Mighty Richmond has struck out.
The box score for area leaders (including, but not limited to, Mayor Wilder):
No runs, no hits, one big error.
That error is complacency.
First, let’s hear from a child, the one sector of the community that will be hurt most by the loss of AAA baseball in Virginia’s capital—a major calling card for the area, whether you’re a business owner, a parent, or just someone looking for a fun and affordable date on a warm summer’s night.
One of my colleagues described the disheartened reaction of her eight-year-old son when he heard his favorite baseball team was pulling out of town after this season.
“He was devastated,” she said. “He heard the news before I did. He doesn’t understand why.”
Who can blame him? He’s too young to have heard the inevitable denials, the finger-pointing, and other typical reactions from our minor league leaders.
Everyone, it seems, wants to cover their own backstops. But no one is stepping up to the plate and saying the one thing it takes to improve – whether you’re trying to hit a curve ball, run a business, or just write a blog.
Nobody’s saying, “I blew it! I take full responsibility. It won’t happen again.”
Perhaps the lesson in the R-Braves is the importance of another “R”—Responsibility.
Only then will we move past the region’s tiresome old attitudes and parochialism, and start working as a team.
When I first heard the R-Braves were moving outside Atlanta, I remembered an observation by Jim Crupi, the consultant/therapist brought in late last year by the area’s business bigwigs. The Braves’ exit reminded me of something Crupi told me about the prevailing winds of mediocrity that can blow around here—a condition that we should now call The Big Whiff.
“If you were to say to the leaders of Dallas, ‘You’ve got a problem here,’ that’s negative, and they’ll throw you out of town,” Crupi observed. But if you told those same Dallas business leaders, “Do you see what they’re doing in Atlanta,’ they’d get real competitive!”
The first, and most obvious, lesson of the messy divorce with the R-Braves after more than four decades of sporting marriage is that Wilder and his staff should have been proactive (i.e. not waiting for another phone call or email). They should have put their egos and political machinations on hold and recognized that NOBODY succeeds by sitting by the phone.
The second, more subtle, lesson is about regional responsibility. After all, The Diamond is owned by the Richmond Metropolitan Authority (also owner of the Downtown Expressway and Powhite Parkway). The authority’s 11-member governing board has four members from Henrico and Chesterfield counties.
And—as if one more layer of bureaucracy were needed—the RMA appoints a stadium operating committee that includes plenty of folks from the ’burbs, including some prominent business people.
Did NO ONE on these groups recognize the Braves might look for options, and inevitably, leave town? And if they did suspect something was amiss, why didn’t THEY hold a press conference to say so?
Did they revert to that quiet, quintessentially Richmond passive aggressive behavior which their own consultant recently warned them about?
There are some cheap plane fares to Atlanta. Maybe next time, this gang that couldn’t pitch straight might want to hop on a plane and compete like it’s the bottom of the ninth.
Anything less will bring us what we have today—the same old games, the same lame excuses, the same hot air.
When an eight-year-old boy understands the score, it’s hard to see why our veteran officials seem so clueless.
My co-worker’s son posed a question that cuts to the heart of the matter:
“Does this mean we’ll have to root for the team from Virginia Beach?”