Triple-A baseball is about to die a quiet death in Canada.
On Labour Day, the Ottawa Lynx will play the final game of their 15-year existence when they close out a six-game homestand against the Syracuse Chiefs, ending an era during which minor-league teams were dotted across Canada.
Less than a decade ago, there were Triple-A teams in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa. In addition, Canada played host to several other major-league affiliates in places such as London, Ont., Welland, Ont., and Medicine Hat.
Yet when the Lynx depart after this season for Allentown, Pa., the Single-A Vancouver Canadians will become the only Canadian outpost among the dozens of major-league farm teams in North America.
While independent pro teams still exist in Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Quebec City, it appears that Canadians have fallen out of love with minor-league baseball.
"I can't speak for other leagues," said Randy Mobley, president of the International League, "but while there are challenges [in Canada]such as travel, if this club [the Lynx]was drawing like an average Triple-A club or better, then we're not having this conversation.
"It all comes down to the fact it's not a priority in the lives of folks in the Ottawa region to come out to Triple-A baseball. I've said many, many times: We love Ottawa. It's not the kind of city Triple-A baseball wants to leave."
The Lynx were born when baseball interest in Canada was peaking. The franchise played its first game only five months after the Toronto Blue Jays captured their first World Series, as baseball participation, television audiences and attendance hit record highs.
Ottawa sold out most games during those early days, setting an International League attendance record in their new 10,000-seat facility and becoming the jewel of Canada's minor-league scene.
But when interest in both the Blue Jays and Montreal Expos began to decline in the mid-1990s, so do did the minor leagues suffer in popularity.
Then there were the economic forces. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, a low Canadian dollar made teams more valuable in the United States than Canada.
In addition, a stadium building boom in the United States meant many American cities were hunting for minor-league teams to fill new facilities. So just as the Lynx are headed to a new stadium in Pennsylvania, the Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton teams all moved from Canada to new facilities in, respectively, Sacramento, Albuquerque, N.M., and Round Rock Tex.
"Minor-league baseball got very hot in the U.S., so cities like Allentown started building these stadiums," said Miles Wolff, the former publisher of Baseball America, who now owns and operates a Quebec City team in the independent Can-Am League. "It wasn't so much no one is interested in Canada, just that you could make more money in the U.S. And the money was a big factor."
Wolff believes the minor leagues were only too happy to leave Canada because of issues related to border crossings and a high number of weather-related cancellations during April and May.
The question being asked now is whether the decline of minor professional baseball in Canada relates to an overall decline in the game's popularity across the country?
Certainly baseball in Canada isn't as popular today as it was during the early 1990s, when the sport had 400,000 registered participants. But with participation holding steady in recent years at 280,000, some argue it's a mistake to confuse Canada's minor-league exodus with an overall decline in the sport.
"Maybe baseball has declined as a spectator sport in some situations, but this is not indicative of an overall decline in baseball," said Jim Baba, Baseball Canada's director general. "In my mind, we've had a renaissance from 2000 to 2007 with players such as Jason Bay, Éric Gagné and Justin Morneau and us qualifying for the Olympics. The response we got from that tells us there's lots of interest in baseball. I find it hard to equate one with the other."
Wolff is also betting that Canadians still have plenty of appetite for baseball. Right now, he's bidding to take over the final two years of the Lynx lease and operate a Can-Am League team in Ottawa next spring, with a schedule that runs from late May to September.
"There is and has always been great baseball interest in Canada," Wolff said. "People say what can you do better than the Lynx? Well, we don't have to play in April and May when the weather is terrible and the Senators are doing well."