For three years, a local real estate developer has been trying to save the Nashua Pride baseball team from extinction.
The team had a history of sluggish tickets sales when John Stabile bought it, but the team has still yet to strike a profit.
Now the owner has given the team about six weeks to get out of the red….or the team’s future may be up in the air.
NHPR Correspondent Sheryl Rich Kern has the story.
Ambience, loudspeaker announcing players
It’s a humid Sunday evening at Holman Stadium in Nashua.
The Nashua Pride are playing the Ottawa Rapidz.
A torrential downpour eased only a half hour ago.
Pride Infielder Ismael Castro from Cartagena, Columbia is up at bat.
Sound of bat striking ball, cheers
Pride fan Phil Garside of Hudson looks on.
It’s great to see this level of ball without having to drive to Boston.
But fans like Garside worry about the lack of community support.
If you look at the stands now, it’s not enough to sustain playing at this level competitively when you only have a few hundred people coming out to watch.
The Nashua Pride had pre-sold 1500 tickets.
But the actual attendance is roughly 500 in a 3,000 seat stadium.
In other words, a few thousand people are NOT eating burgers, drinking beer, and buying souvenirs.
One could blame Sunday’s lack of attendance on the rain, but Mother Nature isn’t the only culprit keeping fans away from seats.
It’s always a challenge.
Chris Hall, the Pride’s general manager, sits in the grandstand, nervously watching the plays, and more importantly, thinking about his budget.
It’s a 92,000 dollar salary cap for the whole summer, for 103 days. During the season, with a 22-man roster, if a guy gets hurt, you have to go find him. You don’t have the minor league system behind you that the Red sox can go single-A, double-A, and go grab a player.
Sound of bat striking ball, cheers
The Pride batter hits the baseball outside the stadium.
As the ball flies, Hall says that will cost the team five dollars.
Baseballs alone are about 15 thousand dollars a year. Bats are about 10 thousand? dollars a year. Hotels are about 20 thousand dollars a year.
John Stabile, the team’s owner, says he’s sunk money into the team for the last two years.
This season, he plans to cut back.
Fans won’t be seeing a lot of the fireworks of past years.
We’ve learned that when you spend two to three thousand dollars, or maybe five thousand on pyrotechnics, and only 1500 people show up, it just doesn’t work.
But what does need to work, says Stabile, is support from the business community. And that, he adds, is moving slowly.
The big corporations have not been responsible at all. So many of them come into New Hampshire, employ people, but they don’t have any sense of community, and that’s unfortunate.
Jay Gladden is associate dean of the University of Massachusetts school of management in Amherst.
He teaches sports marketing.
He says that part of the problem is that, simply put, local baseball fans have several options.
They can drive about 15 miles north, and watch the Fisher Cats, a Double-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays.
Or, they can travel south to Lowell, Massachusetts, to see the Red Sox-affiliated Spinners.
On paper, Lowell is going to have a more compelling pitch. Because they draw better, they’re affiliated with the Red Sox. In the corporate decision maker’s mind, there are a lot of opportunities for investment.
By contrast, the Nashua Pride belongs to an independent Canadian-American franchise, also known as Can-Am, with no financial backing
Last year, the Nashua Pride won the Can-Am championship.
But, says Gladden, corporations pay more attention to the draw for seats than winners and losers.
My experience with minor league sports is that doesn’t matter nearly as much as the players people get to see that are hopefully on the rise.
Players from the Can-Am league seldom move on to a team like the Red Sox.
But Nashua Pride owner John Stabile says they’ve had their successes.
Last year we had four players that went on to affiliated baseball. It does happen. It can happen, Remember, Kevin Millar came out of this league.
To beef up enthusiasm, Stabile has brought back to the Pride team a former Red Sox reliever Rich Garces (GAR-sis) nicknamed El Guapo.
Stabile also hired Rich Miller, another former Red Sox player, as manager.
Despite a few well-attended Saturday evening games, Stabile isn’t saying whether he’ll hold on to the Nashua Pride.
He’ll make a verdict in mid-August.
Then, I’ll look to say we’re here, or I’m going to reposition it, take it to another city, or otherwise dispose of it.
Fade in Fans, sports announcer
Hudson fan Guy Martineau admits the Pride has its competition. But, he says,
There’s never enough baseball. From a local community perspective, I’m not sure a lot of people realize the fun you can come out and have here.
Fade out sports announcer, fans
For NHPR news in Nashua, this is Sheryl Rich-Kern.
I thought this is what the owner of the team wanted. I understood that he really wanted to move the team closer to his home in Pennsylvania. The failings of the Pride would make that move so much easier for him.
From a Baseball standpoint, it is a shame to see "Historic Holman Stadium" suffer such a shame and a loss. The stadium is reminiscent of the stadium at Cooperstown and deserves to be the home of champions. Perhaps they need a different league to align their interests with.
Personally, I love baseball and I love Holman Stadium. Fut lately, I find the Pride games are lacking in just that -- Pride.
If you're a baseball fan, or just looking for an evening of inexpensive entertainment, you really should try checking out the Nashua Pride. Even if you've been to the Pride before the last two years and haven't been back, it's worth the effort to return. My family and I have traveled to ballparks all over the country, especially minor league, and the Pride really offers a great baseball experience for not a lot of money. The park is in very good condition, the concessions have been expanded, there's a children's play area and an outdoor pub for adults. Getting tickets to a Spinners game, especially on a weekend, can be tough, and the Fisher Cats sell out frequently, too. Pride tickets are reasonably priced, readily available, and parking is convenient and free (which is not the case for the Spinners or Fisher Cats, as much as we enjoy those teams, too).