Veteran Longhorn sports-knower Kirk Bohls, formerly of the Statesman and now of the Chron, has a long look at the team working to bring an MLB franchise to Austin.
Matt Mackowiak has a plan.
The long-time Austin political strategist and public relations guru seeks to bring a major-league baseball team to the biggest, untapped professional sports market in the country as he has launched a highly skilled, collaborative team looking to galvanize the community and make a bold bid for an expansion franchise.
That’s right.
He’d like to have butts in the seats of a plush, 40,000-seat, brand new stadium with a retractable roof somewhere in eastern Travis County watching Major League Baseball in the 2030s.
Just imagine it.
In the season opener in 2031, Austinites could go buy a hot dog and brewski, settle into their front-row seat behind home plate and watch the New York Yankees play the Austin Bats.
Talk about your real-life field of dreams.
But these are the dreams of chief executive officer Mackowiak and his co-founding partners, chief operating officer Derrik Fox and president Dustin Byington, just less fantasy and more factual.
Fox, who grew up near Albany, N.Y., has been to Cooperstown 40 minutes away from his grandparents’ home in upstate New York to check out the baseball Hall of Fame more times than he can count. He brings a wealth of experience in sales and marketing.
Byington is a 40-year-old who grew up in a family of San Diego Padres season ticket holders and saw about 50 home games a year since he was a sixth-grader. The one-time left tackle for Columbia’s football team moved to Austin with his wife in 2013. He is a serial entrepreneur who offers incredible finance and private equity know-how and charged with raising capital.
They can envision major league baseball in Austin maybe as soon as 2030, but more likely the following year.
There’s just a few little nagging details that need to be ironed out first between now and then:
- Like a major investor worth billions who loves baseball.
- Like a prime location for a brand new stadium easily accessible to many.
- Like an announcement from major-league baseball to formalize the expansion process and timeline.
- Like tremendous community outreach that fully impresses 30 MLB owners that Austin deserves a team.
- Like millions of dollars to set up infrastructure, hire experts, trigger a groundswell of support and finance their pitch to MLB.
Yeah, that’s pretty much it.
Check all those boxes, and Austin is on its way to becoming the 31st or 32nd major-league baseball team. And, yes, that prospect is long overdue.
“It’s going to be a long journey,” Byington said. “I’m not saying we’re running downhill now, but we’ve sure got a heck of a lot of momentum and we’re picking up speed.”
See here for some background. This is a long story, which ran in the Sunday print edition of the Chron, and it’s worth your time to read. I think Austin is more likely to get a team when MLB goes to its next round of expansion, from 32 to 34 or (better) 36 teams, but it can’t hurt to make a strong effort now. Getting a prospective owner in place would surely help. And on the infrastructure front, anything these guys can do to magic up a commuter rail line along I-35 (because surely the future stadium will be close to I-35), both to combat the evil that is the traffic on that highway and also to make the future Bats games more easily accessible to fans from San Antonio to Georgetown, would be of great benefit to all. As I said, I don’t think they’re going to succeed. But I do think they’re going to put forth a fine effort, and it will serve them well in the possibly not-too-distant future. Good luck, y’all.