Quote:
Originally Posted by mhays
Vancouver has a good core of Toronto Blue Jays fans...they bring 15-20k per game (guessing) when Jays come here.
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that's really interesting.
i would have guessed that the vast majority of MLB fans in vancouver would be mariners fans by default.
i mean, toronto is over 2,000 miles from vancouver, whereas seattle is only 120 miles away, but i guess that international border is a pretty big psychological deal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mhays
It's a fairly small city for MLB, and the Chinese population probably isn't that into baseball, but I agree that AAA seems appropriate. That said, big cities don't necessarily like being second fiddle.
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true, that might play into it a bit, but Vancouver had AAA ball as recently as 1999, before the original Vancouver Candians franchise of the PCL moved down to sacramento and renamed themselves the River Cats.
the current Vancouver Canadians MiBL franchise is "class A short season" in the Northwest League, a pretty far cry from AAA baseball.
looking into things further, Canada used to have much higher representation for higher-level professional baseball. in addition to the MLB blue jays and expos, there were also 4 AAA teams in Canada as recently as 1999:
Vancouver Canadians (PCL) - moved to sacramento after 1999
Calgary Cannons (PCL) - moved to albuquerque after 2002
Edmonton Trappers (PCL) - moved to round rock (austin) after 2004
Ottawa Lynx (IL) - moved to allentown after 2007
so in addition to losing the MLB expos in 2005, canada also lost all 4 of its AAA teams in the same decade, leaving the entire nation with only the MLB blue jays for higher level professional baseball.
from 6 teams down to only 1, i wonder what's up with that?