🔒Letter to the Editor: The Bravehearts’ winning battle

Dear WBJ Editor Brad Kane,

As a longtime subscriber to the WBJ, I enjoy your publication and admire your and your staff’s journalistic courage and integrity. Everyone knows that the WBJ is the only local media outlet to raise questions and scrutinize the City of Worcester’s enticement and investment in the most expensive minor league ballpark in American history.

I also appreciate your frank observation that the Bravehearts compete with Worcester’s new AAA team insofar as we are both summer spectator baseball options in the city. This is a fact that notable city and community leaders have never publicly acknowledged because, obviously, no one wants to be responsible for harming a small, local, family owned and operated business. I learned in 2018 that we have very skillful political leaders in this community.

Despite my admiration for your publication, I cannot help but to remark that your opinion piece in the April 18, 2022 edition entitled, “Fighting a losing battle” was both imprecise and defeatist. It was unhelpful to my small business. After all, who really wants to be part of or support an alleged losing team? Is it a piece that you would have written about another local business like a restaurant? Your headline flies in the face of an underdog story and cuts against the grain of our small but mighty staff of gritty, happy warriors led so ably by the indomitable and indefatigable Dave Peterson.

To be clear, our situation is not a losing battle. The Worcester Bravehearts organization is built on a culture of success and winning and we have no intention of stopping. On the field, the team has won 4 league championships, been in 7 consecutive championship series, and 8 consecutive league playoffs in every one of our seasons to date. That does not happen by accident.

On the business side of things, as your colleague Mr. Buscarino noted in his piece, “Change-up,” the Bravehearts achieved 6th best in the entire country for summer collegiate baseball attendance in 2019 after building our fanbase year over year since 2014. As a staff, we are immensely proud of that year over year growth particularly because it bucks the trend of minor league franchises across sports all around the country who typically speed out of the gate in their first year and then peter out and shrink from there. The Bravehearts hustled to fuel attendance growth until the bottom fell out of the world in March 2020.
Show me a spectator baseball team at any level anywhere in America in 2020 or in 2021 and I’ll show you a business that suffered in attendance and in virtually all key business metrics. 

In 2020, the Bravehearts operated but with zero fans thanks to government restrictions and having to play our games in Leominster away from our beloved Fitton Field home. In a technical sense then, our attendance was actually up by 1229% in 2021 rather than down by 52% as your subheadline purports. 

While nearly every baseball team in this country ceased operating in 2020, the Bravehearts and the Futures League did not. We boldly yet responsibly operated focusing on our league’s mission and weathering the storm. We called it the “improbable season” and there were silver linings. Our league fielded superbly talented local players on the field while also standardizing and enhancing our league’s live video stream platform for all games. In 2020, live Futures League games were featured for the first time on several NESN broadcasts for a regional audience to enjoy while boosting exposure for our players, staff, and league. All players and staff throughout the league remained healthy and happy all summer long that year. Then once the 2020 season was over, the Futures League went out and recruited the only two available minor league baseball teams in our geographic footprint that Major League Baseball had cut along with 40 other teams around the country. The Vermont Lake Monsters in Burlington, VT and the Norwich Sea Unicorns in Norwich, CT both joined the Futures League for the 2021 season to the delight of their communities and fans.

A year later, the Bravehearts’ battle in 2021 was not so much against new AAA competition and the most expensive minor league baseball stadium in America, but rather against persistent covid effects and restrictions throughout the community. Until late spring, we were not certain that the Bravehearts would even play games back at Fitton Field out of respect for Holy Cross College’s covid policies and restrictions. Our sales staff’s cubicles were vacant and dusty in 2021 because our outreach targets such as schools were still operating remotely and many, if not most businesses were disoriented and struggling mightily such that the last thing on their minds was organizing their employees, customers, and families to go to the ballpark in the summer of 2021. Recall that it was not until an unexpected announcement from the governor in mid-April 2021 when he declared that everything would be wide open as of Memorial Day weekend 2021.

Our typical sales rhythm involves our staff hammering telephones and inviting every company, charitable group, school, and youth sports team who answers their phones from January 2 through late May to our games. In a usual year, by our opening day, we will have presold half of all the tickets we will sell all summer long before a single pitch is thrown. In that way, our attendance success is usually assured. 2021 was different. Without a sales staff and with profound uncertainty everywhere, we were forced to rely on organic attendance, rather than presold and preplanned attendance.

Despite not having a meaningful sales season, I was encouraged that the Bravehearts built up our attendance momentum over the course of the 2021 season culminating with a sellout crowd for our final home game on Friday, August 13, even while our AAA friends in their shiny new stadium minutes down the road were also hosting a home game that same evening. The city was treated to dueling fireworks shows that Friday night.

This is the narrative that I wish Mr. Buscarino had included in his piece. I also wish we had the opportunity to respond to Professor Matheson’s observations and conclusions.

For one, Professor Matheson stated that the AAA team has filled the niche of being a more affordable alternative to the Boston Red Sox. That is not hard to do. While the professor’s statement might have a kernel of truth to it, the feedback the Bravehearts continually receive is that the AAA team – while not as bad as the big club in Boston – is still expensive rather than affordable. When companies and groups shop both options in Worcester – the AAA team and the Bravehearts – they are inclined toward the better value proposition and tend to opt for the more affordable Bravehearts games.

Secondly, Professor Matheson stated that there is nothing preventing the AAA team from stealing the Bravehearts’ ideas and promotions. This is completely true, but we are undaunted by that threat. With all due respect to our competitor, they have been copying our ideas since they were operating in Pawtucket. Frankly, we are flattered that a prestigious AAA team imitates the ideas and promotions of a local summer collegiate team. Undeterred, our crackerjack Bravehearts staff will continue to churn out original and exuberant ideas for our guests and community to enjoy for a long time to come.

In the end, competition is a good thing. Readers of your publication understand that competition drives quality, price sensibility, and keeps everyone on top of their game. The consumer and their pocketbook win.

To be sure though, the competitive landscape for summer baseball in Worcester is not a level playing field. This is not Coke v. Pepsi nor CVS v. Walgreen’s. While our situation is not a “losing battle” contrary to your headline, this is David v. Goliath. The Bravehearts are competing with an outsized, government-subsidized competitor as Professor Matheson noted, that is owned by a collection of billionaires and millionaires. The Bravehearts’ advantage in the face of these odds, however, is that our business model is still viable with as few as 750 fans per game. By contrast, the AAA club consistently needs to attract many more fans than they were able to draw in 2021 and they must sustain that for decades if they are to avoid sticking the hardworking taxpayers of this city with the team’s bills.

The Bravehearts built our success and live in the sweet spot of providing immense value for our guests and their families to enjoy hassle-free, pleasant summer evenings at hallowed Fitton Baseball Field complete with free parking, fabulous local baseball stars playing their hearts out, enhanced by whimsical entertainment, delicious food, cold beer, and capped with fantastic fireworks shows, all for less than the cost of taking their family out to dinner at their favorite restaurant. 

Respectfully, that is the underdog story that your publication should have studied and reported. After all, everyone – and especially those of us from the Worcester area – loves and lives for a good underdog story. The best is yet to come for the Bravehearts. See you at Fitton Field this summer.

Oh, and don’t forget: David beat Goliath.

Sincerely,

John W.S. Creedon, Jr.
President & owner - Worcester Bravehearts