At the Bureau of What Goes Around Comes Around, the latter Around can take its own sweet time in coming.
Maybe even 30 years.
It is with no little empathy - and, OK, possibly a reflex neener- neener - that we note the passing of Triple-A baseball in the dusty rancho that grew up to be Albuquerque, N.M. The Dukes have finagled their way into the Pacific Coast League playoffs which begin today, but they're lame Dukes nonetheless. The franchise has been sold by absentee owner Bob Lozinak to another group of investors who are also absent from Albuquerque but very much present in Portland, Ore., where the team will play in 2001 and beyond in a stadium spiffed up with $33 million of civic improvements.
The Dukes are the Triple-A farm club of the Los Angeles Dodgers and have been ever since just before Labor Day weekend in 1971 - when Albuquerque kicked sand in Spokane's face and snatched the Dodgers away.
Now it's Albuquerque getting the sand bath - though in many respects, it's a good deal grittier.
Because there's no longer anything minor about the stakes in minor-league baseball.
Spokane, of course, has found happiness in baseball's nursery - short-season Class A, where never is felt the 35-degree chill of an April night. With just half the home dates of a Triple-A schedule - all jammed into the hot-weather months - this year's Spokane Indians set yet another attendance record by averaging 4,968 fans per game.
Albuquerque's average attendance this summer: 4,696.
Obviously, the ownership of Brett Sports has perfected the formula: a bright, tidy stadium, moderately priced tickets and snacks, a hyperactive public-address and music system that strives to make even pitching changes an "event" - and a stadium behavior policy that either preserves the family atmosphere for customers who don't know their seat cushions from third base or stifles the emotional involvement of true baseball fans, depending on which letter to the editor you believe.
Is the baseball as good? Some nights it's barely baseball.
But as owner Bobby Brett discovered in surveying the town for a possible Triple-A bid a few years ago, it's ceased to matter - quite possibly because his organization has done its job so well.
Perhaps Albuquerque should take notes. The only baseball it figures to have next year, as things stand, is in the independent Western Baseball League.
The issue is a stadium, just as it was when Spokane was jilted in 1971. Just as it always is in baseball.
The Dodgers actually owned the Triple-A franchise back then. And though there had been a tug-of-war between Spokane and Albuquerque for a few years before the switch, no one here seemed to realize the Dodgers were pulling on one end of the rope.
According to a recent story in the Albuquerque Tribune, the Dodgers paid for a third of a $15,000 feasibility study to determine if the city was ready for Triple-A, and then promised it to Albuquerque if a new stadium were built.
"The Dodgers even paid Triple-A rent for the old stadium for a Double-A team until we got the new one built," H.L. Galles, who spearheaded the effort back in late '60s, told the paper.
Hey, it was a business decision. Better weather and a better facility equaled a better chance for the Dodgers to recoup their investment. It was their money, after all.
And their regrets about leaving Spokane were genuine. They bankrolled a Northwest League team here for a year until another Triple-A franchise could be enticed to move. Spokane would then have Triple-A ball until Larry Koentopp's group pulled the plug for good in 1982. Even with future Rangers, Brewers and Mariners playing at the Fairgrounds, Spokane remained for the most part a Dodgers town.
"I still hear people say they remember when the Dodgers were here and the stands were filled every night," said Barbara Klante, who has worked for the Dodgers and the Bretts and some owners in between. "Obviously, they forgot the last few years, because we draw more in 38 games now than we drew for that great team in 1970."
And the bitterness over Koentopp's move to Las Vegas masked one inevitability: Triple-A would become too rich for Spokane soon enough.
It's happened in Albuquerque. The Sports Stadium built in 1972 for $1.4 million, the palace that left our Fairgrounds diamond in the dust has been allowed to deteriorate badly. Even if the city can find a sugar daddy to buy another Triple-A franchise - and there's one for sale in Tacoma - the PCL has said it won't allow it to be moved to Albuquerque unless a new stadium is built.
The likely tab: $30-34 million. It's an issue with which the city government there is playing pepper.
"That's what you're dealing with now," said Brett. "The only reason Portland got Triple-A was committing $33 million in improvements to Civic Stadium. Sacramento's new stadium was a $40 million job. Memphis was $55 million.
"The requirements for a Triple-A stadium now are mind-boggling. You have to have 10,000 seats, indoor batting cages, weight rooms bigger than the one our hockey team has, a manager's office, coaches' office, a trainer's office..."
But in those cities Brett mentioned, somebody made the call that if they couldn't be big league, they should be the next-best thing. Twenty years ago, it seemed to be reasonable, if not sound, thinking.
More and more, it sounds like a shallow conceit, and an unconscionably expensive one.
Spokane has not only learned to live without that next-best- thing, but love it.
Wonder if Albuquerque will come around?
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