Area residents don’t know what they’re paying to see, but they’re buying it anyway. Despite the lack of players and general disgruntled feelings about the Stadium project, season tickets and corporate “skyboxes” for the 2008 Southern Maryland Blue Crabs inaugural year are selling briskly. Sales of team merchandise are also gaining momentum.
Andy Frankel, spokesperson for the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs organization, recently told The Bay Net that nearly 500 active accounts now exist for season tickets. Account holders have purchased between 2 and 12 seats each. When complete, Regency Furniture Stadium will have seats for 4,200 with room for another thousand in the skyboxes and on the picnic greens
The stadium’s 16 corporate skyboxes go for a whopping $25,000 annually. Half of them have been snapped up, complete with 10-year lease contracts. Frankel expects the remaining boxes to be claimed before the end of the year.
During last week’s press conference at Boston’s Sports Bar in St. Charles, Blue Crabs owner Brooks Robinson proudly introduced Butch Hobson, the team’s newly hired manager and director of baseball operations. According to media reports, Robinson promised the crowd “better baseball here than you’ll see in Bowie, Aberdeen, Fredrick,” and then jokingly included Camden Yards in his list. It was a bold statement considering that the Blue Crabs team of players doesn’t yet exist. Robinson talks about baseball the way die-hard fishermen talk about their legendary catches.
According to Robinson and Frankel, Hobson’s first job is scouting for a team. Because the Blue Crabs belong to an independent league, their players are free agents. Some players will come from other Atlantic League teams during a league expansion draft. Others will come, newly released from contracts with major league teams or their affiliates during spring training. Wherever they come from, 95% of the future roster will have former professional experience at some level (international, double/triple A league, or major league team).
The Blue Crabs won’t sign their first players until January, but they expect to have at least half their roster in time for the Atlantic League’s spring training on April 15. The rest of the team will sign right before the season opens with the Blue Crabs’ first home game on May 2.
Work began on Regency Furniture Stadium in late July. You can follow its progress in the slide show below.
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