Atlas shrugs on the Shore

Sort of a public service announcement as I close in on the 2,500 post mark…

Just in from local political activist Greg Belcher: he’s attempting to put together a carpool to see a showing of Atlas Shrugged on Thursday night (7 p.m.) at the Premier Theatre in Easton. The movie costs $8 and the group would leave Salisbury at 5:30 p.m.

Although the Atlas Shrugged website shows the movie is playing in Easton, it appears that Thursday is the only day it will be shown. So it’s important to show support for the film so Part 2 next year will be more widely viewed.

The other event he clued me in on will be next Tuesday, as the Maryland Society of Patriots meets to discuss a strategy for combatting the Maryland DREAM Act.

At that point there will be one week to go before the first hurdle so time will be of the essence.

A symptom or a disease?

Most of the readers around these parts know I follow the Delmarva Shorebirds closely, and I go to a lot of games over the course of a season. But something I’ve noticed this season came out when I was cleaning out the office over the weekend.

I found a stat sheet from about this point last season, and what it revealed was surprising: through 19 openings in 2010 the Shorebirds had drawn 65,290 fans. This year opening number 19 came yesterday; however, only 49,612 had attended the games to date. That’s about a 24% drop from season to season, and if the trend continues the club will fall well short of its previous low attendance figure.

Of course there are caveats to these stats; for one thing the preponderance of games for the Shorebirds thus far have been at home and they hit the 19 opening mark a week or so earlier than they did in 2010. Attendance seems to pick up once school is out and the weather gets warmer.

Yet the team is more competitive than last year’s model, sporting a 22-15 record thus far compared to 17-20 at the same point in 2010. They also have one of the best prospects in baseball (Manny Machado) and are far more offensively gifted then the 2010 team, hitting .276 as a squad and averaging over 5 1/2 runs a game. If chicks dig the longball, they should be happy as Delmarva’s hit 25 as a team so far in about 1/4 of the season (compared to 63 for a full season last year.)

So why aren’t people showing up?

It’s not ticket prices, because they haven’t appreciably increased, and the parking fee remains the same as last year, when it was instituted for the first time. Food isn’t much more expensive, either. Perdue Stadium is sporting a new line scoreboard which replaces most of the functions previously placed on the videoboard in right-center field (which is also working much better this year.) Promotions are reasonably comparable to last season’s lineup, and obviously the team has pushed ticket deals which include admission to the South Atlantic League All-Star Game in June.

In truth, the biggest difference seems to be that the sluggish economy and high gas prices are keeping people home. People who are having trouble making ends meet don’t have a lot of money to go to a ballgame, even if they’re spotted two free tickets for having a child who reads a certain number of books. The fireworks shows that used to draw 5,000 to 6,000 now bring in about 1,000 less, and over a season that will add up.

I don’t think we are at a critical point yet because there’s the financial backing from the Orioles – they pay the players. While there wasn’t a direct competitor to the Shorebirds in the immediate region, some of the financial struggles being encountered by independent baseball leagues across the country (a number of teams folded and leagues merged after the 2010 season) indicate the entertainment industry is hitting a rough patch in many places. (Maryland only has one independent team, the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs of the Atlantic League. Along with the Frontier League, these two leagues are perhaps the most financially solvent of the independent leagues out there.)

I bring this up because there’s always a number of cities which would love to acquire an affiliated minor league baseball team, as Delmarva did from Albany, Georgia after the 1995 season. While the SAL has been relatively stable over the last few years, there was one franchise move where Columbus, Georgia lost a team that moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky. (That team, along with the Lake County Captains, shifted to the Midwest League after the 2009 season for travel reasons.)

We are truly blessed to be a city of 30,000 in a county of under 100,000 people yet have a minor league baseball team which is relatively successful. And it may just be an anomaly that attendance so far is dragging well behind last year’s pace – a good homestand or two will get it caught up.

But the economic doldrums we’ve experienced here for the last half-decade or so (essentially since the real-estate bubble burst and the growth slowed to a crawl) may be finally taking its toll on this particular institution. It’s hard to imagine a summer on Delmarva without baseball, but if this trend continues for a few more years that may well happen. Seventh Inning Stretch is out to make a profit, and they may not be all that loyal to the area if attendance continues to wane.