SOUTH JORDAN, Utah — As Utah makes its pitch to be the temporary home of Major League Baseball's Oakland Athletics, many wonder what benefits the team could bring to the state.
Inside the Mountain West Baseball Academy in South Jordan, the sound of a ball hitting a mitt could be heard Monday. The facility is often used by professional players who train during the offseason in northern Utah.
"I think baseball is a lot better around here than people give it credit, we have good players, we do," said Kavin Keyes with the academy.
Keyes is a former player himself, spending a year in the Seattle Mariners organization after being drafted in 2014.
Nearly two weeks ago, the Larry H Miller Group and Big League Utah hosted executives with the A's to showcase how they'd accommodate the team and their ballpark needs.
Construction is in full swing on a new South Jordan stadium which was originally to be the new home of the Salt Lake Bees. It could provide a stop-gap home for the A's who will be leave California after this season, but won't have a stadium ready to house them in Las Vegas until 2028.
Keyes believes the A's would make an impact on Utah baseball, especially with the younger players.
"I think those kids would really want to go to those games and see them play," he said, "and watching some of the best guys in the world do it is only going to motivate the kids."
Those who study sports and the impact they have on their cities say the newness of the game and only being in town temporarily would be an advantage.
"When it comes to sports, they're not something that creates economic growth and that's not really why you do this," said David Berri, professor of economics at Southern Utah University.
Berri should know the score after publishing nearly 90 academic articles and a handful of books on sports economics over the past three decades.
"You're doing it because it enhances people's lives," he said.
Would fans embrace a team like the A's, one of the worst in baseball that has a lost over 100-games each of the past two seasons?
"The fact that people show up to see the Jazz when they're not good suggests that there are significant numbers of sports fans in Salt Lake City in the surrounding area," the professor said.
Berri believes landing a Major League Baseball club, even temporarily, is a good test to see if the market could sustain a team permanently, along with helping it land an NHL franchise as well.
"If you look at the size of the Salt Lake market and you consider the surrounding areas, it is at least as big as a number of places that have two or three or four teams," he said, "and so there's no reason to think that this wouldn't happen."
