Quote:
Originally Posted by Zassk
I can only go by what I see in the kids' leagues in my area (Richmond). Baseball and softball have declining enrolments, have no strategy to attract new members, and have made no progress in skills development...
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One way to promote baseball is to have at least a AAA team, which would be a higher profile team than what we have now. I'm not sure if baseball or softball is part of the phys. ed program in Richmond elementary schools, but that would help.
I think baseball just isn't popular in Richmond because Metro Vancouver teams have represented Canada at the Little League World Series for the last 7 years, so we must be doing something right.
MLB doesn't overlap with hockey the way the NBA does, so MLB may be a better fit for Vancouver. Milwaukee has a metro area population that has almost 1 million less people than Vancouver and they support NBA and MLB. And Vancouver's metro population is on par with a lot of MLB cities that support 2,3, and in one case 4 big league teams.
Vancouver is an outdoorsy type city and baseball caters to that aspect of our city. Given our cities strong baseball roots, we should at least have a AAA team, and when that's a smashing success we can start considering an upgrade to MLB. A triple A team would probably be more profitable than the Lions and Whitecaps combined - it's just a matter of getting the right people to build a top notch venue.