BY DAN GLICKMAN
The 2024 Rochester Red Wings season couldn’t have started worse for the team’s front office. After three road games in Syracuse, the rains descended upon Rochester, canceling or postponing four straight games. Instead of a long-planned opening day with a large crowd, the home slate began on a cool Saturday in April with just 3,503 in attendance.
Thankfully for the Red Wings, sunnier days were ahead. By the end of the season, the team had had its best attendance since the COVID-19 pandemic and one of its best attendance years in the last decade. A total of 445,336 bought tickets for games at Innovative Field this year, including a Red Wings regular season-record 13,605 on June 14 for a game where Rochester faced rehabbing New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole. On the field, the team had one of its most successful seasons in years, and Red Wings fans saw some of the sport’s best prospects come through town before joining the Washington Nationals.
“It was a great year,” said Rochester Community Baseball President, CEO, and COO Naomi Silver shortly before the end of the season. “The fans really came out for us, and I think we had some great promotions. It just felt like a really solid year for us.”
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The total attendance for the season fell just short of 2017 (445,581) for the second-highest attendance for a Wings season in the last decade and almost certainly would have passed it if not for the loss of several games during the early-season showers. Although official figures for the league are not yet available, unofficial tallies compiled by Baseball Reference put the Red Wings in the middle of the 20-team International League in attendance, ahead of not only neighboring Syracuse but also teams in larger markets such as Charlotte, Jacksonville, and Memphis that host major league-level teams in other sports.
Throughout the season, the Red Wings had their usual promotions to draw fans to the ballpark: Plates nights on Thursdays, visits by traveling acts like the ZOOperstars, fireworks nights, “Cocos Locos” nights, a visit from the Rochester Philharmonic, and various giveaways. They also had more unique events, such as a “Solarpalooza” in honor of April’s solar eclipse, lilac-themed uniforms during the Lilac Festival, and appearances from actors from popular series like “The Office” and movies like Napoleon Dynamite.
The team’s performance may also have helped the Wings at the turnstiles: Rochester’s 77-71 record was the best since 2017 and the first of the Washington Nationals affiliation. The Nationals lineup has also become increasingly familiar to Red Wings fans, with the majority of the lineup most nights being made up of Red Wings alumni, including top prospects from this season like Dylan Crews and James Wood.
“If you look at the Nationals roster right now, it’s littered with former Red Wings,” said Red Wing General Manager Dan Mason. “Many of them had a significant impact on the 2024 Red Wings and are going to have a significant impact on the Nationals for years and years to come.
“I think this is the year that history will say [was] the year that Red Wings fans became Nationals fans. Because if you watch a game right now in Washington, that whole team, for the most part, is guys that played for the Red Wings.”
To continue that success with the Nationals- or any other would-be parent club- the Red Wings organization is always looking to the future. The 2024 season saw an extensive remodel of the clubhouses and associated facilities, and fans coming to the ballpark this season saw a new performance center and batting practice facility continue to emerge behind the first base seating bowl.
The performance center and other infrastructure is expected to be complete by April of next year as part of an array of improvements required by Major League Baseball to maintain the club’s place in the professional baseball hierarchy.
“The stadium looks as good as it ever has,” said Silver. “We’ll continue to make improvements, and we’re working with the county to do that. I think the player facilities have elevated us to among the very best in minor league baseball, which is important to us because we always want to keep our Major League affiliate very happy to be here and to keep Major League Baseball, the Office of Major League Baseball in our corner.”
The stadium improvements and the Red Wings’ continued success at the gates come at a tumultuous time for Minor League Baseball. Since MLB took over the structure of the minors in 2020, an increasing amount of teams have come under the control of outside interests away from the cities that host them, whether they be their Major League parent clubs or holding companies that own several franchises. Silver, whose father Morrie famously spearheaded the effort to save the Red Wings from relocation by the then-owner St. Louis Cardinals in the late 1950s, believes that Rochester benefits from local ownership.
“Local ownership makes all the difference in the world,” she said. “To have an owner of a team, any team, minor or major league, that isn’t local… You don’t have the same sense or sensitivity to what your local fans feel or how they perceive the ballclub.”
“It’s just a different feeling, so I think it makes us much more sensitive to our fans’ needs and makes us aware of them as well.”
With those needs in mind, the Red Wings front office staff is preparing for next season, which will start on the road on March 28 before the home opener on April 1. Mason and Silver are both tight-lipped about what fans could expect next season, but Mason says the work has already begun on one of the most important off-the-field pieces of interest for fans: promotions.
“Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll start kind of putting together our promotions plan for 2025,” he said. “I can guarantee it’s going to be another fun field season here at Innovative Field.”
While Mason wouldn’t give specifics, he did admit that the team is trying to get Innovative Field a visit from the Savannah Bananas, the increasingly popular barnstorming team that has filled stadiums across the country with their “Banana Ball” games, which feature special rules, trick plays, and unexpected guests. They’ve made appearances in Buffalo and Syracuse but have yet to come to the Flower City.
“We have been working on that for a few more than a few years, and we will continue to work on that,” he said.
There is, however, one thing that Dan Mason does promise. The thing he promises every season: come April 1, when the Red Wings have their home opener, it’ll be a beautiful day and at least 50 degrees.
He guarantees it.
Great news about attendance. Also looking forward to having the construction completed. Attended a half dozen games and listen to many other on the radio. Looking forward to next year. Go Wings
Some good, some not so good (but its just one persons opinion)
The attendance was great, given the lousy weather at the start and the recent poor play of teams the Gnats have given us. Wings tickets sold numbers have sort of remained steady over the past ‘normal’ seasons. They had usually come in 9th or 10th in the old 14 team league and this year they were about in the middle of the 20 teams.
Props to Dan, Naomi &Co for continuing to find ways to get people to the ballpark.
Props to some of the hitters who really brought offensive pop back to Rochester.
Props to all who have continued to make the ballpark look even better.
Huge props to Josh Whetzel, ever the professional behind the mic, making each game sound like it was a playoff game. A true credit to the organization.
The other stuff. Still don’t like the ‘new’ name. Frontier Field fit. It sounded right. But I guess the money the new guys offered tipped the scales.
Despite the great years here from the likes of Baker, Wood, Crews, Yepez, and a few others I seriously doubt this has helped ‘turn the corner’ in making Rochester fans fall in love with the Nationals. Thats a huge stretch for a town and its media who only worship Yanks and Mets.
Bush league move of the year; Gnats DFA’d veteran Blankenhorn down the stretch while he was among the league leaders in HR and RBI and after they had called up every one of our offensive threats. That was a real you-know-what to our fans.
Lord gave the Wings pitching staff a bit of credibility but overall it may have been the worst collection of pitchers to ever wear the uniform here. While some may consider 77-71 a ‘successful season’, in the former I.L. it wouldn’t have been quite as impressive. but now with the playoffs a complete joke, I guess winning more than losing will be chalked up as a plus..specially since there was very little incentive anymore to watch the standings. This is not the Red Wings fault. Its MLB who has managed to render minor league baseball some kind of disease.
Is Washington a good fit here? Of course not. In previous years we would be saying can they give us a real winner; a playoff contender; a Governor’s Cup team. Now, none of that matters. You just play the games and hold your nose when MLB talks about their exciting best of 3 ‘playoff series’ and that ever popular one game whatever in Las Vegas. The landscape has totally changed in AAA and none of it is for the better.
Still we have the Red Wings. And we’ll go to watch them. We will honor the hard work of local ownership and the dedication of Dan Mason, Naomi Silver and their crew. And maybe hope that one day MLB will figure out what made the IL such a great league for decade after decade, and restore what has been discarded.
To Dan and Naomi: I wish for you a 75 degree sunny opening DAY with a crowd of 12,000 welcoming back the boys of summer.
Go Wings!