Major League city? Or just provincial?

Triple-A era closing in Canada
Canadian Press

The Vancouver Canadians were the first to leave, down to Sacramento after the 1999 season. Three years later it was the Calgary Cannons, headed to Albuquerque. The Edmonton Trappers became the Round Rock Express two years after that.
Once the Ottawa Lynx move to Allentown, Pa., following the 2007 season, the demise of triple-A baseball in Canada will be complete. In just eight short years four franchises firmly entrenched in their communities, built on solid foundations, will have disappeared.
The Vancouver Canadians, reborn as a single-A club, will soon be the country's last affiliated minor-league club. Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton have franchises in the independent Northern League.
Along with the Toronto Blue Jays, only five pro ball teams will call Canada home in 2008.
"It's not an easy situation when most of your partners are based in the United States," says Branch B. Rickey, owner and president of the Pacific Coast League, which was home to the clubs in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton.
Adds Blue Jays pitcher Scott Downs, who graduated to the Montreal Expos - now the Washington Nationals - in 2004 after playing in Ottawa and Edmonton: "They were great places to play. It's sad to see minor-league baseball dwindling in Canada."
There are no simple answers to how, or why, no common formula that would have changed things. Geographic isolation, travel issues and aging facilities left the three PCL clubs prone to predatory buyers from more motivated baseball markets in the U.S., and now all three clubs rank in the top-five for minor-league attendance among the 176 teams across the continent.
Ottawa, which plays in the International League, faced fewer challenges but people just stopped going to games and couldn't be lured back. The Lynx will play out the string next summer stocked with the Philadelphia Phillies prospects who will move on to Allentown.
"All of the challenges (in Ottawa) could have been overcome with better attendance," says Randy Mobley, president of the International League. "It has nothing to do with geography, nothing to do with the travel, nothing to do with the Canadian economy.
"The main problem was they couldn't draw 6,000-7,000 fans a night."
But there were larger issues, too.
Major-league teams have never been as demanding of their triple-A affiliates as they are now. They want top-notch facilities, easy access to their players, less travel, worry-free living conditions.
Tampa Bay Devil Rays manager Joe Maddon recalls how when he was the Los Angeles Angels' roving hitting instructor and their triple-A club was in Vancouver, several players couldn't afford to pay their rent.
"The organization had to top them up for a while," he says. "Part of it is also the inconvenience of bringing players back and forth across the border if you need somebody rapidly."
There were troubles with the Canadian dollar, which was substantially weaker than the American greenback only a handful of years ago.
Travel costs for Edmonton, Vancouver and Calgary were also prohibitive, with several flights down to the southwestern U.S., and vice-versa for the rest of the league. Concerns about making connecting flights, weather delays, lost luggage and border issues left the league worried about teams arriving late or missing games.
"There was a lot of money at risk," says Rickey, who oversaw all three departures. "There was an extraordinary intersection of opportunity and availability in these three cases."
Vancouver lost its team when ownership in Sacramento approached Rickey and said it had promises of a new stadium from the city and was looking for a team that could be convinced to sell and would be easy to move.
A similar scenario played out in Calgary, when the sting of losing its team to Portland prompted Albuquerque, N.M., to build a stadium and seek out another club.
Alone in Canada, Edmonton was a sitting duck for the buyers from Round Rock, Texas led by Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan, who wanted a triple-A team to replace the double-A club it already owned in the city. The double-A team was moved to Corpus Christi once the triple-A club arrived.
In each instance, the prospective buyers were pointed north as the viability of running a PCL team in Canada diminished. Despite being longstanding fixtures in their communities, the Canadians (1978-99), Trappers (1981-2004) and Cannons (1985-2002) were surprisingly easy to uproot. Their moves were met with little to no resistance.
"Honestly, I would have to admit that's the case," says Rickey.
The Lynx, on the other hand, struggled for years before another suitor came calling for them.
They set International League attendance records when the began play in 1993, averaging nearly 10,000 fans a game. But those numbers steadily declined into the 2,000-range as apathy inexplicably grew toward the team.
"I've thought long and hard about that, I don't have a simple answer for that, I wish I did," says Mobley. "If we could have identified a single issue, we would have tried to address it.
"There were several factors but the predominant one is that spending the night at a triple-A game was not a high priority for the people of the Ottawa area."
Owner Ray Pecor did not return a message seeking comment and has yet to publicly confirm his sale of the club to businessmen in Allentown. Mobley confirms that there's an agreement and approvals in place with a closing date of November 2007.
Travel, by bus, wasn't a problem for the Lynx and crossing the border was not a major problem. There were no geographical issues that made having Ottawa an inconvenience for the other clubs.
"The weather wasn't always the best but we had good fans, they were fun places to play," says Downs. "Edmonton was one of my favourite places to play. I was able to spend a year and a half there and the fans were unbelievable.
"The weather was a little cold but other than that I enjoyed it."
Few former players and coaches have a bad thing to say about their experience in Canada.
"I truly enjoy the Canadian people," says Maddon. "By nature they're very polite, very hospitable. "They treated us great."
But for business reasons, it's unlikely triple-A baseball will be back in Canada anytime soon.
"Certainly there are scenarios that could be extremely favourable to doing so," says Rickey. "I don't think it's in the foreseeable future."
Adds Mobley: "I wouldn't say never but I don't see it happening. I have no reason to believe that may happen."