12/21/2010 - Skyhawks May Fly The Coop
The Sussex Skyhawks flew into town in 2006 with high expectations as the newest tenant of Skylands Park.
Now after five seasons, it looks like the Skyhawks may fly the coop.
Mugs Media has learned that Sussex Professional Baseball, the owners of the club, has let go its entire front office staff, including general manager Ben Wittkowski, and locked its doors.
The team also disconnected its phone line and emails have not gone through.
A spokesperson for the Can-Am League, the independent baseball league in which the Skyhawks have competed in since their inception, had no comment on the future of the club.
The spokesman said that at the league’s annual directors meeting in January, all league matters and teams will be discussed for the 2011 season.
Officials from the New Jersey Jackals, the Skyhawks’ sister club in the Can-Am, could not be reached for comment. Skyhawks president Larry Hall is also involved in the ownership of the Jackals.
So what does this mean?
On the surface, it doesn’t look good that the Skyhawks will be playing baseball at Skylands Park when the Can-Am League kicks off May 26 of next year and that would be a shame on many levels.
The nature of independent baseball leagues is unstable and there is a chance that a team will be playing this season in the ballpark built in the early 1990s for the New Jersey Cardinals of the New York-Penn League. The Cards left Augusta after the 2005 season for University Park, Pa.
Teams and owners do come and go, but with the addition of the Newark Bears to the league from the Atlantic League, maybe there wasn’t enough room for three Can-Am teams within a 40-mile radius and it was time to cut bait with a Sussex franchise that has struggled to draw fans since it came to town.
No one knows for sure right now, but the future of the Skyhawks will be publicly revealed probably right after the league meetings.
As I said, it would be a shame because the Skyhawks did everything they possibly could to establish a large fan base. The club had its loyal and ardent supporters but not enough over the long season.
The Skyhawks had great giveaways, fireworks every homestand and put a championship team on the field in 2008 under former National League Manager of the Year Hal Lanier.
But nothing seemed to put, as the late George Steinbrenner used to say, “fannies in the seats.”
The Skyhawks’ attendance dropped every season from an average of 2,183 per game in 2006 to 1,670 last season, second to last in the six-team league.
I used to talk to Wittkowski about it and he was stumped. Wittkowski was the Can-Am Executive of the Year in 2005 when he was with the Jackals and tried everything to motivate the local fan base.
But there is the problem. There aren’t enough people in this region to support a team over the course of four-plus months. Sussex County, although it has grown leaps-and-bounds from when there were more cows than people, still doesn’t have enough people to support a pro club.
Yes, the New Jersey Cardinals were the darling of the minor baseball world for a couple of seasons and a model that many affiliated and independent teams would follow.
The Cardinals won the NY-P in their first season in 1994 under skipper Roy Silver and the ballpark was sold out almost every night. The park’s official capacity is 4,358, but the Cards would draw an excess of 5,000 fans on fireworks nights.
It was a happening and everyone wanted in. It also didn’t hurt that Major Baseball ended its season in August of 1994 due to a strike and people were hungry for baseball. Plus, the Cardinals were the first minor league team in North Jersey in decades.
In 1994, the Cardinals and the Trenton Thunder in New Jersey and the Hudson Valley Renegades in New York all began play.
The three franchises were all far enough away from each other to succeed and draw from a large population base. Many Cardinal fans were from Bergen, Passaic, Essex and Morris counties and would take the leisurely drive to “the country” to catch a game on a beautiful summer’s night.
But after people saw the success of the three clubs, affiliated and independent teams started popping up everywhere, including the Bears, Jackals and the Somerset Patriots. And most importantly, in Brooklyn and Staten Island where the Mets and Yankees placed their NY-P teams, respectively.
The Cardinals’ attendance peaked after about five or six seasons, but once the area was saturated with baseball, including the New York affiliates, the writing was on the wall and the Cardinals left after a nice 12-year run.
With so much baseball to be found, the novelty of driving to the country wore off and people stayed local. The Jackals do well in attendance because they are in the densely-populated Essex-Bergen County area.
Sussex just can’t compete.
The other issue is Skylands Park which has been a fiscal nightmare almost from the get-go. The privately-owned and built ballpark has gone though several owners, bankruptcy and other assorted problems since it opened in June of 1994.
The ballpark was originally was supposed to be built off Route 565 behind the Franklin Sussex Auto Mall in Wantage but ran into environmental problems and the site was switched.
Vernon resident Robert Hilliard led the charge and was the face of the ball park and the New Jersey Cardinals for team owners Barry Gordon and Marc Klee. Hilliard and the team owners played off the Field of Dreams motto of “Build it and they will come.”
Well, they did. For a few years, at least.
Hilliard eventually parted ways with the stadium and the Cardinals and in the wake of the stadium’s financial struggles many local business and contractors suffered greatly. Some went out of business due to money owned to them or to this day still feel the effects.
The stadium’s owners are not the only guilty parties in my view. The township of Frankford was never overly warm to the ball park and fought the Cardinals and the stadium owners on a lot of issues.
Skylands Park should have been a beacon of Sussex County where concerts, the circus, college and high school athletic events and anything else that could be featured would be held at the park.
But it never materialized, and in this harsh economic market, this no time for the Sussex County to purchase the ballpark which at close to 20 years old is in need of a facelift.
When Larry Hall announced that the Skyhawks would come to Skylands Park in 2006, he said, “We are committed to creating the highest quality organization and experience for our fans with highly-competitive baseball in a fun-filled, family-oriented atmosphere.”
Hall and Wittkowski did all they could, and after a five-season run it may be over.
And without a tenant, there is a very good chance that Skylands Park may become the proverbial White Elephant at Ross’ Corner and a monument to a better time for baseball in the county.
That’s it for now, see you on the sidelines and I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!
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