At the Hardball Times there is an article bemoaning the departure of minor-league baseball in Oneonta. As I have discussed previously, Oneonta is a pretty small city to support a minor-league baseball team. In my study I had it as the third least likely city to host a baseball team that was hosting a baseball team. I would like to admit to one limitation of my study. I was not able to incorporate any measure of tradition and longevity of a team in a location. Tradition and history are an important part of the appeal of baseball, so this is a legitimate concern. For instance, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh with long histories would seem to be better markets for baseball than similarly-sized markets without much baseball history such as Portland and Sacramento. Even with this consideration, the small size of the Oneonta market does not seem to be able to support a Short-Season A team.
I realize there will always be fans who are upset about the loss of a team, but Norwich just seems to me to be a much better market than Oneonta.
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