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Roll of the Dice: Warthogs betting that ballpark packs 'em in
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Published: April 21, 2008
The Golden Age of Sports in Winston-Salem swept through the town in 1947. By 1948 it was history.
A whole lot of people are betting a whole lot of money that another is on the horizon.
In 1947, the Winston-Salem Cards drew 223,507 fans to Southside Park, a dramatic increase from 127,000 the year before.
By the end of 1948, the attendance was back down to 141,664 and would never again approach 200,000 during the succeeding seven seasons at Southside Park or during the 52 seasons that Winston-Salem's professional baseball teams have played at Ernie Shore Field.
The team's planned move to a new ballpark on the western edge of downtown by next season is predicated on the belief that fans will flock to watch baseball in Winston-Salem like never before.
The new ballpark located hard by Business 40 will almost assuredly boost attendance dramatically. But for the investment to pay off, the team will have to draw far, far more than the 161,180 that showed up at Ernie Shore Field last season, or even the 223,507 that attended games at Southside Park 61 summers ago.
The Greensboro Grasshoppers have drawn more than 400,000 each year since they opened a new ballpark now known as NewBridge Bank Park in 2005. Their average for the three seasons has been 425,569.
By comparison, the Grasshoppers averaged 181,486 fans a year in their final three seasons of 2002, 2003 and 2004 in War Memorial Stadium.
Can owner Billy Prim of the Warthogs and his brand-spanking new ballpark with all the modern amenities mobilize the Winston-Salem fan base the way that the Greensboro ownership changed the local dynamics 25 miles away? Can he do what no one -- from a long list of baseball and hockey owners to athletics-department and marketing officials at Wake Forest and Winston-Salem State -- has been able to do and make Winston-Salem a really good sports town?
He's betting on it.
"I told Ron Wellman, one way or another he and I are going to make this a good sports town," Prim said, referring to the director of athletics at Wake Forest. "And I would agree that we haven't done as much in the past.
"But we think we can and we think people in this community are excited about that."
To stoke the embers into flames, Prim and his partner Flip Filipowski have enlisted Mandalay Baseball Properties to manage and operate the team. Since its inception in 2002, Mandalay Baseball Properties has cut a wide swath through minor-league baseball with its wildly successful performances at Dayton, Frisco (Texas), Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and Staten Island.
The numbers have been much more modest at two other Mandalay clubs, Hagerstown of the Class A South Atlantic League and Erie of the Class AA Eastern League, though it bears mentioning that Hagerstown's Municipal Stadium was built in 1930 and was last renovated in 1995.
Teams almost inevitably get a spike in attendance during the first seasons in a new park, so Prim was asked why he didn't let the current staff run the team for a few years before turning the operation over to Mandalay at the first sign of slippage.
"It's all about having the right management in place," Prim said. "This is the right management.
"I've got a business to run and this is not my full-time job. Flip and I have a big investment here and it's something that we want to make sure is successful for our investment and for the community. So we wanted to bring in the best people possible to operate this thing and make sure it's a success.
"And we think we have that in Mandalay."
Wellman said, in his mind, another Golden Age of Sports in Winston-Salem has already begun. He said that the town has changed dramatically since he arrived at Wake Forest in 1992, and he cites as evidence both the increase of tickets sales at the Deacons' basketball and football games, as well as the rise of Deacon Tower with its modern amenities at BB&T Field.
He said he has no doubt that Prim and Filipowski are making the right bet.
"We see more individuals getting involved, more corporations getting involved," Wellman said. "The sale of the premium seats in the Deacon Tower really shocked us. And we sold out in two months. We thought we would move forward with the project if we sold 75 percent of the seats in two months.
"We sold over 100 percent in every category of premium seats. I think that's a barometer, because a lot of those seats have gone to people who are not Wake Forest alums, but who have made a long-term commitment."
Trivia: Ballparks
.Single -- Where did Bill Mazeroski of the Pittsburgh Pirates hit the home run to beat the New York Yankees in the 1960 World Series?
Double -- Where did Jackie Robinson play his first major-league game?
Triple -- Where did the George Brett pine-tar incident take place?
Homer -- Where did Nolan Ryan record his 3,509th strikeout to eclipse Walter Johnson's all-time record?
Around and about
Wake Forest's baseball team has been down pretty much all season, but it's not out of the race to make the ACC Tournament, scheduled for Jacksonville, May 21-25. Eight teams qualify for the tournament, the two top from each division and four others with the best conference records, regardless of division. The Deacons are 7-13 after yesterday's loss at Virginia, but through the weekend only Florida State (18-3) and N.C. State (12-8) in the Atlantic Division and Miami (17-2), North Carolina (16-4) and Virginia (14-7) were in comfortable positions of making the tournament. The Deacons' final three series are at Georgia Tech next weekend, at home against Duke (May 9-11) and at home against Boston College (May 15-17).
Trivia Answers
Single -- Forbes Field.
Double -- Ebbets Field.
Triple -- Yankee Stadium.
Homer -- Olympic Stadium.
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