Burlington Mayor Jon Billups smells something foul in the air this upcoming baseball season.
“It’s tough for me to reconcile what Major League Baseball is considering,” Billups said, referring to the possibility that the Burlington Bees may be on the chopping block. “Minor League Baseball is where people fall in love with the game.”
The Quad City River Bandits, Clinton LumberKings and Burlington Bees, have uncertain futures as MLB considers reducing its number of affiliated teams
Billups is one of 145 mayors throughout the country who have signed a mayors’ task force petition to protest the possible minor league closures.
As he pointed out, the petition isn’t just for mayors. It’s for everyone interested in saving minor league baseball and can be found at https://connect.chattanooga.gov/mayors-task-force-to-save-minor-league-baseball/?fbclid=IwAR2DThLhAZ6hzyjmBCdtBxgdE-sMVMwBEXoxd9sc2TcT8ROBFJhKEYYi2QE.
“This is bigger than Burlington, but to me, it’s all about Burlington,” Billups said.
In the MLB proposal, revealed last fall, are plans for 42 minor league teams to lose their MLB parent-club affiliation. Three of Iowa’s five minor league teams were on the initial cut list.
“I will fight tooth and nail to get anything and everything that we can,” Burlington Bees general manager Kim Parker said in a February interview with the Des Moines Register.
The decision is not official, yet. However, without major league team affiliation, minor league teams are likely to fail within a few years, statistics show.
Billups speculated the organization could be using affiliation-loss as a way to cajole cities with deteriorating minor league parks to improve the facilities.
But Burlington and several other cities have set examples for how a ballpark should look, and that’s what Billups can’t understand. Community Field is the opposite of ill-maintained outliers and money makers for the city.
A report from the Iowa Economic Development Authority determined that the Bees support, directly and indirectly, $4.7 million in wages in Des Moines County.
No Reason Given
At this point, all Billups and minor league managers can do is speculate.
“I don’t know what their agenda is because they haven’t given us a reason,” Parker said last month.
MLB has said it aims to improve working conditions at ballparks, cut down on travel and provide better hotel accommodations. MLB officials also are trying to address player compensation, a problem posed by 45 former players in a 2014 lawsuit against the league.
In a statement provided to The Des Moine Register, MLB maintains that affiliate contraction is not its goal. The league also said that it has plans for every affected team, but what that might mean for local clubs that lose big-league affiliations is unknown.
Double Standard in Dyersville
Nearly every Iowan loves "Field of Dreams" — the movie that inspired a tourist destination. In August of last year, MLB announced its intentions to hold its first-ever league game at the Field of Dreams facility in Dyersville.
It’s an interesting concept sure to sell tickets on name recognition alone, and a dream come true for many Burlingtonians. But in light of the proposed cuts, MLB’s promotional move sticks deep in Billups’ craw.
“They’re looking to spend millions in Dyersville,” Billups said.
Former Burlington Bees board member Al Ourth is also disillusioned by the league's decision.
“Does that even meet the criteria?” Ourth asked. “That wasn’t built to be an MLB field.”
On Aug. 13, 2019 — exactly one year before the Chicago White Sox play the New York Yankees in Iowa’s first-ever MLB game — construction began on a temporary 8,000 seat ballpark for the event.
It’s the only major league game that will be played there next year.
The design of the ballpark in Dyersville, including the shape of the outfield and the bullpens beyond the center-field fence, will pay homage to Comiskey Park, which was home of the White Sox from 1910-1990. The right-field wall will include windows to show the cornfields beyond the ballpark, which will overlook the former movie set.
A week ago, Iowa City Press-Citizen columnist Tony Brecht skewered the MLB for its hypocrisy, citing “plans to destroy more than 100 years of actual, not made-for-TV, Iowa baseball history.”
The Legacy of Burlington Baseball
There was professional baseball in Burlington long before Community Field, a history dating to 1889. The team was then known as the Burlington Babies, sticking around for a single season before returning in 1895. The team stayed in the area for another two years before leaving yet again, returning in 1904 as the Burlington River Rats of the Iowa State League.
Pro baseball left Burlington a third time from 1917 to 1923, and when the team returned in 1924 with the Mississippi Valley League, it started using the Bees as a nickname.
The original Community Field burned to the ground on June 9, 1971. It took two years to rebuild the stadium, with temporary seats used during construction, but no games were missed.
The stadium was upgraded in 1999, including new bleachers and box seating, followed by a much more extensive 2005 renovation that made use of more than $1 million from the Vision Iowa fund. Among the additions to the 3,200-seat stadium was a new press box and canopy behind the home plate. The cost of the renovation came in about $3 million.
The Class A Burlington Bees have brought a half-dozen Midwest League championships to Community Field since 1949, the most recent in 2008 and 2009.
“I would hate to see baseball leave Burlington,” Ourth said.
Submitted photo
Community Field is shown prior to a Burlington Bees game on a warm and sunny summer day.