The Hartford Yard Goats unveiled their team logo on Wednesday, featuring a feisty goat chewing on a baseball bat.
The nostalgic colors and lettering refer to Hartford sports history -- the Whalers -- and the old New Haven-Hartford-New York train line logo. A "yard goat" is a term for a type of rail car.
The team is now offering logo-emblazoned apparel on its online store, including baseball caps and jerseys.
Here is the official logo; colors pay tribute to Hartford Sports History. Get yours today! http://t.co/RZFoG5B0ZE pic.twitter.com/O44p37ZRJ1
— Hartford Yard Goats (@GoYardGoats) July 8, 2015
Now that the name and logo are official, the reality that a team will be playing baseball in Hartford gets even closer.
The stadium is under construction, and even though the grass may not be perfectly green by April, developers say the team will play ball in Hartford on opening day.
Still, the overriding question for Hartford isn't whether baseball will be fun. It's whether this baseball stadium in this part of Hartford will bring the sort of economic development and prosperity promised by the park's boosters. That's a question answered only by time and patience.
Hartford Mayor Pedro Segarra stood at a construction site next to one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. He was surrounded by a sea of parking lots that's been here as long as he can remember. Give it time, he said, as an excavator dug out home plate.
“When all this is all built, you're really not going to know where you are, but you'll be in Hartford, and proudly so,” Segarra said.
Hartford is spending $56 million on a ballpark for a team called the Hartford Yard Goats, a name that doesn't have much to do with Hartford, and has everything to do with marketing a team to kids who want to come to the games and buy a hat with a goat on it. Meanwhile, the city has also spearheaded a $300 million, privately-financed housing, retail, and supermarket project to surround the ballpark.
Segarra said that's what happens when you leverage public money. “Once we had the stadium announcement, the development piece came together, and we had a lot more interest from developers to want to invest in this area,” he said.
A recent study says a sports franchise may make a city happy, but it's unlikely to make a city rich.
But wherever wealthy sports franchise owners get cash-strapped cities to build them a new gem, there's always the question of whether all of the investment will pay off for the people paying the bills.
Hartford City Council President Shawn Wooden has said people in the nearby neighborhood where he grew up need a boost. But Andrew Zimbalist, a professor of economics at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, isn’t so sure the ballpark development will bring jobs.
“The promoters always talk about it as the best thing since sliced bread for the local economy, and that's not true,” Zimbalist said.
Yard Goats on the marquee pic.twitter.com/v5PRP6PZBV
— Paul Doyle (@PaulDoyle1) July 8, 2015
Zimbalist said the research shows that public stadiums by themselves typically don't generate much economic growth, if any. One recent study from researchers at Lake Forest College in Illinois and Holy Cross in Massachusetts concludes this way: sports may make a city happy, but they're unlikely to make a city rich. And Zimbalist said that's how this should be sold.
“Here's an activity, a wholesome, summertime activity that the community can enjoy, that can create a greater sense of community. This can be a plus. And I think that that's the most honest way to sell one of these ventures,” Zimbalist said.
And even if the numbers don't pan out, boosters are saying it's the kind of plus that Hartford needs.
