Buy Me Some Peanuts RIVER CATS EXECS KNOW IT TAKES MORE THAN BASEBALL TO KEEP FANS HAPPY
BY R.E. GRASWICH SPORTS AUTHORITY
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here are certain things a baseball fan shouldn’t know when enjoying a River Cats game at Raley Field. Among them is the fact that several hours before the first pitch on this particular night, five people who serve hot dogs and beer called to report they would miss the game with one excuse or another. As a fan, you are not supposed to know this and it’s not supposed to matter. But it does matter. It can ruin the Swiss-watch complexities plotted over days, months and years by Sierra Beshears, the ballpark’s general manager for food and beverage. “It’s the kind of crisis that happens all the time,” she says. “But it’s still a crisis when it happens.” The River Cats are in business to provide customers with the gentle elixir of America’s pastime, which, poets tell us, means the thwack of a baseball striking a wood bat, a dusty slide into third, a home run in the bottom of the ninth. Those sights and sounds are eternal. Their presence each spring and summer on the shoreline, just west of Tower Bridge, has helped to make the River Cats the most
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Sierra Beshears is the the general manager for food and beverage at Raley Field
valuable minor-league team in the United States, worth about $40 million, if you believe Forbes magazine. But the baseball-poetry stuff isn’t what keeps fans coming back. For that feat, the River Cats rely on people like Beshears, workers who create the food and effects and atmosphere that transport baseball fans through their game-time experiences at Raley Field.
“It’s all about customer service,” says Mark Ling, the team’s public relations and baseball operations coordinator. In 15 years since landing at Sacramento, the River Cats have never been able to conduct business with the big-league swagger that sustains the Kings or Giants or A’s. The River Cats can’t sell swagger because they are by definition a minor-league outfit.
The trick is not act like one. Big-league franchises sell exactly that: the promise of The Show, the presence of the world’s best athletes, the marquee names. Some do it well. Others get lazy about it. None of those obvious big-league promotional tools exist in the River Cats’ garage, beyond the occasional appearance of a famous name undergoing physical rehab while he takes a few cuts in the minors. “When we get a big-name player passing through, we certainly try to capitalize on it, even if he’s playing for the other team,” says Dane Lund, entertainment and promotions manager for the River Cats. “But usually, what we have to sell is a great experience.” That experience covers a wide spectrum over six months, from an uninhibited performance by a boozy Jimmy Buffett tribute band to a miniconcert starring Lincoln Brewster, a Christian guitarist and worship pastor at Bayside Church in Granite Bay. It becomes a balancing act, with the River Cats seeking to build an evening of nonstop fun and entertainment around an old-fashioned, slow-paced game where few fans know the players. Thanks to the team’s status as a Triple-A feeder for the Oakland A’s, the River Cats have no control over the team roster. They barely know who will be in uniform. “Baseball is why people come out, and it always will be about the game,” Lund says. “But we have to do our best with everything else, which is why we invest in the latest scoreboard technology and wireless cameras.” All fans have unique and personal agendas—some baseball devotees SPORTS page 42