A One-on-One With PCL President
Branch B. Rickey III
(Continued from Page Four )
MLN Follow-up: Then let's look at the issue being put before the voters there. The Model T is the Albuquerque Sports Stadium. The supersonic jet is a new stadium downtown. A lot of people in Albuquerque like their model T. What's the vision that makes them change their viewpoint of the existing facility?
BR: "My wife is not a baseball fan to the radical degree that the rest of my family is.
There is an older stadium in the PCL... I won't mention which one, because it is still with us, but when my wife went to her first game there she got up in the second inning to go to the bathroom. When she came back in the third inning, she gave me an icy stare.
'What's wrong?' I asked her.
'Have you been in the ladies restroom?' she asked.
Well obviously I hadn't. The next day I toured the ladies restrooms with the General Manager of the team and some of his staff. Now, when I see the men's rooms, they're old, but it doesn't phase me. That's the expectation I have of a baseball park. But when I looked at the ladies' room through my wife's eyes, it's not her.
She likes going to the multiplex theaters where the restrooms are well lit, have large mirrors, nice counters where you can set down your purse.
She loves the vitality of the multiplex, the neon lights, the feeling of safety in the parking lot, the restaurant across the street.
If I asked her to go with me to Albuquerque two years ago, she'd stay home. If I'm in Sacramento or Memphis it's a new story. With a ballpark downtown, we can go to dinner and the game. She signs up because it's an outing. A combination evening. Then it's not just a baseball game. It's entertainment.
Now, if I'm at a remodeled stadium on a hill, two miles from the nearest dining, that's not going to have the same experience as a ballpark which is part of a larger entertainment package."
MLN Follow-up: Many people in Albuquerque are afraid of the downtown area. They don't go. The professional basketball team moved to the downtown convention center and saw their attendance plummet. People wonder how baseball would fare differently...
BR:"You should have seen the downtown area in Memphis prior to the construction of the stadium. There was no economic development for blocks.
In April as I was going to the Centennial celebration [there]. I was staying at the hotel which is right across the street.
I started to walk across the street and I was stopped at the corner by a policeman to let traffic pass. I looked at him and gestured towards the stadium.
I said, 'What do you think?'
And he said, 'Wow. This is really great.'
I said 'What did you think a year ago before the gates opened?'
He said, 'I'll tell you the truth. I didn't think then, and I still can't believe now that they would come this far.' Meaning into the urban core.
There was not support amongst a LARGE percentage of the population that downtown made sense.
What the stadium has meant to Memphis is far more than what Memphis has meant to the stadium."
