Mobile not willing to give up on BayBears yet
Even though an Arizona based owner group has acquired the Mobile BayBears and the group is looking for a possible relocation, the city of Mobile says it doesn’t want to give up on the ball club.
The new ownership group, BallCorps LLC, wants to move the club to Madison AL, a part of the Huntsville metropolitan area, where a new ballpark could be built as part of a downtown revitalization project.
A few days ago, the Southern League approved the sale of the club to the aforementioned ownership group but an approval of a possible move is still far away as the ownership group needs to tell where the team is going, and so far it is not even sure if Madison will be the future home of the BayBears .
Mobile city officials announced they want to make a pitch to keep the team in the city.
“Until it is a done deal, I hope the City of Mobile is in play and we will make our pitch to the new owner, whoever it may be,” said Mobile Mayor, Sandy Stimpson. On Tuesday, Mobile’s mayor did all he could to assure his city that there’s no signed contract saying the team has been sold, or that the BayBears will be relocating. While that’s technically true, a local news station obtained confidential document over the summer, showing the potential new owner is interested in moving the team to Madison. The Deputy Director of Communication for Mobile`s mayor, Laura Byrne, insisted that nothing is official yet. “There is no contract to either sell or move the BayBears team at this point.”
If a new stadium is the major reason for a move of the team, the city of Mobile can see if that is an option. “Our overall goal is for the Baybears to stay in Mobile,” explained Byrne. “We’ll work as well as we can with the current owner, or the new owner to find a happy medium to figure out a way that it can be successful here.”
The current home of the BayBears, Hank Aaron Stadium, is only twenty years old. Sure it doesn’t have many bells and whistles, one may wonder if a structure of that age is too old to house a baseball team.