Will The Cyclones Blow The Bad
Baseball Memories Out of Brooklyn?
The Mets have an opportunity to heal a forty-four-year long wound, and revitalize one of New York City's great entertainment districts as they bring baseball back to Brooklyn.

 

Will Swarts

Brooklyn - 05/13/01- It has been forty-four years since the last crack of a professional bat echoed through the streets of Brooklyn. There has been four decades of anger and frustration since "Dem Bums" left historic Ebbets Field to become the Los Angeles Dodgers.

From the 1890’s Brooklyn Bridegrooms, when Brooklyn was an independent city, to the days when the National League team was called the Trolley Dodgers, the Borough of Brooklyn has carried on an unabashed love affair with its team. That love affair came to an end with the famed baseball-painted wrecking ball that leveled Ebbets Field in the late fifties.

When the home opener arrives on June 25, the long baseball drought in Brooklyn is over. The Cyclones, a Short-Season Class A team from the New York-Penn League will take the field, and a new chapter in local baseball history will begin.

The field is a testimonial to New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's commitment to baseball and urban renewal. The city is engaged in a $180 million spending program that will bring minor league baseball to Brooklyn and keep it in Staten Island (Where the Yankees' A franchise plays.), on terms that city officials hope will revitalize the surrounding areas in the process.

Adjacent to the fabled, faded rides and taffy stands of Coney Island, just out of sight of the clattering roller coaster that gave the franchise its name, KeySpan Park is a 6,500-seat, $39 million boutique ballyard which boasts a dozen luxury boxes and 9,000 square feet of commercial retail space at ground level.

$30 million has been spent to improve the run-down boardwalk area that runs parallel to Surf Avenue. $37 million has gone into a local development corporation that was planning to build a community sports complex on the stadium site before the Cyclones roared in.

NYC has spent millions just to bring the team that will be the Cyclones to town. The city dropped $6 million last year into upgrades for the St. John's University stadium, the one-year home of the Queens Kings, last year's incarnation of the Mets' New York-Penn League franchise.

That investment took a whopping hit last year. As the Queens Kings, only 38,662 fans showed up for home games, the worst record in the league, according to MinorLeagueBaseball.com.

The league attendance leaders, the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, a Niles, Ohio, affiliate of the Cleveland Indians drew 207,287 fans last year, the second-greatest total attendance for any short season A franchise in the country in 2000.

Estimates are that the Cyclones could top that, with 247,000 seats available for the team's 38 home games.

The site selection is no accident. Coney Island, and the nearby subway station, where five different lines carry fans to and from games, were both strong considerations in the location of the park.

Terms of the stadium lease, and the endorsement deal that gave KeySpan the naming rights, were not disclosed, but the City Economic Development Corp. says the city will recoup $250,000 a season on advertising and signage revenues. The club will keep any additional revenues.

The stadium is expected by the politicians and local merchants alike to rejuvenate this neighborhood which has, at various times in its existence, been one of the entertainment jewels of the city.

The team will draw fans largely from Brooklyn, whose baseball memories reach back to one of baseball’s most romanticized eras. A simpler time when three of the major league's great teams called New York their home, and the Dodgers locked into a decades-long rivalry with the hated Yankees.

The Bums only took one of six World Series bids from the boys from the Bronx, in 1955, then headed out for Los Angeles after the 1957 season.

As the famed baseball-painted wrecking ball came down on Ebbets Field, it left a hole in the cultural soul of the borough. To this day the Dodgers’ departure hurts some fans like a broken hip.

Since the arrival of the Mets in the 1960s, the outer boroughs have maintained their hatred of the Yankees, and transferred their allegiance to the Mets at Shea.

Mets co-owner Fred Wilpon heads the Cyclones' ownership group. His son, Jeffrey, is the executive vice president of the club. Smart public relations moves from the Mets' player development office have already won the hearts of many local fans.

Hitting Coach Howard Johnson and Pitching Coach Bob Ojeda, were both members of the 1986 Mets, who won one of the most memorable World Series in history.

"Hojo is my favorite baseball player ever and with his experience, it would be nice to see if he can lead the Cyclones to a successful season," says fan John Filip.

Cyclones Manager Alfonzo is the older brother of Mets star second baseman Edgar Alfonzo, as well as New York's first Latino manager.

Sales Director Vince Bulik says ticket sales are brisk. Single-season and three-year plan tickets have sold out for the $10 field box seats, the most expensive seats at the park. Signs in the temporary front office of the Cyclones set advance sales goals of 76,000 seats.

The retail space at the stadium is intended for year-round operations to bring in steady revenues. "We'll get a good core anchor and go from there," says R.C. Reuteman, the club's senior vice president for business operations.

Reuteman, a matter-of-fact Milwaukee native who keeps a Lucite-encased 1945 ticket stub from the American Association's Brewers on his desk, has been at ground zero of a franchise before. In 1984, he opened the Binghamton Mets (B-Mets), a AA franchise in the Eastern League.

The neighborhood will likely see the effects of property improvements along Coney Island’s beachfront, says Judy Orlando, the executive director of Astella Development Corp., a nonprofit development agency that has overseen construction of almost 1,000 single-family homes in the neighborhood since 1981.

Orlando says interest in the remaining parcels of vacant land and land now occupied by rusty amusement park rides around the stadium is increasing. “I know there’s a lot of excitement because the Cyclones are coming.”

Crain’s New York Business, a weekly newspaper, estimates that an 800-square foot to 1,200-square foot space could fetch up to $2,000 a month. That's a stark contrast to 1998 prices, which were below $400 a month for the same space.

Brooklyn's baseball fans, who have already plied the Cyclones' Web site (www.brooklyncyclones.com) with goodwill messages, might be the gauge of potential turnout. The prospect of setting a new league record isn't unthinkable.

The team works hard to shed the memories of the ghosts of bums past, and create their own identity in Brooklyn.

"We're not the Brooklyn Dodgers, we're the Brooklyn Cyclones," Reuteman says in a businesslike manner. "We'll create a link to the past, but we're not planning on living on what happened then."

Fans from Florida to Israel, and lifelong Brooklyn residents have flooded a section of the Cyclones’ Web site called “Brooklyn Memories." Some still carry a sense of real loss, but others are thrilled with the continuation of a baseball saga.

Former Brooklynite Bruce Wexler, who lives now in Cherry Hill, N.J., attended the last game played at Ebbets Field as a 13-year-old.

”Of course to me, this is the greatest thing in sports in the last 43 years," he says. "Who knows? If enough people come out, maybe they'll move to Mets to Brooklyn."

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