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8 • Th« Red and Black • Thursday. July 27, 1969
T
Play Ball! Athens may get minor league team
By ROBERT McDONALD
Sports Writer
If two Athena men have their
way, local residents will have a
new and exciting entertainment
outlet for those lazy summer
nights.
Ernie Golin, an area busi
nessman and athletic trainer, and
David Elder, a local computer and
electronics salesman, want Athens
to become the home of a class A
minor league baseball team. The
team would he associated with the
South Atlantic league and would
uflbl »m alternative in the enter
tainment void present in Athens
over the summer.
“Between May and the end of
college baseball and August when
■ football practice gets
going, there’s not much as far as
sports entertainment in Athens,”
Elder said. “We’re offering fami
lies. college students, anybody,
cheap entertainment. A family of
four would probably be able to go to
the ball game for under 20 bucks.”
Golin and Elder said that the
local communinity is large enough
for the proposal to be financially
successful.
"We're looking around the eight-
county Athens area, a 30-square
mile radius,” Elder said. “We feel
there’s enough support for a minor
league huseball team.”
The would-be baseball team
owners said that the S.A.L was re
sponsive to the idea and that
Athens would be a great location
for a team.
“Of the 16 m^jor league teams
that don’t have contracts with the
South Atlantic League, about
seven said they would be inter
ested," Elder said. ‘Three — Cleve
land, Seattle and Baltimore — said
they were very interested."
The bid to get a team in town
hinges on finding a place to play.
At the beginning of the year, Golin
and Elder brought a proposal for
building a city- funded stadium at
Bowden Park before the Athens
City Council. In their July
meeting, the council voted to
shelve the idea until more outside
funding could be raised.
"All of us would like to see it go,
but we would like to have more pri
vate support,” council member W.
Calvin Bridges said. ‘They (Golin
and Elder) know the city just
doesn’t have the money for the
whole thing. We’re willing to help
out in some way and whenever
they get ready, they can bring it
back to council.”
Golin and Elder said that at
minimum, building a new stadium
would cost 1.5 million but that the
city would retrieve its initial ex-
nditure soon after the team
gan playing.
Based on studies of member
teams, the S.A.L estimates the
total economic impact of teams, in
cluding monies generated by club
players, visiting teams, umpires
and visiting major league per
sonnel, to be between two and 4.5
million per season.
“If that money was coming back
directly to us, we would do it our-
‘Of the 16 major league
teams that don’t have
contracts with the
South Atlantic League,
about seven said they
would be interested,'
—David Elder,
Athens salesman
selves without city involvement,
but its not. It’s going to the city ,”
Elder said. ‘That is why we feel the
city and county should help sup
port us.”
Golin and Elder said they are
now exploring other options in the
hopes that the right combination of
city and private money can be
found.
“One avenue is to go public and
sell stock in the team,” Golin said.
“Another is to get more businesses
behind the team to help fund it.
We’ve already contacted a number
of business people who have said *if
you guys want to do it, we’ll back
you with advertising.’ Right now
we’re reviewing the possibilities.”
One option the pair looked into
was using the University’s Foley
Field, an option that has turned
into a dead end because some all-
important advertising dollars
would be lost.
“We have a university policy
that says we can’t have any adver
tising in our sports stadiums," said
John Shafer, associate atletic di
rector for business. “I thought that
would be a hinderance to a minor
league team.”
Golin and Elder said that they
remain quite optimistic about the
project and that advance sales of
season tickets may go on sale soon
“At first we weren’t going to do
that because we didn 7 t want to
promise what we couldn’t deliver,”
Elder said. “We didn’t want to turn
people off before we got started.'
Former UGA netters
Wallace, Miller merge
talent in Crackerland
The 43rd annual Crackerland
Tennis Tournament is less than
half way completed, but the dou
bles competition in the men’s
open division was decided before
the tournament began.
Georgia women’s tennis coach
Jeff Wallace teamed up with
current Bulldog senior Jim
Childs to win the doubles com
petition last year
This year Wallace was lucky
enough to gain an even better
partner, former Bulldog great
Allen Miller.
The colorful Miller is the only
male athlete in Georgia history
to be named All-American four
times. He is without a doubt the
best doubles player that I have
had the pleasure of watching in
my extended stay in Athens.
Few people currently in
school can recall that Miller
teamed with Ola Malmquist to
beat a doubles pair from
Southern Illinois named Ken
Flach and Robert Seguso for the
NCAA outdoor championship in
1983 Well, Flach and Seguso
have since claimed several ma
jors on the professional tour and
were the number one ranked
pair in the world for a couple of
years.
While Wallace is currently
better known for his out
standing coaching accomplish
ments for the women’s team, he
was actually quite a player in
his day at Georgia. He won the
Chris
Chilton
1
mythical
gles title at the SEC outdoor
championships in 1984 and also
produced several comeback vic
tories in the NCAA’s that year to
help keep Georgia alive in the
team competition.
Miller and Wallace also
played a part in helping Georgia
win its first NCAA team crown
in 1985, Miller as a player and
Wallace as a student assistant
coach That team had perhaps
the most colorful collection of
characters in Georgia tennis his
tory.
The two things that Wallace
and Miller share that gives
them an even bigger advantage
besides their obvious natural
talent are a tremendous inten
sity level and an unquestioned
desire to win.
Their only competition could
come from the team of Nick
Stutsman, the number one seed
in the singles competition and
Corky Warner, a rising senior at
Athens Academy.
Just the opportunity to once
again watch these.past stars
should be worth a trip over to
Henry Feild Stadium for any
Georgia tennis enthusiasts.
Chris Chilton Is a sports writer for
the Red and Black
Bowden Park: Little or soon-to-be minor league field
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