"A family outing is a family outing, whether you go to the Lexington Blowfish or the Columbia Fireflies.”

...says Moe Baddourah, when asked about the new baseball team that will be coming to Columbia next spring.

Mayor Benjamin, who is the number one supporter of the minor league baseball team coming to Columbia is super-duper optimistic. Like Pollyanna level optimistic:

“This is one of the most baseball-friendly regions in the country,” Benjamin says. “You can have [NCAA] Division I championship-level baseball, you can have professional minor league baseball and you can have a successful wood bat league team in the Midlands."

Color me skeptical. I love baseball, and I love going to baseball games. I have young children who I want to take to baseball games. However, there's only so much time in the budget for baseball. When you're taking young children to games, baseball is baseball. I'm not going to stop going to Carolina baseball games to go to see some team that there is no emotional connection to. I don't think I'm alone.

I think the minor league team is going to have lots of corporate sponsors buy seats, but I'm skeptical that they will fill the seats with people. Maybe there are people out there that are dying for minor league baseball, but Mayor Benjamin is wrong about the idea that you can have three teams play for full stadiums of fans. The reason he's wrong?

It's called supply and demand.