The Rocket

Issue date: 12/7/07 Section: Sports

It was a unique partnership.

It mixed professional baseball and a college campus.

It gave students real-world experience in the sports industry.

It is no more.

The "it" I am referring to, is the now-defunct Slippery Rock Sliders minor-league baseball team. After only one summer in Slippery Rock, the Sliders, who will now go by the name Midwest Sliders, will pack up and leave Jack Critchfield Park and the area. They are taking their show on the road. Literally.

The Sliders will now be playing all of their games on the road, something that is virtually unheard of these days. But we aren't talking about a few games: These poor guys will play 96 of them on the road.

They will have no down time, no home crowd, no fans cheering for them. That is absolutely ridiculous. And to make matters worse, folks at the university thought that the Sliders were coming back.

After hearing the news of the team leaving, Paul Lueken, the SRU athletic director even said he was shocked. He had no clue this was going to happen.

But why did the Frontier League decide to move the team?

Part of the reason may have been the fact that the Sliders had the lowest attendance of all 12 teams in the league. They averaged 713 fans per game in the 29 home games they played.

Maybe it was because the Sliders were terrible on the field, finishing with a 29-66 record, the worst in the league.

But we, and I mean the community and myself, don't know exactly why. I do have some ideas, though.

I worked for the Sliders last spring. I was a public relations intern for them. So I have some insight into the organization.

First off, no offense to the people in charge, but there was never any real direction while I was there.

It seemed to me as if they wanted the team to fail. We tried to get the word out to the local media, but for some reason, no media outlets were covering the team. I don't know why this is. We were never allowed to send anything to the papers or radio stations on our own.

It all had to be done through the general manager, and he always told us that it was never accepted. I don't know if it was true or not, but I just can't see why the media wouldn't want to cover the club.

Bob McComas, SRU's sports information director, has said that the town and the team were never really given a chance to succeed. And he is right. He says that local people were never allowed to give their input, which I agree with 100 percent. As part of the Sliders organization, we designed flyers to hang in windows and hand out to businesses and a cover for the program.

However, I never saw them get delivered or posted on any windows.

That seems odd to me.

Nobody tried to sell this team to the community. They just hoped people would show up.

My Communication Projects class created a TV commercial for the team to air on Armstrong Cable, a task the general manager asked us to complete. However, when we gave him the video, he told us that it couldn't run on TV, offering no explanation why.

He did, tell us, however, that he would put it on the Sliders' Web site. Why would you put it on the Web site?

You are trying to get new people interested in the team, and most people that have found the Web site already know about the team, so an online-only video wasn't of much use.

Not to mention the fact that not everyone is going to find the site. Some people don't have Internet service, but most have cable. So airing a commercial on TV would reach a broader audience. And last time I checked, that was a good thing.

But from the very start, I think the team was doomed to fail. There was no communication, no goal and no leadership. I realize the team and everything was thrown together at the last minute, but that is no excuse. For being part of a professional team, it certainly didn't feel professional.

So to all you Sliders fans that want to see the team, I hope you have lots of money for gas, because the team has hit the road.

Brandon is an English graduate student and Sports Editor for The Rocket.

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