JetHawks Post Wins for Owners, Lancaster

On the field, the Lancaster JetHawks, a Class A minor league baseball team, played only .500 ball this year. But financially, the JetHawks were a clear-cut winner--both for the city and the team’s owners--in the club’s first season here.

A year ago the team, then known as the Riverside Pilots, finished dead last in attendance in the 10-team California League with a meager 56,601 fans.

This year, in a spanking new city-owned stadium, the JetHawks drew 316,611 fans--or 4,523 per game--third best in the league. The Lancaster stadium has only 4,500 seats, but there’s more room on two picnic grounds inside the park.

“The bottom line is we had a successful year,” said Matt Ellis, the JetHawks’ general manager and part-owner. “From a company standpoint, we lost a lot of money in Riverside the year before--we lost more than six figures. So we’re pleased to get that money back.”

Many people see minor league baseball as a sport or an entertainment form, but in the end, it’s really a business.

Lancaster did well by the JetHawks too. The team pays the city the highest fixed-cost lease in the California League, at $300,000 a year plus maintenance costs.

And the city is starting to sell 52 vacant acres next to the ballpark just west of the Antelope Valley Freeway. Lancaster expects to close a sale soon on about 1.5 acres for a jumbo-size McDonald’s-Chevron complex for $1.2 million, or $20 per square foot, contrasted with 41 cents per square foot when the city bought the land long ago.

“Before there was a baseball stadium, I’d cold-call developers and no one was interested. That’s not the case now. This sells itself,” said Stafford Parker, Lancaster’s redevelopment director.

Parker is still talking to developers about selling the remaining acreage, and he expects this bare dirt to turn into a commercial sports entertainment center, with restaurants, movie theaters and such.

The city floated a five-year, $7.5-million bond to help pay for the $14.9-million construction costs for the stadium. By selling the rest of this land, Parker said, “We’ll be able to pay for anything we owe on the baseball stadium.”

According to Barron’s, $4 billion has been spent in the United States this decade to build sports stadiums, much of it in public funds for major league sports complexes. Part of this is the price tag cities pay in their frantic competition to lure sports franchises away from other cities.

And city officials often justify these expenditures by talking of possible financial benefits that a new sports team will bring to their community.

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But a study by a Stanford University economist concludes that most fans at sporting events come from only a 20-mile radius, and if there were no sporting event, most of that money would be spent on other leisure and entertainment nearby.

Still, if Parker’s plan works out, Lancaster’s new sporting attraction will end up paying for itself.

Matt Ellis and his father, Michael, the team’s president, anticipated that Lancaster would be a baseball-hungry city. And when they sold out tickets for opening day in three hours, and when 2,000 fans showed up for an open practice, Michael Ellis said, “We realized it was bigger than we ever expected.”

Although the JetHawks were a big hit in the community, the Ellises, who own another minor league team in Canada, know that most teams playing in a new stadium enjoy a three-year honeymoon period of increased attendance.

“We have a lot of work to do to keep it going and keep the fans happy. Our challenge will be to keep the crowds up, and not just in year one,” Michael Ellis said.

The JetHawks had about 2,300 season ticket holders this year, and the Ellises hope to nudge that up to 2,500 to 3,000 next year.

They probably will not raise ticket prices next year. And while they have talked about adding bleacher seats to handle overflow weekend crowds, they probably won’t risk spending the extra money now. “One season doesn’t necessarily indicate how things will be three, four, five years down the road,” Michael Ellis said.

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Before the season, the Ellises thought they could break even if they drew 210,000 fans. But they spent more money than they anticipated, such as $60,000 extra on their scoreboard, contributing to a final scoreboard bill of about $300,000, Matt Ellis said.

And while their final numbers are not tabulated yet--the city’s latest utility bill isn’t in--Michael Ellis guesses the break-even point was drawing 230,000 fans.

Matt Ellis was also pleased to draw 4,100 fans to a game between the Silver Bullets, a professional women’s baseball team, and a team of local high school players and radio personalities when the JetHawks were out of town. He says he needs to keep creating new attractions to keep things fresh.

Even before the season, the Seattle Mariners were happy enough with the situation in Lancaster to sign a four-year extension to the player-development contract with the JetHawks.

“The whole arrangement has been outstanding,” said Larry Beinfest, who oversees the Mariners’ minor league operations. “The facilities are all first-class. The playing surface is immaculate.”

Lancaster Municipal Stadium, commonly referred to by its nickname, the Hangar, reflects how minor league baseball has changed in the past 10 years.

Instead of rickety, wooden ballparks with “character,” new parks such as the Hangar are miniature versions of major league stadiums with all the amenities, just fewer seats.

“The new facility was probably the best that I’ve experienced first-hand,” said JetHawk Manager Dave Brundage, who played nine seasons in the minors before spending the last two as manager. “To be in something like that every day, sometimes it doesn’t seem like minor league ball.”

On the field, the JetHawks had the traditional promotions. There was the nightly race around the bases between a child and K.B., the giant, purple hawk mascot; team employees throwing souvenirs into the stands; and a version of “Let’s Make a Deal,” in which a fan inevitably chose what was in the box instead of the free tickets, and usually wound up with a rubber chicken or an old shoe.

But some promotions didn’t work as well. The team tried baby races, in which two toddlers crawl on a blanket in front of the dugout toward their mothers. Problem was, the babies usually refused to move in the presence of several thousand screaming fans.

The biggest excitement, as seems to be the case with most minor league teams, was generated by fireworks. The Fourth of July drew the largest crowd of the season at 6,778.

The second-largest crowd--6,618--came July 19, when Randy Johnson, one of the best pitchers in the major leagues, was scheduled to start for the JetHawks while rehabilitating from a back injury. But hours before he was to pitch, doctors told Johnson that his back wasn’t sufficiently healed, and his start was scratched.

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Instead of Johnson, the fans got to see major leaguer Chris Bosio make his second rehabilitation start for the JetHawks. And Bob Wolcott, hero of the Mariners’ victory in first game of the 1995 American League Championship Series, pitched a game for the JetHawks when his normal turn in the major league starting rotation came up during the All-Star break.

Aside from a few major league cameos, JetHawk fans had to be content with potential major leaguers. Some will be back next year, while others will move up the Mariners’ ladder. Of the 38 players who appeared on the JetHawk roster this season, four are considered virtual locks to reach the majors--outfielders Jose Cruz Jr. and Shane Monahan, and pitchers Greg Wooten and Ken Cloude.

Infielder Jason Cook, a longshot for the major leagues, may never be as big a star anywhere else as he was in Lancaster. Cook, a 24-year-old from Virginia, quickly became a fan favorite for his solid performance on the field and his willingness to sign so many postgame autographs that some joked he ought to run for mayor.

“I had a good time playing in Lancaster,” Cook said. “I thought [the fans] were very supportive.”