Local baseball debate spawns parallel brouhaha in blogosphere

This will be the first summer since 1965 that Richmond’s baseball fans will have no local professional baseball to follow, to call their own. After last summer’s season ended the Richmond Braves packed up the franchise and moved it to the suburbs of Atlanta. Now the contest to do with baseball in Richmond isn’t about about […]

February 22, 2009; 5:57 PM • by FTRea

This will be the first summer since 1965 that Richmond’s baseball fans will have no local professional baseball to follow, to call their own. After last summer’s season ended the Richmond Braves packed up the franchise and moved it to the suburbs of Atlanta.

Now the contest to do with baseball in Richmond isn’t about about scoring runs. It’s about where to build a new baseball stadium, in order to attract another minor league tenant. The online debate has been nonstop for the last few weeks, as Richmond.com reports.

It’s still Boulevard vs. Shockoe Bottom and both teams have vocal supporters calling the plays. An article by Scott Bass published this week in Style Weekly gained approval from F.T. Rea at Slantblog, who took issue with the anonymous support the Shockoe Bottom camp receives online. The anonymous author of Life in the 804, however, took issue with Style Weekly’s report. Keeping up with this conversation could easily become Richmond’s newest spectator sport.

The controversy of this sports/real estate story has taken an odd turn in the last week. Click here to read, “Watching baseball in Richmond,” by Nicole McMullin.

Updates:

From Richmond Good Life here is a collection of many of the articles and commentaries available online about where to play pro baseball in Richmond — click here.

From Harry Kollatz at Richmond Magazine — “There’s No Crying in Baseball.”

February 22, 2009 5:57 PM 0