You may be right that it is time to close the book on minor league baseball here in town. Sam Lynn Park has been a crummy place to see baseball for fifty years. It is a dump! Bakersfield certainly saw many opportunities to work out a plan to have a modern facility in place but chose not to proceed.  What is a minor league franchise worth to a city? 

I lived in Sacramento for many years when there was no minor league baseball in the city. In those days  you would read about old timers from the Sacramento Solons that would crop up from time to time in the Sacramento Bee. There was an area close to downtown near the Sacramento River with abandoned train facilities and blighted industrial buildings that the city and a few driven entrepreneurs from both the local scene and outside the market looked at to build a new ballpark.  It took only two years to get the plans settled on the ballpark, and work out an arrangement with the Oakland A's to place an existing Triple A club into Sacramento. Raley Field holds about 10,000 fans in a beautiful setting close to the river and has been one of the top attendance parks in all of Triple A since  opening  in 2000. It offers a variety of different concert venues throughout the year as well as being a great place to watch baseball.

Sacramento, like Bakersfield, is close to a major metropolitan market with two MLB franchises. The city and local businesses made a commitment to build a first class facility. The area surrounding Raley Field was rejuvenated and the businesses making up the Old Town District and those in West Sacramento have thrived as a result. Yes, Sacramento has a lot of the same problems today that Bakersfield  suffers from, but there are  places in Sacramento  that offer their residents  respite and relaxation from the grind of day to day problems. Bakersfield just doesn't get it, and there are no city leaders willing or able to bet on the locals.