Not much has changed

Because not much has changed with the Wild Things, I've felt the need to break a basic journalistic rule and pull out a section of a blog post I made at the end of last season and include it in this post, almost word for word. I made a few changes to update facts. Here you go:

The upcoming offseason will be the most important one in Wild Things history. There are many topics that must be addressed, including getting a naming rights sponsor for the ballpark to replace Consol Energy. A good game plan for the future is desperately needed.

The first question to be asked in the offseason should be this: Is it really in ownership's best interest to run two teams, the Wild Things and the Pennsylvania Rebellion of the National Pro Fastpitch league? If you think things are bad with the Wild Things and the Frontier League, then you need to check out the Rebellion and the NPF. The Rebellion make the Wild Things look like the New York Yankees. The Frontier League's officials and business model make the NPF's look like the latter is being run by the kids who operate the neighborhood lemonade stand. The Rebellion missed the playoffs in a five-team league in 2015, then finished last in a six-team league this year. Four teams went to the postseason in 2015. One of those playoff teams was a first-year team that wasn't wasn't even allowed to acquire players through an expansion draft but still finished ahead of the Rebellion. This year, another expansion team finished ahead of the Rebellion and made the playoffs.

How any NPF team can remain in the financial black is beyond me. Judging by their poor attendance and the cost of having to fly to Florida, Texas and South Carolina to play games, the Rebellion have to be losing money.

A lot of money.

I have a feeling the Rebellion's financial losses are impacting the Wild Things. If that's the case, it's a very bad sign. One of financial trouble ahead. And the solution is not to raise ticket or parking or concession prices.

Operating two teams, with one front office staff, and neither team able to sell out a small ballpark (the Wild Things did have one sellout in 2016), makes no financial sense. The time to pull the plug on the softball team, if it is indeed a financial drain on the Wild Things, should have been before 2016, which happens to be the final year for Consol Energy's naming rights deal at the ballpark. A 10-year-contract was announced by Consol and the Wild Things in April of 2007. That means the deal ran through this summer. If another company doesn't step forward and put its name on the ballpark, it will be a big financial hit for the Wild Things.

There also has to be changes in the Wild Things' baseball operations. When you miss the playoffs eight times in nine years, there is something very wrong. The way you find players, the people you get recommendations from, where you're looking for players, the kind of players you sign, it all has to be re-evaluated and changed. Somebody needs to think outside the box.

Somebody in the front office or ownership needs to answer this: Why has a franchise that could pack the house almost every night fallen so far so fast that now it can't fill half the ballpark unless pyrotechnics are involved? If the answer is because the novelty of pro baseball in Washington has worn off, then that's too late to change. If it's the economy, then the Wild Things can't change that. But if it's because the front-office staff can only spend half its time selling tickets to Wild Things games because the other half is spent hawking Rebellion tickets, or if it's because the games have become boring, or the parking fee and ticket prices are too high, or the giveaway items have become either worthless or few and far between, or the team can't win, or the between-innings promotions are stupid or nobody in Pittsburgh/Westmoreland County/Fayette County hears/reads/knows about the Wild Things, or the customers are not treated with respect etc., then those things can and must be corrected. In other words, eliminated.

Now, back to this year and some new thoughts.

The Wild Things desperately need to improve their public image, especially in Washington. They have looked like the bully bad guys in the situation with the Trinity School District and how much it has cost the Hillers' baseball team to play at CEP. The Wild Things say they weren't overcharging Trinity for playing at CEP but rather they were getting a tax abatement. Call it what you want, a tax abatement or fleecing the local school district. It all semantics. The reality is the Wild Things need to charge Trinity and every other school that plays at CEP (or whatever it's called next year) the same fee, either a per-game rate or a per-hour rate. That shouldn't be a difficult thing to figure out.

The Wild Things also looked bad when they flexed their muscle and caused the Trinity/W&J deal that would have had the Hillers playing at Ross Memorial Park next year to fall through. Multiple sources have said the Wild Things threatened to put a fence around their parking lot if Trinity moved its games to CEP. That fence would make it impossible to park more than a few cars at Ross Memorial, so W&J pulled out of the deal. The Wild Things certainly have the right to fence in their parking lot, but this entire situation should have never reached the point where the team looks like the kid who says, “If I don't get my way, then I'm taking my marbles and going home.”