Zolz Entertainment

ZOLZ "IN THE NEWS"

From the FoxSport.com:

Renegade revelry - By Alan Snel

FISHKILL, New York — The eastern sky is cobalt blue at Dutchess Stadium, and the last traces of dusk are vanishing to the west. It's the bottom of the sixth inning at this New York-Penn (Single A) minor league ballyard, about 90 minutes north of New York City. The home Hudson Valley (New York) Renegades are losing, 5-2, to the Lowell (Massachusetts) Spinners when Renegades clean-up hitter Iker Franco steps into the batter's box.

Down the right-field line, a teenage girl lets loose with a plaintiff cry, "I love you Iker." A younger boy with a baseball glove sitting closer to the field turns around and fires back, "Then marry him." The crowd roars with laughter at the verbal pitch and swing. No John Rocker trash-talking here in the Hudson Valley. Instead, this July 5 game is "Cinco de Julio" night, a goofy play on the Mexican Cinco de Mayo holiday. Every Renegades staffer and game-night employee —- from Renegades general manager Steve Gliner to the club's two husband-and-wife 6-foot-tall raccoon mascots — have donned sombreros and panchos.

Irreverent Rick Zolzer, the stadium announcer, takes a wedding deejay approach to contests and raffles. The sounding of train whistles provokes hundreds of rug rats to stomp their feet on rumbling aluminum bleachers. And fans will conga-dance their way through the concourse for an inning, snaking a path through the $8.2 million, 4,344-seat venue. "I like to stand at the gate and talk to fans, and one fan told me, 'The Renegades help me define the summer,' " said Marv Goldklang, the club's principal owner who owns parts of four other minor league teams. "The summer begins when the Renegades arrive and when the Renegades leave, fall is here and school begins."

In many ways, the Renegades club is a model minor league team. While most Single A clubs lose money, the Hudson Valley Renegades make "a nice profit" on an annual budget that is between $1 million and $1.5 million, according to Goldklang. He declined to specify. The team fills more than 95 percent of its stadium seats during its 38-game home season, runs its own concessions and is expanding its marketing efforts.

The Renegades, known for their unusual, but popular, burgundy and hunter green color scheme and raccoon mascots, will hunt for new fans into New York state's affluent Putnam and Westchester counties to the south, Connecticut to the east and Ulster County to the north and west. The team has 1,800 season-ticket holders and a waiting list of about 500.

Its stadium sits off a two-lane road that runs along the Hudson River's eastern side, about a mile north of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge. The ballpark setting is wooded, but fans can see Interstate 84, and even a state prison to the south, offering a surreal feel to the bucolic ballyard. The biggest budget item is stadium maintenance — costing more than $250,000 per year — followed by front office (12 staffers) and travel costs, Goldklang said. The team also invested more than $200,000 for stadium improvements in 1999, including a new 150-fan patio picnic area, a playground, new backs for bleacher seats and new cup holders for the nearly 170,000 annual fans.

"This team makes money. And the reason it does is because we spend a lot of time listening to the fans," Gliner said. Dutchess County owns the stadium, built in a 73-day record pace in 1994 for the Renegades' inaugural season. The county's Hudson Valley Stadium Corporation, a tax-exempt entity that serves as the agent of the county, manages the facility. In turn, Hudson Valley Stadium contracts with the local Southern Dutchess Chamber of Commerce to manage some of the stadium jobs, such as running the parking lot. Under the rental agreement, the county charges and receives $3 a car for parking. The county also receives a ticket tax of 50 cents per ticket for ducats of more than $5 and 25 cents for ticket of less than $5. The team gets all other stadium revenue, such as money from 46 ads on the outfield fences, 24 commercial signs on the base of the grandstand wall and six rotating signs on the scoreboard. The team also makes money from renting eight sky boxes — including five for three-year deals with plumbing, bank, radio station, auto auction and soda companies. The 16-seat box goes for $9,500 a year, while the 12-seater sells for $7,500 annually. The other three boxes are rented for individual games.

Timing is everything in sports business, and the arrival of the Renegades — the former Erie, Pennsylvania club — came at a time when local IBM plants were downsizing and Dutchess officials were looking for a community morale pick-me-up in 1994. "The Renegades became a symbol of the resurgence of the immediate region," Goldklang said. "It was a bitterly contested issue as we were going through the legislature from a stadium finance standpoint, but we were embraced by the public. We came into the region at a time when the community was looking for something good to happen." Added team president Skip Weisman: "The community was looking for something to rally around." And it wasn't the Yankees or Mets. Yankee and Shea Stadiums are 60 miles to the south and too far away, and Hudson Valley fans were growing wearisome of the majors' high ticket prices. The Renegades offered an affordable night of entertainment and baseball. It's $4.50 for a general admission ticket. "With the Mets and Yankees purging everyone, you can come here for a reasonable price," said usher Gerry Gudsoe, a retired teacher. "I won't go to a major league game in New York. I'm tired of getting screwed."

The mid-Hudson Valley community, a little less than halfway between New York and Albany, has embraced the Single A team members, giving them free housing and an assortment of other freebies from dental work to restaurant meals. Free housing is important for players who earn about $850 a month. "This area has been hungry for some form of professional baseball," said Ed Howard, of Poughkeepsie, who watched the Renegades lose to the Lowell [Massachusetts] Spinners with his sons, Sean and Edward, on Wednesday. "I like the crowd participation," Howard said "I like the way the emcee gets into it."

Indeed, it doesn't take much for the stadium "emcee," Zolzer, to verbally mix it up. The local radio station personality likes to roam the stadium with his headset and microphone, cracking one-liners and goofing on everyone from fans trying to win a box of tacos to Tampa Bay Devil Rays owner Vince Naimoli. The Renegades are a Devil Rays' affialiate and Naimoli has been known to make a cameo at the stadium. "It's like he's the emcee at a wedding or bar mitzvah, with 4,000 guests,'' Goldklang said. He noted one visiting manager was so upset when a Zolzer quipped on the loud speaker that the pitches of an opposition junkball pitcher wasn't even breaking the speed limit that the skipper tried to confront the glib stadium announcer in the middle of the game. "He pushes the envelope," Goldklang said. "I told Rick, your job is to take reasonable risks."

While the Renegades are a success story, the team is fighting to keep complacency from setting into its fan base, Weisman said. "We have to maintain the same level of enthusiasm," Weisman said. It means pushing the market's borders, not relying on the same old sponsors and trying to accommodate their fans' changing interests, Goldklang said. "We have a little motto," he said. "Stay ahead of the curve."