NEWARK — When the first pitch was thrown, there wasn’t much of a crowd in the ballpark to see it. Entire sections were (unoccupied). The flow of people through the front gate was a trickle. The most fan-generated noise came from a children’s birthday party on a concourse in the right-field corner.
The Rev. Joe Kwiatkowski, among the few in (attendance), said this was not the loneliest feeling he had ever had at Bears and Eagles Riverfront Stadium, capacity 6,200.
“I’ve been here on nights when I literally (counted) the crowd and it’s been like 90 to 100,” he said from a seat behind first base. “Tonight will probably be a little more because they’ve got fireworks.”
It was an overcast Saturday evening, rain on the way, but that only partly explained the meager attendance to watch the Bears play the Quebec Capitales in an (independent) Can-Am League game.
After a (promising) start to the return of minor league baseball here 13 years ago, a persistent dark cloud has settled over the Bears and their cozy ballpark near the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. In (recent) years, the team has changed ownership several times, gone into bankruptcy and emerged to an almost nonexistent fan base and grim financial reality.
The Bears are more than $800,000 in arrears on rent to Essex County and have provided little in ticket and (sponsorship) revenue due the county. Whatever the team’s fate, the county and the city must each pay $1.1 million a year in debt service on the ballpark until 2029.
Given the large soccer constituency in the city’s Portuguese and Latino strongholds, did Newark get its (demographics) crossed and build the wrong field of commercial dreams? Did the city bet on the wrong sport?
A Yankees fan who said his priest’s salary was better preserved by spending a few dollars at a minor league game than paying a small fortune at Yankee Stadium, Kwiatkowski, 54, who has a Roman (Catholic) parish in Glen Rock, N.J., has attended Bears games because he once lived in Newark’s Ironbound district and hoped that a successful team could contribute to the city’s (revitalization).
“I was within walking distance, right over there,” he said, lifting his chin in the direction of the outfield fence.
