The World Around You

Take me out to the ball game. Take me out to the crowd. I have noticed an extra bounce in sports fans’ steps in the area lately. No, it’s not spring football, and only some of it is March Madness. No, double A baseball is returning to our area, and you can feel that little extra excitement. My wife and I picked up our ticket package on Saturday and Opening Day is just over two weeks away.

The Biscuits are coming and I cannot wait to see all the positive developments that will come from their debut. Only bringing professional baseball back to central Alabama would not necessarily have been a good thing. In fact, there was great potential for abject failure. This is not an area filled with baseball fans, previous teams have folded unceremoniously and the facilities previously available have been second-rate. There were so many ways for this to have been done wrong. Fortunately, the right choices have been made at every turn.

A new $26 million stadium, designed by the premiere firm in the business, is near completion, providing the perfect stage for the team’s future heroics. The name Biscuits has been much maligned, but has become a marketing goldmine. The potential for quirky tie-in events are endless and it embodies the spirit of family fun. The name has also brought attention to the area from national media and spurred local discussion since the day it was announced. Remember the old saying, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

On top of that the owners have brilliantly timed the rollout of each element of the team’s start-up to allow for maximum exposure and to keep excitement up. We’ve had the opening of the Biscuit Basket, uniform unveilings, job fairs and the first day to purchase tickets to get us through the period from last summer to now.

Finally, a sign of a group that knows what their doing, is the requirement for those with the best seats for season tickets to sign a three-year contract. This will help ensure bodies in the seats for years to come. Any team can get people to come once, but this should be an experience you will want to have again and again.

Yet, translating excitement and publicity into dollars is the ultimate goal of this entire enterprise. The new stadium will bring thousands of people to downtown Montgomery, which should result in even more development into the future. That development isn’t only good news for Montgomery, but for all of the tri-county area and beyond. Simply the idea of a revitalized downtown has brought about the planned expansion of the Civic Center, which offers the potential for many more large events to be staged in central Alabama. That means more tourist dollars for the entire area. This is a smart investment in the future of the entire region and those who can’t see that should look at what smart investment in the downtown of other southern cities has been able to accomplish.

So, I will be supporting the Biscuits all summer long at Riverwalk Stadium and I hope to see you there. Play Ball!