Frontier League Commissioner Bill Lee stood on a stage at the Capital West Christian Church events center July 16 and marveled at what he saw: about 350 youth baseball players and their parents showed up to hear him speak about the prospects of bringing an independent professional baseball team to Jefferson City.
Eighty-five sponsors supported the event.
"Many Frontier League teams don't have that many sponsors," Lee quipped.
Professional baseball failed once in Mid-Missouri when the Frontier League's Mid-Missouri Mavericks folded after three seasons in Columbia in the mid-2000s. Now, a Jefferson City group wants to build Mid-Missouri's first professional baseball stadium in an attempt to lure the Frontier League back to the region.
Jay Carroll began trying about four years ago to land a Frontier League team in Jefferson City. Now, Carroll leads a group of community members trying to create an expansion team called The Wanted.
For the past three years, Carroll has visited minor league stadiums across the Midwest trying to figure out what works well and what doesn't. Now, he said his group is looking for sites around Jefferson City for a potential stadium.
Carroll declined to name sites under consideration, but said any site needs to allow traffic to enter and exit reasonably quickly. Other concerns, like whether light and noise pollution will leak into surrounding areas, also will be taken into consideration, he said.
The Wanted's group hired Jefferson City design firm The Architects Alliance and Indiana firm Jones Petrie Rafinski to design the facility, which designed stadiums for the Class A South Bend Cubs and Class A Lansing Lugnuts. Cary Gampher, The Architects Alliance principal architect, worked on the Class AAA Oklahoma City Dodgers' Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark in the mid-1990s.
Before major design work begins, a site will need to be chosen, Gampher said.
"You want to stay fairly generic until you start looking at a site, then you mold that design to the site," Gampher said.
Lee and Carroll said any stadium will need to be multipurpose to be financially viable. Ten of 12 teams in the Frontier League have fields with artificial playing surfaces to make facilities more easily convertible, Lee said.
"It just can't be a baseball facility," Lee said. "If they're only going to build a baseball stadium, the facility is not going to be successful."
Frontier League stadiums generally seat 2,500-3,000 people, Lee said. To make facilities multipurpose, most incorporate standing room areas and grass seating areas down the foul lines and in the outfield without fixed capacities.
Minor league and independent baseball teams do not make a lot of money, Carroll said. So he wants a ballpark to be convertible to host events like football games, concerts and conventions. Carroll even envisions attracting a team from the United Soccer League, a 33-team league in Division II of U.S. soccer.
"If you are breaking even or a little better, you are doing well on the baseball aspect," Carroll said. "The way that it becomes successful is because you're adding other events inside a stadium."
Carroll heads the nonprofit 501(c)(3) Young Wanted Company, according to nonprofit database Guidestar. The group runs the Young Wanted, which organizes youth baseball and softball programs for children ages 10-16 in the Jefferson City area.
If Jefferson City lands a Frontier League team, Carroll wants the Young Wanted nonprofit to own it. Carroll hopes the group will be able to use profits from a team and ballpark to fund the Young Wanted baseball program and help low-income children across the region play baseball and softball.
"To play competitive sports these days, it's not uncommon for it to cost $1,500-$4,000 for one kid to play," Carroll said. "That's a lot of money out of a parent's pocket, and there are some great athletes that get left behind because of it."
Carroll declined to name other community members involved in the project.
Lee said he is confident in the potential ownership group and likes Carroll's leadership. This type of ownership would be the second nonprofit to own a team in Frontier League history, but the first to run a team like this, Lee said.
"We did one, but the way it was run, it wasn't truly a nonprofit," Lee said. "The more creative you become and the more community-oriented you make it, the more it's going to be adopted."
Learning from the past
Lee said he is optimistic about the project and talks took on a greater intensity after the July banquet. The Frontier League wants to expand by as many as four teams in the coming years, he said.
Geographically, Jefferson City sits on the western edge of the league's footprint, which stretches from the St. Louis suburbs of O'Fallon and Sauget, Illinois, east to the Pittsburgh suburb of Washington, Pennsylvania. With a population of just under 43,000, Jefferson City would be larger than six cities in the 12-team league.
Carroll and Lee cautioned, though, that the deal is far from done. If any Frontier League team ever takes the field in Jefferson City, it likely will be years before play begins because The Wanted's potential ownership group and Lee want to avoid mistakes made by the league during its last stint in Mid-Missouri.
Over three forgettable seasons in Columbia from 2003-05, the Mid-Missouri Mavericks went 92-186. For all of their brief history, the Mavericks were dogged by stadium issues. The team played at the University of Missouri's Taylor Stadium, which at the time lacked clubhouses for both teams.
"There were basically no locker rooms," Lee said. "It never really took hold there with that."
Lee also said issues with out-of-town owners plagued the team.
Attempts to build a stadium before the team arrived from its previous home of Canton, Ohio, never materialized, according to the Columbia Daily Tribune.
If Jefferson City lands a team, construction of a stadium likely will need to be finished because Jefferson City has no suitable options for a temporary facility, Lee said.
Carroll said the Mavericks flailed because of Columbia's loyalty to University of Missouri athletics and Division I NCAA sports.
"Columbia, they have their baseball team," Carroll said. "If you have a community come together and build a facility, it becomes a destination. That's the difference."
A recent experiment
In some ways, Jefferson City already has an example of what may happen if Jefferson City lands a pro baseball team.
The Jefferson City Renegades began playing at Vivion Field in 2017 as part of the MINK League, a wood-bat summer league for collegiate players with eight teams across portions of Missouri and Iowa.
In the earliest days of the search for a Frontier League team, Steve Dullard led the campaign. Dullard split with The Wanted's group, though, dissuaded by what he said was an expansion fee of $875,000.
Dullard saw the MINK League's $5,000 expansion fee as a sure way to bring baseball to Jefferson City.
Each Frontier League team operates with a $75,000 salary cap. Players generally make $600-$1,600 per month, according to the Frontier League.
MINK League teams do not pay their players, making the product more financially viable in a small city, Dullard said.
During their first two seasons, the Renegades struggled at the gate. This summer, the team averaged 300-350 fans per night, Dullard said. Attendance fell slightly because of a hot June, he noted.
It's also been a challenge to find enough corporate support and fund the Renegades' $50,000-$60,000 operating budget, most of which is comprised of travel expenses. Dullard said the team breaks even. Two-thirds of its budget comes from corporate support.
In the Renegades' third year, he hopes a 5K in October, a trivia night in February and a golf outing next spring will help raise more money for the team.
"We're paying the bills, and that's our first goal," he said. "We want to give back to the community, but this is still a business, and we need reserves."
Even if a pro team comes to town, Dullard said, the Renegades plan to keep on playing.
"We can still operate just fine," Dullard said. "Whether there is a competitor, it's great for the city."
A development tool
Proponents of The Wanted believe the team and a stadium can spur development around a ballpark. Carroll said his group has had discussions with a hotelier interested in building a hotel behind a stadium. Other restaurants, shops and even a water park could spring up around a ballpark, he said.
A ballpark could have indoor event space for wedding receptions and other gatherings that employ people year-round, he said. Overall, Carroll thinks a team and ballpark could employ "hundreds" of people directly and indirectly.
Jefferson City Mayor Carrie Tergin said in order for funds from the lodging tax to be used, a convention center must be attached to any project.
"It's too preliminary to say the word taxpayer funding," Tergin said.
Since voters approved a lodging tax increase in 2011, the 4-cent tourism fund has accumulated more than $4 million for construction of a convention center.
A ballpark could be funded through a combination of private donations and by using funds from the lodging tax, Carroll said.
As economic development drivers, ballparks have a checkered history. Some bring the economic development promised, while others fail to deliver.
Because independent clubs get no financial assistance from parent clubs, they stay in cities 25 percent as long as affiliated clubs, Nola Agha, a University of San Francisco professor of sports economics, said in a 2013 study.
"The result is independent leagues tend to exhibit more market volatility," Agha said.
Still, Agha said minor league baseball teams and stadiums at all levels have significant positive impacts because of the publicity they can bring local businesses and because of the redevelopment projects they can launch.
Lee said if a team comes to town, corporate businesses, small businesses and nonprofits will need to invest in a team to sustain it.
"It takes a lot of sponsorship, tickets, groups," Lee said. "That's why this is about adding quality of life to the Jefferson City area."
Carroll and Lee did not say when a decision will be made about whether Jefferson City gets a Frontier League team. Carroll also did not have an idea when design work on a stadium will be finished.
As the project progresses, patience will be key - as similar projects have sunk at the last minute or foundered after completion because they moved too quickly, Carroll said.
"When they come out, I want them to come out with guns blazing," Lee said. "You only have one chance to make a first impression."