Though nothing to do with the title I am thrilled to welcome to our mad corner of the Internet Jason Heath someone who I don’t know personally but who’s other blog I knew well and enjoyed regularly, I now feel like a total “rookie” on this site! OK enough with the sport analogies, this is a real sports story. The St Louis Cardinals AA baseball team, The Springfield Cardinals moved here and into a brand new ballpark, Hammons Field three seasons ago, . They play 70 Games a year, the average attendance is 7000 a game, and they have 4000 season ticket holders “striking” (couldn’t resist) fear into the hearts of the local arts groups. Let’s play Ball!
When I got the news something in my memory bank popped up. The year I joined the Fort Worth Symphony as Assistant Conductor in 1994, they with Van Cliburn trotted out onto center field at the Ball Park in Arlington (new home of the Texas Rangers) to play the National Anthem (Van sung it!) on the first opening day. I immediately made the call (not to Van although he sang it very well!) and spoke to my now friend Kirk Elmquist at the Cardinals offering him the orchestra for their first opening day. The orchestra agreed to donate their time and out we went, with the Gatlin Brothers! The reaction was extraordinary, there we were in tuxes and ball caps, I was on the pitchers mound throwing out the first baton. We have now done it 3 straight years and the last two on our own! Now they have lost all three opening day games, and I hope they don’t connect us to that streak! We are already booked for next year’s opening day and the benefits we have been receiving and we are about to receive from this association we could not have imagined. The intent all along though was simply to be connected with the most exciting new thing in our community and to show them that we too celebrate the arrival of professional baseball. Most of us are sports fans are we not?
Here is how the game has been progressing:
First batter up and it’s a single! Our publicity has included a front page above the fold picture of us in the local paper the next day with the teams lined up along the base lines (see yesterday’s post No More Pulp!). There is always a live TV and Radio broadcast of the event that includes our performance. We received much public kudos (especially for our musicians) for donating our time to do it, and we are now asked by many people if we are going to be there each year. You bet we will!
Second batter up….straight up the middle for a base hit! There’s so much sponsorship potential with those who sit in all of those luxury boxes. We can identify at least one new sponsor gained just from our appearance on opening day and many long time sponsors love that we are out there and talk of it highly every year (every sponsor has renewed the last three seasons)
Next batter…a base hit that loads the bases! We are currently in talks with the team for an exciting future collaboration. In a nutshell (or sunflower seed) here it is:
- In return for including their season info in our next two programs, they will give us a full page game day ad for all of next season. That is $10,000 dollar value free!
- I’ll be recording on video (at some of the first few games of next season) the Cardinals Charge on my Trumpet in different parts of the park. All season long it will play on the “Jumbo-tron” with the caption “Charge – brought to you by the Springfield Symphony!”. Overall attendance was nearly 500,000 people this past season!
- They are talking to us about hiring ensembles of musicians to play at some special events
- They are going to allow us to secure sponsorships for our appearances that will all come to us!
That ball is hit deep into left field, it’s way back….it’s…gone..Grand Slam!!!!
In the same period they have been in Springfield our subscriptions have gone up 60%, our single tickets have increased also and whilst there were many other things (that I will share) that contributed to this, it certainly proves that they didn’t hurt us! The Arts need to get out of the dug-out, get onto the field and make a play at the plate!
PS The first Ozarks Literary Festival will be held at the Ballpark