Ohio has 2 MLB teams and NC has to fight to get 1? That’s ridiculous.
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Same with PA and Illinois
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And in Illinois, they are in the same city.
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Don’t forget the greatest offender, Missouri.
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No offense to any of the lovely people that happen to be from there, but I never understood how Missouri has any of the recognition it does. Is it historical or something, like it used to be very important? Seems like Arkansas or Oklahoma to me. They have 2 medium cities and an overall population that’s half of ours and below Indiana.
Even Google’s AI is stumped…
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Also home (currently) of the Kansas City Chiefs. That, alone, is enough for me to hate it. Go Bills.
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I think you’re right about it being for historical reasons. The gateway to The West (the St Louis Arch) and all that. I think it used to be much more important economically, sort of a cross roads of transportation. Didn’t they used to call Missouri a bellwether state in national elections too? I don’t think it is anymore!
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Because those medium sized cities were big cities 100+ yrs ago (especially St. Louis). The 1920 census showed Kansas City had a population of 325k, and St Louis at 773k. Meanwhile NC did not have a single city with 50k residents at that time (W-S was the largest at 48k).
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I just got back from a visit to St Louis and there’s no doubt in my mind that the region should have a baseball (and hockey and MLS) team, even if Kansas City also has teams in the same league. In addition to what @nicholas listed, St. Louis was at one point in the early 1900s the 4th-largest city in the country, and today it’s MSA at 2.9 million is significantly larger than the entire Raleigh-Durham-Cary CSA of 2.1 million. The city itself may not be growing the way Raleigh is and certainly has its fair share of problems, but if baseball doesn’t belong there it certainly doesn’t belong in Raleigh.
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My Dr. & her husband went to medical school in downtown St. Louis & also lived in a tower in downtown & Dr Kara said that downtown Raleigh is way beyond & way ahead of downtown St. Louis. They live in downtown Raleigh.
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2.5 million.
I’m not trying to take Missouri’s teams away from them. I just wasn’t getting how the state has any stature. I get it, I guess. They had a big city 100 years ago.
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Thanks for the redirect on the population of the Triangle.
It’s bad enough that we have to deal with folks isolating the Raleigh-Cary MSA population as our market size, but we also need to put our best foot forward every time we talk about our market and its potential. Population, growth rate, TV market, etc. are all important.
For those who want to explore the current markets and potential market’s populations and growth rates, this is my favorite site.Combined Metropolitan Areas (USA): Combined, Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas - Population Statistics, Charts and Map
What’s great about this particular site is that it uses the Census estimates.
What will be found is that the Triangle is already larger and growing faster than markets perceived as larger such as Las Vegas, Cincinnati, and Nashville. We are already larger than some existing markets, and are closing the gap on others.
By the time an expansion team would be operating in Raleigh, the Triangle will likely be 2.7M people.
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Seems to me that a better measurement than metro area populations for the market for major league baseball would be a simple 100 mile population radius comparison. This is a reasonable range of potential attendees. Metro areas criteria have variables that don’t have much of anything to do with how many people are close enough to get to a game within a reasonable driving distance. TV market is very close to the same thing. On that measurement, we are already ahead of existing teams.
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St. Loius was a top 10 city by population for about 100 years (peaked at #4 in 1870, 1900-1910)
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Some of these midwest or great lakes cities sports teams are vestiges of the population and industry they once had. They got their stadiums or arenas and teams established before their cities started their precipitous decline into being past their prime. The Ohio cities of Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati used to be super relevant and thriving industrial centers. Cleveland was a hub for United AIrlines until they bailed on it.
Memphis, same story, different airline. Delta once had a hub a Memphis it inherited from an airline it acquired, and now 2/3 of the airport is abandoned. Thank God they have Fedex there, because there’s not much else. For a city like Raleigh with as many nonstops to dozens of cities in the US, not even RDU has found a need to get a nonstop to MEM (until recently). A city made famous by Elvis and rivaled by some to be like New Orleans is now peak cringe and crime-ridden. The pyramid on the river that had to be repurposed as a Bass Pro Shop…don’t even get me started! For decades Memphis was THE city in Tennessee, and Nashville was a distant sleepy 2nd place by comparison to Memphis, until it was left in the dust by Nashville and it leveraging it’s music/bachelorette tourism vibe.
St. Louis and Kansas City have had the same decline especially as measured by the decrease of travelers there. Sure they have sports teams, but STL and MCI airports were also hubs for TWA and Braniff…They had 747’s flying nonstop to cities all over the world, but those airlines faded into obscurity and irrelevance after being world class airlines of their era. (And with them, so did those cities). Kansas City build a new terminal so it could permanently close the abandoned terminals and consolidate into fewer gates than it used to have. STL is now famous for gang violence and crime. Their air traffic was so busy 30 years ago they needed an additional runway (Raleigh’s is costing over a BILLION dollars). Now St. Louis has zero need for the billion dollar project they spent on.
All that to say, those are several cities that have pro sports because 50 years ago they were on the upswing or at their peak relevance. They’ve all been displaced for various reasons by “hot” cities like Nashville, Raleigh, Charlotte, and Austin, while other existing teams in FL, TX and the East Coast have stayed relevant. Although Baltimore is in a death spiral downtown; it’s grim there compared to 25 years ago near Camden Yards. Very sad. And don’t even get me started about Chicago and the mass exodus of people and companies for various financial, criminal, business and political reasons. As someone already pointed out, they’re about to lose their stadium to Indiana.
Portland is in a death spiral of their own making. I don’t think Dundon will try and move the Trailblazers until (if ever, but if he does it’ll be) after the MLB bid for Raleigh. He wouldn’t want to rock the boat, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he eventually moves them out of Portland. I mean look how Oklahoma City ended up with an NBA team. OK City? give me a break.
The timing of all the work by Lou’s group the past couple years, the publicity of Dundon and now 2 governors speaking out for NC baseball, specifically in Raleigh, the Hurricanes Stanley Cup win this year, and now SHOCKER even the stingy NC state lawmakers saying they think they can come up with some funding for Raleigh baseball stadium…wow, it seems like the perfect storm: GREAT TIMING. There definitely has been a lot of goings on behind the scenes to get us to the momentum it feels like the Triangle has right now for MLB to be here one way or another: expansion or move a team.
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OH so OVER 100 years ago then @GucciLittlePig LOL
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I hear Rome used to be a pretty big deal too…
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Instagram post putting out a potential location for MLB stadium across from Bandwidth HQ. I think this is a terrible idea and downtown should be the location.
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In order to make this work, they’d have to figure out a short transit solution like the AirTrain at JFK between the stadium complex and the baseball stadium. That way the district they are going to build around the Lenny can be leveraged all year long.
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This location makes zero sense. It would have no connection and no overlap with any of the parking or development from the Lenovo Center. It has way worse ingress/egress traffic capacity. They would basically have to build a whole mixed-use entertainment district 1/2 mile from their other mixed-use entertainment district.
It really needs to be:
- Cargill, 2) Spring Hill, 3) NC State football practice fields, or maybe 4) Blue Ridge & Beryl Rd
Seen lots of stuff on social media about this week maybe being a make-or-break time for MLB to Raleigh. All comes down to if the NC House agrees to put stadium funding framework into the budget that has been proposed by the NC Senate? And this could potentially let the TB Rays relocate to Raleigh instead of Raleigh waiting for an expansion team??
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