Generals put up for sale by Carter

Waynesboro Generals owner Jerry Carter announced Thursday that the Valley Baseball League team is for sale and could move or fold within two months.

Entering his second year as owner, Carter set a 30-day deadline starting today to find a buyer to keep the team in town. The Generals have been a local fixture for decades. If the first deadline is not met, Carter said, he will open the sale to buyers who could move the club out of the city. If none is found, the team could fold.

“What I have to do now, is try to protect the integrity of the franchise,” Carter said. “The best way to do that is to find local folks who want to buy the team.”

Carter said he would do “whatever possible” to keep the team in Waynesboro.

If no buyer is found after 60 days, Carter said he would “have to make a very tough decision no one wants to make about whether the team can play baseball in 2010.”

Carter said he is unable to bear the burden of running the team on his own. The move has nothing to do with finances, he said.

“There is more to running a team then the average person would ever understand,” Carter said. “You have to be connected to a community. You have to be a mover and a shaker.”

Generals President Chris Graham will be handling the sale, along with consultant Bill Meade. Graham has been granted power of attorney over the club during the 60-day sale period.

“We have a couple of options that we have been pursuing and that we will continue to pursue,” Graham said. “We will also be very open to the people who have not been contacted but have some interest.”

Carter took over the Generals with the goal of putting together a local ownership group, but was unable to find investors.

“I knew when I bought the baseball team that the only way that I would be able to be an active part of the team is if there was a group of folks owning the team,” Carter said. “Now, I realize I can’t put that team together.”

In July, Carter said he planned to sell minority shares for $1,000 apiece. No buyers were found. In November, he began seeking major investors and again came up empty.

“That is where the tag line, ‘Your Town, Your Team’ came from,” Carter said. “I wanted to be part of an organization and let the team belong to the community like it does in New Market and go from there.”

News of Carter’s plans to sell or fold stunned local officials.

“I’m surprised,” Waynesboro Mayor Tim Williams said. “I thought the Generals had some successful and profitable seasons. … I’m sorry to hear that. I’m hoping maybe this will be a red flag that local businesses will try to support exclusively the Generals.”

Waynesboro Vice Mayor Frank Lucente expressed similar concerns.

“I feel that it is a shame that there is a possibility the Generals will stop to operate,” he said. “I think there needs to be an effort to keep them alive. It’s going to take good management to make the team profitable and someone with a lot of expertise and knowledge to make it work.”

Gators suspend operations

Another Valley League team, the Fauquier Gators, suspended operations after the season ended last summer, citing a lack of community support. That club had operated as a nonprofit organization and had been run, in part, by Steve Athey until his death in 2005.

His wife and children took over the club as trustees and continued to operate it in his memory.

“When my father was involved, he didn’t ask people for money,” said Athey’s daughter, Gators trustee Alison Brennan. “A lot of the money came from him but after he died we didn’t feel comfortable with mom and us running it that way. When we reached out to the community for support, we didn’t get any. Last year we charged the fans [$5] admission to the games and people complained every night.

“It was a tough decision because we liked what my dad had started … but in the end, if the community does not care, what are we doing it for?”

The Generals faced a similar problem during the 2009 season after Carter bought the team from Jim Critzer. In a November interview with The News Virginian, Carter called on local businesses to help out.

“As long as you have over 20 Waynesboro businesses choosing to advertise in Staunton, it shows how many folks are in the mindset that the area is one in the same,” Carter said. “We need the people in Waynesboro to step up and rally around their baseball team. There is room for everyone on the bandwagon, from fans to sponsors to volunteers all the way up to someone owning part of the ball club.”

Few people responded.

Small clubs such as the Generals and Gators need businesses to overlook the dollars and cents, said sports marketing expert Brendan Dwyer, assistant director for the Center for Sports Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University.

“In a town that’s struggling, if something is important to the town, it might take some sacrifice for some local business owners to help it stay,” Dwyer said. “You need people to advertise and it may cost money, but the benefit it brings is beyond bottom line. It means a lot to a city, especially one that is going through tough times.”

More than a team

The Generals are among local icons that long have defined the city. Others are Mohawk Industries, the carpet plant that is shuttering today, and Invista, the fibers maker that has been downsizing dramatically for the last year.

A city in Waynesboro’s position could either rally behind something like a baseball team in trouble or choose to let it slip away, Dwyer said.

“I think people can look at it two ways,” he said. “The first is that money is tight and sports is the one thing we can cut. The other is that sport is a distraction — it’s a great way to get away from hard things. Every since the turn of the 20th century, sport has always been there, baseball specifically. People are on same side and cheering for something. Sometimes owning a, whatever it may be, is not always a profitable venture, but what it means socially, it can be.”

If the Generals do fold or move, there is the chance another team will move in, but Dwyer said that’s not always the same.

“When Charlotte [N.C.] lost the Hornets [a National Basketball Association team], there was a bitter taste,” he said. “It doesn’t mean a team can’t come back. I would go on a limb and say it would be just bittersweet if one did. It would be difficult because they always have that feeling for the original team. I think it can be bitter and it goes beyond the team or the league. It goes to sport.”