"This is where baseball matters"

Pat O'Connor, the new President of Minor League Baseball, was at the Hot Stove Banquet in Beloit earlier this week. Take a deep breathe...You'll get it in about ten seconds.

“This is where baseball matters,” he said to the crowd of over 100 at the Country Club of Beloit. “This is where baseball lives, breaths and breeds.”

O'Connor was talking about cities like Beloit that house one of the 160 minor league baseball teams in the country. It's in cities like Beloit, he said, where the game really matters - not a highly populated place like Sacramento or San Antonio, but a smaller town where the community can get to know the players and really appreciate the game.

Anything about a new stadium in there?

[Beloit Chairman of the Board Dennis] Conerton did mention that the team, along with the City of Beloit, have a plot of land in mind for a new stadium. However, with the untimely death of Ken Hendricks, one of the major financiers for a new stadium, it has been put on hold for now.

O'Connor knows it isn't easy for a city like Beloit to sustain a minor league team. Other cities have new, flashy stadiums with bigger markets to draw from, so it's not exactly fair to compare the Snappers to the Dayton Dragons or the Lansing Lugnuts

“It boils down to economics of the world today,” O'Connor said. “There's increasing pressure on the expense side and the demands for revenue generation are above and beyond what some markets can do.”

How about the Snappers in 2008

One thing that has helped the Snappers in recent years is the players the Twins have sent them. Beloit has made the playoffs every year it has been affiliated with the Twins and [Former Minnesota General Manager] Ryan believes next year's team will be very talented as well.

“We try to send good players and good men here,” said Ryan, a Janesville native. “This year's team should be very talented.”