Miles Wolff, commissioner of the Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball.
Baseball fans in Ottawa suffered another blow last month when the Ottawa Rapidz filed for bankruptcy. After only one season the professional team sought protection for more than $1 million in losses.
Team and city officials have argued over costs of a long-term lease for the Ottawa Stadium on Coventry Road. With Rapidz owner Rob Hall bowing out, the team and the stadium will be left in limbo.
The city has yet to seriously consider the stadium’s future, says the councillor for Rideau-Rockcliffe ward, where the stadium is located.
“We’re not close to there yet,” Jacques Legendre says. “We’re [still] a little bit shocked that the current team has lost so much money their first season.”
The stadium can’t be used for anything except baseball, he says.
“It was designed specifically for baseball,” he says. “But it’s so good for baseball that it’s not much good for anything else.”
If the stadium does not attract a new team, Legendre suspects it will have to be torn down and replaced.
Wayne Scanlan, a columnist with the Ottawa Citizen who has been covering local sports for over 20 years, says fans are worried that the city will be quick to replace the stadium.
“A lot of cynics believe the city will happily bulldoze the place and put up a Wal-Mart or Ikea,” he said in an e-mail.
Others say they hope the stadium will seat fans again someday.
Carl Kiiffner, who calls himself a long-time fan of baseball in Ottawa and authors the Unofficial Ottawa Rapids Blog, says he is keeping a positive attitude.
“I’m optimistic that a new owner can be found and we’ll go forward from there,” says Kiiffner. “It’s just a matter of finding someone else to step up now.”
But some argue a new owner won’t solve the main problem: an insufficient market for pro baseball in Ottawa.
Legendre says he doesn’t understand why baseball seems to have so much trouble here.
“This was a surprise to me,” he says. “The business model that was presented to us by the commissioner of the CanAm League, Miles Wolff, was a realistic financial model, and it’s a model that he has actually made work elsewhere. It’s a successful endeavour. So why it would not work in Ottawa, I don’t know.”
Scanlan says that the situation was different when the Ottawa Lynx, a Triple-A International League team sold to the US last year, arrived on the local sports scene in 1993.
“There were line-ups for the season’s tickets, a packed stadium for the first couple of seasons—but unfortunately we weren’t able to make the transition from baseball fad city to a city with a baseball tradition.”
This season, the Rapidz had the worst record in the league, but drew more fans than three other teams, according to league statistics.
Doug Moore, who works with Ottawa’s Real Property Asset Department, says the city is willing to work with Miles Wolff to try to bring in another baseball team.
“I think there’s a willingness on the part of the city to talk about something that’s a little longer term, if Wolff has another baseball team in mind that would use the stadium,” he says. “Right now the ball’s in his park.”