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Drawing USA Baseball would be coup for city
© St. Petersburg Times, Given the recent bad news about the state of the local tourism industry, it was exciting to hear this week that county, city and tourism officials are working to bring USA Baseball to Clearwater. The organization, created by an act of Congress in 1978, is the national governing body for amateur baseball in the United States and is a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee. Some 19-million amateur athletes play under the USA Baseball umbrella through organizations such as Little League Baseball, Pony Baseball, the YMCA, the National High School Baseball Coaches Association, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the National Association of Police Athletic Leagues. USA Baseball fields the USA Baseball Olympic team that competes in the summer Olympic games, as well as a national team that plays an exhibition schedule across the country against international teams, and the USA Baseball Junior National Team for youngsters under age 18. For four years the organization has been headquartered in Tucson, Ariz., but it is interested in moving. There has been low local turnout for tournament games in Tucson, and officials say it also is too expensive for teams to fly to Tucson for games. Clearwater is among about a dozen cities bidding to get the headquarters. The St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention and Visitors Bureau estimates that if USA Baseball located in Clearwater, 8,000 additional hotel rooms could be filled each year. Under the proposed plan, USA Baseball's offices would be located at Jack Russell Stadium in Clearwater, where the Philadelphia Phillies now play spring training games. USA Baseball also would use the fields at a new spring training stadium the city of Clearwater plans to build in the next couple of years. The proposal to use Jack Russell is a curious one. The aging, leaky offices at Jack Russell are unlikely to measure up to USA Baseball's current digs at Hi Corbett Field in Tucson. That stadium recently was renovated at a cost of $3.77-million, a project that included expansion and remodeling of USA Baseball's offices. Not only does the city of Clearwater have budget problems that might make a remodeling of Jack Russell problematic, but the Jack Russell site has been promoted by the city as a good location for industrial development that would bring needed jobs to the community. While that portion of the proposal might need review or tweaking, the presence of USA Baseball in Clearwater would be a great addition to the community. Upper Pinellas County loves baseball, and the addition of high-level amateur games to the local sports scene might even lure back those fans who have lately soured on professional baseball. The organization's games would bring more variety and more people to the city's new baseball stadium, likely to be built near the intersection of Drew Street and U.S. 19. And, of course, having USA Baseball here would be a shot in the arm to the struggling tourism industry on which Clearwater and Pinellas County depend for economic health.
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From the Times North Pinellas desks |
