Have you seen the price of gas in your neighbourhood?
Like most, I was shell-shocked when it hit $1.859 per litre in the Calgary region, representing a 30-cent jump overnight.
Luckily, I had filled up my tank the night before, but the nerves are certainly getting a workout as I get ready for the next time the gas gauge starts to dip below half a tank.
OK … I can hear it now.
“Joe, what does this have to do with baseball?”
Admittedly, on its face, not a whole lot. But when you think about it, the implications of higher prices of, well, EVERYTHING, will impact a lot, including our favourite game.
And as mentioned in both “Dugout Stories Monthly” (subscribe by adding your name to the pop-up on the ADS site) and on the latest podcast, it also represents a massive opportunity for baseball organizations and leagues on the prairies and across Canada (and any sport, to be honest) as we head into the summer.
RADICALLY CANADIAN
Heading into this spring and summer, I was already thinking that baseball teams and leagues should be starting to promote themselves even more in their respective communities.
(Trigger warning: there’s some politics coming.)
The news headlines in recent months have been all about how travel down to the United States had been waning in the wake of the geopolitical climate.
Usual tourist hot spots south of the 49th parallel have been doing everything in their power to coerce Canadians to return to their favourite destinations.
With that in mind, any Canadian business owner, including in the baseball realm, should have been thinking about those potential customers and figuring out how they could tap into that market.
Also, the whole “Buy Canadian” campaign became quite popular, so why not jump on that bandwagon a bit?
You wouldn’t have to outwardly say, “So, planning a staycation this summer?” But you should have been thinking about how you’re positioning yourself in the eyes of the potential customer base who had some extra coin in their bank accounts because they were staying home.
Remember the Canadian Football League’s “Radically Canadian” campaign of the 1990s?
SUMMER NIGHTS
The price of gas and the overall affordability crisis is making it even more likely that many Canadians are going to be staying closer to home this summer.
We can all argue until we’re blue in the face about who is to blame – or we, as baseball organizations, can do something about it.
With just a few weeks left until summer, now would be a perfect time to ramp up your in-community marketing – remind everyone in your entire region about how you provide the perfect summer night out for the family at an affordable price.
Is there anything better than a night out at the ballpark?
Sure, as baseball fans we are a bit biased. But if you can show off what it’s all about and make it a truly unique experience that goes beyond what you see on the TV with the Blue Jays, you’ll have them hooked.
BASEBALL’S HOME
There’s one more piece to the puzzle here to make this a winning combination and that’s buy-in from community and municipal partners.
Almost every summer baseball league team has some level of this already in place, so now’s the perfect time to double-down on it.
This is where we tip our caps to the Lethbridge Bulls for what is shaping up to be a prime example of this.
They have teamed up with the City of Lethbridge, Tourism Lethbridge and the Lethbridge Sport Council for “Lethbridge: Baseball’s Home.” The whole idea behind it was born out of the city hosting the Canadian College Baseball Conference World Series, The Road to Okotoks Prairie Qualifier, and the Bulls’ home opener – all in the span of 10 days.
They’ve added in a Little League Jamboree and a new Canadian Baseball Legends Gala to create “The Canadian Grand Slam of Baseball,” which will take the city by storm over 10 days.
Add that to an already stacked list of events including the Rural Roots Baseball Classic in Carnduff, the WCBL All-Star Weekend in Saskatoon, the culmination of The Road to Okotoks with the Morneau Cup tournament in Okotoks, several major Baseball Canada and Little League national tournaments, and you have the making of a massive summer for baseball … right in our own backyard.
And it won’t cost you an arm and a leg to get there.
Tales of Baseball 