A thought experiment
With the Carolina Mudcats soon moving 30 miles east, could the Shorebirds someday suffer the same fate?
While I was working up the beginnings of my July month in review (I use the previous season’s post as a template so I have the numbers handy) I noticed that Delmarva would be the last regular-season home opponent for the Carolina Mudcats. For those who don’t know, the Mudcats are moving at the conclusion of the 2025 campaign.
After 35 years at Five County Stadium as, at first, a AA affiliate of the Pirates, Rockies, Marlins, and Reds in the Southern League, and, since 2012, a member of the advanced-A Carolina League as an Indians, Braves, and Brewers affiliate, the team is leaving Zebulon, just east of Raleigh, and moving further east to Wilson, a city on the state’s I-95 corridor. (The team will maintain its affiliation with Milwaukee; the Brewers have spent eight seasons as the Mudcats’ parent club.) Wilson, in turn, has had a team in the collegiate wood-bat Coastal Plain League since 2013 - for a few years, one of the other teams in that league was the Savannah Bananas before they went full-time into the entertainment business. It will be Wilson’s first affiliated team since the 1973 season. (And they won’t retain their longtime “Tobs” name, changing their identity to the Warbirds.) On the flip side, presumably the CPL could move right into Zebulon without missing a beat, since the travel wouldn’t be an issue.
While our team is set as far as affiliation through the 2030 season and has other agreements with the county stretching out as far as 2038, it’s also true that attendance has been on the decline the last few years. As you likely have read in my monthly comparisons, we’ve lagged well behind the patronage pace of the last two years this season and thus far this decade haven’t come close to the numbers the Shorebirds routinely drew in the 2010s - granted, they play four fewer home games now but they’re way more than 12,000 short of the previous numbers. It very well could be that Seventh Inning Stretch, LLC - the entity that owns the Shorebirds and two other teams - may be all right with that, but they also might wash their hands of our team as their lone East Coast property, selling out to one of the large entities buying up minor league franchises like they were classic baseball cards.
Yet Delmarva is fertile ground for minor league baseball - there are no competing teams for at least two hours in any direction (with our summer traffic) so it’s an attractive area. But is Salisbury the right location for a team when the region’s population base, both year-round and for summer tourism, is closer to the ocean?
Ponder this for a moment: The Eastern Shore is littered with abandoned golf courses that couldn’t survive in an expensive market where retirees can’t keep playing the rounds they used to. What if someone made an offer the golf course owner at Lighthouse Sound couldn’t refuse to give up that site for a new Shorebirds stadium that would be closer to the population center of the area and have the potential of a bayfront view and Ocean City’s high-rise condo row as a center field backdrop? By that time, the proposed widening of the Route 90 bridge would be complete, giving fans from the beach easier access to the new stadium.
If that were to occur, it’s likely Salisbury would become a great potential host of an MLB Draft League team such that Frederick has now (and Aberdeen may replace in the next year or two as the Ironbirds’ future is in doubt.) That would at least keep some people going to Perdue Stadium, although it’s doubtful that we’ll average the 2,613 a game Frederick did last season in 37 openings. A more realistic figure would be about 1,500 to 2,000 on the average, which - truth be told - isn’t much less than we’ve drawn so far this season.
If Salisbury can keep the Shorebirds, that’s great. Hopefully they will for a long time to come. But I’m sure I’m not the only person who has thought about this possibility given the explosive population growth of eastern Sussex County and the access such a stadium in West Ocean City would have to tap into that market rather than drive an hour each way to Salisbury.
Baseball is now a business, and if business isn’t improving then there may be some alternative that’s more attractive. Unfortunately, new facilities for the players don’t put butts in the seats, particularly if the team on the field isn’t that good.
In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now. You can also like and restack this piece so others can enjoy it.