’Cats set for reopening
Friday’s game is first at which attendance can be at full capacity
The Tri-city Valleycats are promoting Friday’s game against Equipe Quebec as “Reopening Day,” the first time Joseph L. Bruno Stadium will be open at 100 percent capacity since the coronavirus pandemic wiped out the 2020 season.
Weather permitting, the Valleycats will have the chance to fill all 4,500 of their chairback seats, plus the picnic area and berm seating that can allow more than 6,000 into “The Joe.”
“It means a lot,” Valleycats president Rick Murphy said. “I think as we’ve seen over the last three or four weeks, people are starting to get more comfortable coming out.”
With state restrictions being lifted, Valleycats officials say they’re optimistic business is gradually returning to normal with their attendance down dramatically from previous seasons.
In their first year in the independent Frontier League, the Valleycats are averaging 1,835 fans through 14 dates. That’s good enough to rank second in the Frontier League but more than 50 percent down from the 4,000plus the Valleycats averaged for 11 straight seasons from 2008 to 2018 when they were affiliated with the Houston Astros and belonged to the New York-penn League. It dipped slightly to 3,869 in 2019.
“It’s probably unfair for me to look at 2019 (and before) because it was a different model we had,” Murphy said. “We didn’t have a pandemic. I think you have to tailor your comments and expectations around where are we. Coming into 2021, we weren’t
even sure we were going to actually play. So to have a season and open up the park and see fans here and see kids and families enjoying themselves, really, it’s gratifying, and it’s a huge step in the right direction in terms of trying to get back to 2019.”
The Valleycats began the season with a COVID limited capacity of 2,400 with fans separated into vaccinated and non-vaccinated sections. That had increased recently to 3,000-3,500.
Valleycats general manager Matt Callahan pointed out the team’s attendance is driven by group sales to companies and organizations, who were reluctant to show up at the park in large numbers. That has begun to shift recently, Callahan said. The Valleycats also opened their 96-game season in May, before schools let out for the summer, compared to the mid-june start in the 76-game New York-penn League season.
“I also think that people are just getting more comfortable in doing things and going out to an environment where there’s more people gathering,” Callahan said. “I think that the arrow is pointing up and everything is heading in the right direction. It’s just going to take some time to get back to what we’re used to.”
In the more immediate future, Callahan said he thinks the Valleycats will sell out on Sunday. Tri-city has never failed to sell out its traditional Fourth of July home game, followed by fireworks, since the franchise began in 2002 with crowds often topping 5,000.
“I anticipate based on the interest that I’ve heard and seen so far that we’ll have a very good crowd that night,” he said.
Under the independent model, Murphy said he couldn’t say yet what the Valleycats will have to draw to survive. He said the estimated additional cost of playing independent ball is $300,000 or more with the team now paying the players and coaching staff and other expenses.
The Valleycats weren’t getting much for their buck earlier this season, but the team had won six of eight heading into Thursday’s doubleheader.
“I think the fans that I’ve talked to are pleasantly surprised,” Murphy said. “I had said in the preseason that the caliber (of play) is going be a higher level than the New York-penn League … Everybody’s coming up to me and saying this team’s exciting and this league’s exciting.”
Murphy said it could take until the 2022 season, with the Valleycats given a full offseason to promote their product, for business to get back to near prepandemic levels.
Valleycats fan Gary Smith of Latham keeps coming to games even
though the team is independent.
“I don’t care about the league,” he said. “It’s a nice park and it’s a good time and I can’t play baseball anymore, so I might as well watch somebody who can.”
Note: The Valleycats are adding three home games to their schedule. The July 23 to 25 series against Equipe Quebec will be played at Bruno Stadium, instead of Quebec, because of the ban on non-essential travel at the Canadian border.