Columbia, S.C., has the state capitol, a regional population of more than 700,000 and no professional baseball team.

It wasn't always that way. Columbia has a long history of having minor-league teams, but the last one -- the Capital City Bombers, a Single-A team -- left town after the 2004 season. The lure of a new stadium 100 miles away in Greenville was too tempting for a franchise that had been playing in an old stadium in Columbia.

Greenville had built a new stadium because its previous team, the Braves, bolted for a new stadium outside Jackson, Mississippi because it didn't like the old Greenville ballpark. Jackson, by the way, had lost its team when it moved to Texas and, you guessed it, a new ballpark.

Sound familiar?

Minor-league baseball has long been a game of economic dominoes, and this particular installment left Columbia without a pro team. If the Braves leave Richmond after the 2008 season for a new ballpark in suburban Atlanta and no other team fills the void in 2009, the Richmond metro area (pop. 1,194,000) would become the largest without a majoror minor-league baseball team.

Based on interest expressed by other leagues, it doesn't sound as if Richmond will be without a team for long. But it is possible that a new team won't be ready to come in as soon as the Braves leave because the International League hasn't allowed the city to negotiate with other teams.

"It's really been a blow to Columbia," said Ron Morris, sports columnist for The State newspaper. "If you don't have a minor-league baseball team, it just screams that you're a small town. Period."

Columbia does have a nationally ranked college team with the University of South Carolina, and Morris believes competition from USC helped push the Bombers out of town. For the past two seasons, the amateur Columbia Blowfish, who compete in the Coastal Plain League for college players, has taken up at old Capital City Stadium and been successful.

Morris described the Blowfish as a comedown in quality from the Bombers -- "the equivalent of American Legion ball," he said -- but he acknowledges that most people don't know the difference, and the team has led the league in attendance.

Baton Rouge is also a college town with a perennial college baseball powerhouse in Louisiana State University, but no minor-league team. They have had independent teams play there once in a while, but they never survive, said Heath Aucoin, director of events management for Baton Rouge Area Sports Foundation.

"And football is the name of the game here," Aucoin said of LSU's national championship football team, which attracts sold-out crowds of more than 90,000 to Tiger Stadium. "By the time baseball starts, people are putting their money into football tickets for the fall."

New Haven is also a college town; Yale University is the most prominent. Tucked between New York (80 miles away) and Boston (140 miles), New Haven has struggled over the years to keep minor-league teams.

An independent team, the New Haven County Cutters, ceased operations after last season and "left to near complete apathy," said Dave Solomon, sports columnist for the New Haven Register.

Down the road in Hartford, they haven't fielded a minor-league team since 1952.

Some places haven't lost pro baseball entirely. Wichita, Kan., with a metro area of 600,000, lost its Triple-A team in the 1980s, got a Double-A team in its place and then lost it after last season to Springdale, Ark., which offered a new ballpark. The Wichita Wingnuts, an American Association independent team not affiliated with a major-league team, will begin play this summer in Lawrence-Dumont Stadium, which was built in 1934.

Springfield, Mass., the place where James Naismith invented the game of basketball, hasn't had a minor-league team in years. A member of the Greater Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau is pitching the idea of a new ballpark in the area that could attract the team.

The pitcher? Jim Bouton, the hard-throwing rebel who turned baseball on its ear in 1970 when he wrote the controversial best-seller "Ball Four." Bouton now lives in western Massachusetts and operates Vintage Base Ball Federation, a nationwide organization with clubs in more than 30 states in which amateurs play the game according to the rules and equipment of the 1800s.

He recently proposed building a small, old-time ballpark in Westfield, a neighboring town to Springfield. In a phone interview, he said the ballpark would feature elements of beloved old ballyards.

Bouton said the ballpark would be the site of Vintage Base Ball Federation's annual World Series and could also serve as home for a minor-league team. An opponent of publicly financed sports venues, he's trying to find investors to pay for the project.

The economic benefits of minor-league baseball are "dubious," Bouton said.

"Minor-league baseball cannibalizes other entertainment forms," he said. "It may create an economic hub of commercial activity in the area of the ballpark, but it takes it away from somewhere else.

"It's mostly a community feel-good kind of thing. And that's worth something."
Contact Bill Lohmann at (804) 649-6639 or wlohmann@timesdispatch.com.