FOCUS: The State of the RiverDogs is good, very good

Echols addresses a crowd.

Editor’s Note:  The Charleston RiverDogs held a special inaugural “State of the RiverDogs” breakfast last week for partners, owners, staff and key community leaders.  Here are some excerpts of a talk given by President Dave Echols, who in RiverDogs fashion, approached it like a State of the Union speech — red tie and all!

By Dave Echols, special to Charleston Currents  | Welcome to the inaugural State of the RiverDogs. It was a fantastic 2019 at The Joe and we’re excited to share some of the changes and plans in the works for the 2020 season. 

We’re so proud in Charleston to have one of the most beautiful ballparks in the country, and this time of year is always exciting as baseball begins again and the ballpark is abuzz. We’re fortunate to have a fantastic relationship with the City of Charleston, who has been a fantastic partner and landlord for more than 25 years. 

In addition, I want to recognize the RiverDogs’ front office staff – which I’d put up against any in sports. There may be no greater measure of the growth in our business than the influx of new contributors to our full-time team. Fifteen years ago, we were a staff of 10, who all wore dozens of different hats every day. Today, our business has matured to nearly 30 full-time staff members who work collaboratively across departments to achieve. Since the start of 2019 alone, we’ve welcomed these 12 folks to the RiverDogs family – in many cases in newly-created roles to help meet the growing demands of our business. These new folks, along with our core of veteran team members, are the ones who constantly challenge each other with new ideas to make fun happen. 

A look back

Now, if you’ll indulge me, I want to highlight the great year we had in 2019. Attendance growth is the single metric we point to to judge the overall success year-over-year and over a multi-year span. We’re extremely proud to now be operating a ballclub that consistently draws more than 300,000 fans to the ballpark each season (and well over 400,000 when factoring in non-RiverDog-gameday events). For the third season in a row – the first three times in our Club’s history – we’ve eclipsed that mark, and, yes, for those of you who keep asking, we would have set our all-time attendance record in 2019 had it not been for the statewide emergency evacuation order on the final day of our season (the hurricane finally decided to approach Charleston 4 days later).

A lot of things went well in 2019. We were nominated for three national Minor League Baseball Golden Bobblehead Awards and were named the South Atlantic League’s Club Merit award for overall best operation amongst the league’s 14 member clubs. 

Our team again created memorable gameday promotions that received national and regional media attention, including Helen McGuckin Night, where we worked to WOW the real-life woman who gave the RiverDogs a 2-star rating after only driving by our beautiful ballpark, and we created multiple specialty on-field jerseys that were featured on ESPN, including our nights celebrating Seinfeld and the movie Dumb and Dumber.

Perhaps our greatest strides were in growing the impact we made in our core community initiatives. We made two key department additions in Brooke Swetenburg and Chris Singleton, whose message of diversity, inclusion, and faith we’re proud to help promote. Our charitable giving to a wide variety of causes, consistently ranks near the top of all 160 teams in Minor League Baseball, and we set a new high-water mark in 2019. We’re also proud of our small role in helping in MUSC’s extremely successful campaign to open the new Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital; what a great addition to our community. 

Furthermore, in our core initiatives of youth sports and fitness and literacy in education, we introduced new programs, including the launch of what we believe to be the first multi-lingual reading program conducted by a Minor League Baseball team, in partnership with Berkeley County School District, as part of our Copa de la Diversion program to connect to Charleston’s growing Hispanic community.

And, in the first half of the season, we even found some modicum of on-field success – at least through the first month of the season. On our way to a First Half Division Championship, the team lost grips of a four-game lead and lost out to Lexington.

A look ahead

So, obviously, that leaves us with a lot to look forward to and grow on in 2020. Before I get there, first a quick comment on the topic on which I seem to get the most questions this offseason: The ongoing negotiation between Major and Minor League Baseball (MiLB) on the Professional Baseball Agreement, which lays out the relationship between MLB and MiLB. As you may have read, there is much talk about the possibility of Minor League teams being contracted and other potential changes. What I can say is that we don’t foresee significant changes that will impact the way we operate the ballclub in Charleston. Charleston and the community at-large have been tremendous supporters of Minor League Baseball, and we expect to continue deliver a great product for our fans and our community for a long time. 

What we are excited about is when we look into the future and see the opportunities for us to continue to grow with our community. Alongside our partners with the city, we have some exciting facility upgrades to share for 2020, including new group areas, such as the “Dugout” themed group area you see here, and an overhaul of the ballpark’s telecom capabilities.

Chief among the updates is the city’s upgrading of the ballpark light structures and converting those lights to LED bulbs around the ballpark. Not only is this solution a significant improvement in energy efficiency, it also provides us with the opportunity to liven up the game day presentation.

As we look even further into the future, there’s no shortage of ideas we can continue to work on to keep the ballpark one of the best in the country, even 25-plus years after its construction. Projects like the completion of a 360-degree boardwalk-style concourse behind the outfield wall make us all excited about the possibilities of how this ballpark can serve this community.  

And, of course, a new season means a new slate of outlandish promotional nights, all united under the umbrella of Make Fun, the RiverDogs’ slogan for the second consecutive season. We believe that our role in the community is to help create, or make fun, in everything that we touch.

So, a quick sneak peek here: an appearance by Stanley from The Office, Canadian Tuxedo Night, five specialty jersey nights, 13 fireworks shows, and another edition of Bobblection, where fans will “vote” on this year’s presidential race by picking a bobblehead of one of the candidates.

All of this is possible only with the support of our partners, and there are too many in the room to name. … Thank you.

(NOTE:  Major partners include MUSC; Budweiser’s local distributor, Southern Eagle; Boeing; and Segra, a fiber network company whose name is now attached to the Riley Park Club.)

Dave Echols is president of the Charleston RiverDogs.  The season starts April 9 at The Joe.