Is Jackson losing its minor league baseball team?
Media reports from Columbus, Georgia, suggest the city is funding a stadium renovation in an attempt to lure a Double-A Southern League baseball team.
Part of the story from the Columbus Ledger-Inquirer suggests the city is in negotiations with Diamond Holdings to potentially bring a team there.
Diamond Holdings owns 28 minor league teams. However, the teams mentioned in the story that could move to Georgia are the Mississippi Braves from Pearl; the Rome, Georgia Braves; the Midland, Texas Rockhounds; the San Jose, California Giants; and the Wichita, Kansas, Wind Surge.
Multiple sources believe the Braves are the No. 1 option for moving to Columbus, Georgia, and the Braves' lease at 8,480-seat Trustmark Park is up in 2024, which would free the team to leave and go anywhere.
Mississippi Braves Vice President and General Manager Pete Lavin did not return repeated phone calls and text messages seeking comment for this story.
A spokesperson with the Braves who answered the phone said he had heard the rumors but that he could not reach Lavin to get a comment.
Pearl Mayor Jake Windham said he had not heard of the Braves potentially leaving.
"We are not aware of anything like that," Windham said. "We are just looking forward to the next season which begins in April."
An Atlanta Braves official declined comment because the Double-A team is owned by Diamond Holdings.
Major league teams typically don't comment on future minor league plans.
Attendance at Trustmark Park in Pearl for Braves games has been disappointing at best. Of 30 total Double-A teams, the Braves were 29th in attendance in 2023 with 2,545 fans per game, according to Ball Park Digest. Only the Biloxi Shuckers, the Double-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers, had fewer fans per game in 2023 with 2,440 fans per game.
In February 2021, the Mississippi Braves announced they would be one of 120 minor league clubs to accept MLB's Professional Development League license.
The agreement assured the M-Braves as the Double-A affiliate of the Atlanta Braves until 2031.
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As part of that announcement, there was a new league structure for the M-Braves, who are now a part of the Double-A South. The eight-team circuit consists of eight members of the Southern League.
The Braves have played in Pearl and Trustmark Park since 2005.
The Braves are the latest minor league team in the Jackson area. From 1975-1990, the Double-A Jackson Mets were a cornerstone of professional sports in Central Mississippi. When the Mets moved their Double-A team to Binghamton, New York, the Houston Astros moved their Double-A team to Jackson where it played from 1991-2000.
The Mets and Astros minor league teams all played at Smith-Wills Park in Jackson.
Columbus, Georgia, Mayor Skip Henderson, in a city council meeting, according to the Ledger Inquirer, declined to disclose who is backing the project after the council held a private meeting for almost two hours to discuss it Thursday morning, before the public vote.
“The name has been put out, but they’ve asked us not to disclose on a regular basis the partnership,” he told reporters afterward.
Henderson believes that landing a minor league team would be the first step in an economic development project.
“Baseball to me is not in the center ring,” he told the Columbus newspaper. “The center ring is the development that’s going to change the lives of people in south Columbus; it’s going to increase revenues; it’s going to benefit the entire community.”
Trustmark Park in Pearl served as a catalyst for economic development itself as projects such as Outlet Malls of Mississippi, a theater, Bass Pro Shop as well as other businesses, restaurants and hotels have cropped up in the past 20 years.
The loss of the Braves at Trustmark Park would leave a void in that economic development engine in Pearl and would leave the Metro area with two baseball stadiums that once were homes to Double-A franchises.
USA Today's Bob Nightengale contributed to this report.
Ross Reily can be reached by email at rreily@gannett.com or 601-573-2952. You can follow him on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter @GreenOkra1.
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Is Jackson losing its minor league baseball team?
