My curiosity got the better of me this morning.
I decided to look up the home page for the AirHogs, the team that passes for a minor-league baseball organization that plays some of its home games in Amarillo.
I discovered a serious travesty.
The AirHogs are known as the Texas AirHogs, given thatĀ the teamĀ splits its “home schedule” between Amarillo and Grand Prairie, a community in the Metroplex.
The home page lists its “home” game schedule by referring to the split between Amarillo and Grand Prairie.
http://airhogsbaseball.com/home/
Which brings me, I suppose, to the purpose of this blog post: the possibility of Amarillo getting an actual minor-league baseball franchise.
City officials have announced a schedule for the knock-down of a vacated Coca-Cola distribution plant across the street from City Hall. It’s coming soon. The lot will be cleared off, scraped clean and then the city will await construction of a $45 million ballpark — once known as the multipurpose event venue.
All the while, the city — or more specifically, the Local Government Corporation — is negotiating with a baseball franchise that currently plays ball in San Antonio. The hope here is that the San Antonio Missions, a Double A team affiliated with the National League San Diego Padres, will relocate to Amarillo once San Antonio lands a Triple A franchise.
The LGC has a huge task before it. Indeed, the negotiation likely is a key reason that interim City Manager Terry Childers agreed to stay on the job a while longer as the City Council continues its search for a permanent chief city administrator.
During the campaign prior to the November 2015 municipal referendum on the MPEV, retired Amarillo College President Paul Matney talked about Amarillo’s history as a “baseball town.” The voters agreed narrowly with Matney’s assessment and approved the referendum that gave the city the green light to proceed with the MPEV.
That history, though, is not being honored by the ridiculous half-and-half home schedule the AirHogs are playing. Heck, they aren’t even playing all their Amarillo home games at that dump called Potter County Memorial Stadium; they are playing some of those games at West Texas A&M University’s home field.
I am trying mightily to retain confidence that the LGC can pull this deal together and that Amarillo can get the kind of minor-league baseball that will make the city proud.