Elmore Sports Group isn’t closing the door on moving the Colorado Springs Sky Sox (Class AAA; Pacific Coast League) to a new downtown San Antonio ballpark, according to a statement from the team.
The reasoning is simple: San Antonio is too good a market to ignore, especially if the city is talking new ballpark, per the Colorado Springs Gazette:
“If the City of San Antonio, the 37th largest TV market in the country calls and says they would like to talk about a downtown stadium and the possibility of bringing Triple A Baseball to San Antonio,” the Sky Sox said in a statement, “it would be imprudent as business owners not to listen.”
The team stressed that no deal has been finalized and the club “certainly has a desire to keep baseball in Colorado Springs.”
“This is a process, there is no deal in place, no downtown ballpark and no agreement of any kind with any city,” the Sky Sox said. “We don’t know frankly what is going to happen at this point but if or when discussions do take place they would be the beginning of the process, not the end. And if anything were to materialize from the discussions it would be well off into the distant future.”
This doesn’t mean Colorado Spring would lose pro baseball: there’s always the opportunity for Elmore Sports Group to move the Helena Brewers (rookie; Pioneer League) there. While that would stretch the eastern edge of the Pioneer League footprint almost five hours past Grand Junction, it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility.
As noted, Dave Elmore and San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor are expected to make some sort of announcement next week about a potential Triple-A team at a new downtown ballpark.
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