What is the future for top level sports in our city?
That is a question we need to consider, and we need to find a positive answer sooner than later.
Sunday evening it was a generally nice one, warm enough to not wear a parka, but no mosquitos. The sun was generally out.
And the Yorkton Cardinals took to the field at Jubilee Park for the home opener of the Western Major Baseball League season.
The game was against the Cardinals’ main nemesis in the league the Melville Millionaires.
You might have expected a big crowd filling the bleachers, but you would have been wrong in that expectation.
The posted attendance was 180, and that might have erred on the side of appearances just a little bit.
A couple of hundred fans does not cut it in terms of paying the bills in a league which streches to Fort McMurray and Brooks in Alberta, and across the southern half of Saskatchewan.
The league is so expansive because it is trying to attack top college eligible ballplayers from across Canada and the United States to the Canadian Prairies for three months of top level, developmental baseball.
What does that mean for fans?
Simply put it’s the best baseball played in Saskatchewan and Manitoba night in, and night out, throughout the season.
Several players who spent time in the WMBL have ended up in the majors, including three former Cardinals, most notably current Angel’s shortstop Andrelton Simmons.
Granted the local Cardinals have struggled to be competitive in terms of the playoffs almost since inception, but that does not detract from the generally entertaining brand of baseball fans can expect any night at Jubilee Park.
Sure the lack of playoff wins might be an excuse for some fans to stay home, and others will lament the 400-foot centre field where home runs go to die.
But the reality is, if we want Yorkton to have quality sports entertainment in the summer, the WMBL Cardinals offer it, but they won’t survive on 180 fan nights either.
And just to be clear the situation is not unique to the Cardinals.
The Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League Terriers are regularly flirting with red ink at season’s end.
This is a team in a hockey mad nation which has made long playoff runs far more often in the last decade than they have watched from the outside once the regular season winds down. In that time they have twice gone to the Western Canada Cup, and once advanced to win the national crown at the RBC Championship.
They should be playing to generally huge crowds, but that is not the case.
While the team’s annual general meeting has not yet been held for 2016, a loss on operations this past season seems highly likely.
So the question is, in a city of near 20,000, with a proud sports heritage, why do the Terriers and Cardinals struggle to find fans to help keep the team’s financially viable?
If we, as a community don’t figure that out, we stand to one day awake with our top teams gone. It could happen sooner than most may think given operational costs these days. If either club were to be lost it would be unfortunate as they supply a high level of sport entertainment. More people just need to get out to games to see that.
