaining.
We love complaining more than any sport that involves a ticket. I am up for the Complaining Hall of Fame and on the last ballot, I saw your name as well. We’re teammates and while we never really win (because there isn’t really a scoreboard for this particular sport), we get to suit up every day and step up to the plate.
If someone wanted to fill the Richmond Diamond (remember, the worst stadium in AAA baseball), get a crowd of complainers over there for a noon gruntfest. It’s the perfect venue for us complainers because there’s plenty to complain about. A while back, a chunk of concrete fell from the roof.
Whack. Point made.
Replacing baseball with bitching makes sense, with finger pointing as a close second. You may be too old to play baseball, but you never grow too old to bitch and moan. And there is no shortage of targets to aim at either – politics, government, religion, spouses, jobs, finances, taxes, food, education – it’s an endless list.
Many people will miss professional baseball here. We messed it up pretty good and our team bolted. But we still have bitching to replace pitching. We just need a name for our team. The Richmond Whiners? The Procrastinators? The Unfinishers? The Dealbusters? The Idiots? Take your pick; no matter which name we choose, we can always complain about it.
If you disagree with anything in this blog, and you want to uncork some name-calling, there’s your tryout. Congratulations, you made the team. Get in the bullpen, you’re bitching next.
Tags: Baseball, Richmond, Richmond Braves, Sports, Virginia