For the front-office staff of the Salt Lake Gulls, the final days of AAA baseball in Utah were harrowing.
The team's owner, Roger Russell, made the mistake of borrowing $350,000 against his share of concession sales to buy the club. Most minor-league teams earn a large share of their profits from concession sales, and despite record attendance the year before, the Gulls didn't have enough cash.By August 1984, the team's bank account was empty.
"Until that point, Roger had kept pulling us out of the fire somehow," recalls Steve Pearson, who was assistant general manager.
"But at the end of July, we're scheduled to go on a 16-game road trip. There's no money in the bank. No money for tickets, meals or hotels."
At the last minute, Russell wrote checks to cover all the expenses. The team left, and the checks bounced.
When the team returned, the Internal Revenue Service froze its bank accounts and the power company turned off the lights at Derks Field. The radio station that carried Gulls' games cut the team off in the middle of a broadcast, never to return, and the front-office phones were disconnected.
The Pacific Coast League agreed to pay to turn the lights back on, but the Gulls limped through their final home stand by paying some people in cash from the tickets sold each night and by simply not paying others.
"We as a staff felt an obligation to ride it out," Pearson said. "We knew we wouldn't get paid."
To add to the troubles, the Gulls were good. The team qualified for the playoffs. But by then the financial well was dry. Team officials negotiated to play every playoff game in Edmonton, Alberta.
"Knock on wood, we got beat early," Pearson said. "We got back to Derks, put the keys on the table and walked out the door."
Such was the ignominious departure of AAA baseball in Salt Lake City.
AAA is the highest level of professional baseball next to the major leagues. A year after it left, the Trappers, a team in a rookie league - the lowest level - moved to town. To many fans, the city had sunk to baseball's lowest depths. Instead of teams from Phoenix and Las Vegas, the new team would play the likes of Great Falls, Mont., and Medicine Hat.
Miracle or farce?
Some call what happened during the next eight years a minor marketing miracle. The Trappers broke national rookie-league attendance and winning records and readied the city for a triumphant return to AAA in a new stadium. During its last two years, the team drew more fans than some AAA teams in only half as many games.
Others call what happened a farce, saying the Trappers "papered the town" with free tickets and hurt the market. Whoever tries to sell baseball with the higher expenses of a AAA team will face resistance from fans used to collecting free tickets from stacks on the counters of their neighborhood grocery or department store, they say.
Here are examples of how the Trappers marketed, according to transcripts from presentations made by Trappers' General Manager Dave Baggott at baseball promotions seminar in El Paso:
- In 1992, the team got Nordstrom to sponsor "Roll-back-the-clock night," complete with fireworks and old-style uniforms. In return, the team gave Nord- strom 40,000 tickets to one game, despite the fact that Derks holds only 10,000. Anyone buying anything at the store before the game received four free tickets. The attendance that night was 11,382, and concession sales topped $20,000.
- In 1991, TCI Cablevision paid $5,000 and received 75,000 tickets for one game. The company distributed these in its monthly billing statements. The team then let the company sell cable subscriptions to the overflow crowd at the game. The company reportedly sold enough subscriptions to cover its investment.
- In 1991, SpaFitness paid $4,500 to sponsor a game. The team placed 50,000 coupons for $8 family passes in the spas and allowed aerobic instructors to perform between innings. The company also was allowed to sell memberships during the game and to allow fans to test equipment.
Critics argue AAA teams can't succeed that way. Utah Jazz owner Larry H. Miller said AAA teams have to sell a lot of season tickets to be successful. And season ticket holders don't like it when everyone around them gets in for free.
Joe Buzas, owner of the AAA Portland, Ore., team scheduled to begin play in Salt Lake City next season, has a reputation for not giving away tickets. He ran into resistance when he first bought the team in Portland from a man who frequently gave away tickets.
"I'd pull into a gas station and the attendants would say, `Hey, Joe, how about some free tickets?' I'd say, `Oh yeah? Are you going to give me a free tank of gas?' " Buzas recalls.
Guilty of being successful?
Baggott doesn't know what all the fuss is about.
"Why am I being persecuted for putting people in the stands?" he said. "If I'm being accused of being successful, I'm guilty. I'm sorry for giving too good a deal."
If he had simply opened the gates, without any promotions, Baggott said he would have drawn only 900 to 1,200 "die-hard" fans to each game.
"If you can fill the stadium and get full-price for each ticket, you should be king of the minor leagues," he said. "But it's not going to happen. Nobody in baseball charges full-price for every ticket."
Instead, he made a practice of filling the stadium, getting money up front from the sponsor and selling a lot of popcorn and snow cones.
"Your total gross numbers are way up with promotions, and it's better for the players. They like playing in front of large crowds."
Baggott said baseball has to be entertaining to be successful. That's why his team played bingo with fans during the game and provided one promotion after another.
"As a former player, this may sound strange, but baseball games can be the most boring things in the world," he said. "It's a three-hour game, with about four minutes of actual action. If your team falls behind early and you aren't entertaining people, they're leaving.
"We believed it didn't matter whether we won or lost. We wanted people to come home and when people asked who won, they might say they don't remember but they had a great time.
"I believe it's totally because of the success of the Trappers that we are a good triple-A market now."
At least one sports-marketing expert agrees. Jim Uwers, head of the sports-marketing graduate program at the University of Utah, said successful teams market aggressively. And, while the U. and other schools continue to send graduates into the sports world every year, he expects more and more teams will follow the example set by the Trappers and others.
"More teams are looking at the total product, taking care of everything from the time you leave home to the end of the game."
The Jazz are no strangers to aggressive marketing, and Miller concedes the Trappers may have helped the local baseball market.
"They may have sensitized segments of the market to baseball who weren't before."
Whether or not everyone paid, Derks Field seated more fans more often during the Trappers' era than at any other time in the city's history. And the team succeeded in erasing the bitter memories of the Gulls.
Pearson, who was hired as the Trappers' first general manager after surviving the Gulls' last season, recalls the difficulty he had selling advertising the first year.
Creditors still were fighting the Gulls for money.
"A lot of what we did, we paid cash for," he said. "That allowed us to get the confidence of the people again."
Still, only 57,683 fans saw the team that first year. It took aggressive marketing and a record-breaking 29-game winning streak in 1987 to turn things around.
It's unlikely the next team will face such a challenge.
Next: Would a downtown stadium have made more sense?
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(Chart)
Game attendance
Attendance per game for Salt Lake teams
Spectators per game
1948-57 Bees 1,746 112,229 per season
(Class C, Pioneer
League)
1958-65 Bees 1,756 134,891 per season
(AAA, Pacific Coast
League)
1967-69 Giants/Padres 1,865 61,546 per season *Rookie-league teams play rougly
(Rookie, Pioneer League) half the number of games of the
other games.
1970-1984
Padres/Angels/Gulls 2,652 2,652 188,294 per season
(AAA, Pacific Coast League)
1985-92 Trappers 4,597 162,028 per season
(Rookie, Pioneer League)