May - Albany Colonie Regional Chamber of Commerce

The Tri-City Valley Cats will showcase their New York-PennLeague championship trophy at The Joe on their openingweekend of June 17and we’re looking forward to picking upwhere we left off last year.”Top catsThe ValleyCats set organizationalattendance records for the seventhconsecutive year in 2010, drawing 155,315fans to Joseph L. Bruno Stadium, or“The Joe,” and averaging 4,314 fans pergame. That was also the season of theone millionth fan, who came through theturnstiles on June 19.With 2011 being the ValleyCats’ 10thanniversary season, the team is lookingforward to another season of competitivebaseball and family entertainment.“We’ve been growing for sevenyears, and a lot of it comes down to theentertainment value that we really try todemonstrate at The Joe,” Murphy said.“When you look at the affordability of ourtickets, our family four pack of four tickets,four hot dogs and four drinks costs only$25. Depending on the day of the week, wegenerally offer some value incentive. Everynight is a theme night, and we’re alwaystrying to cater to a particular demographicor theme. Last year, we had 15 fireworksdisplays, and we’ll do that again this year.We really are an affordable family option.”The ValleyCats also cater to thecorporate community, hosting events forbusinesses and their clients or staff.“This is a great opportunity forbusinesses to come out and have abarbecue or a corporate outing,” Murphysaid. “It’s a great team-building venuefor various businesses to offer employeesand their families to gather collectivelyin a fun-filled, affordable environment.Our mission statement is ‘to create fansfor life in an affordable, safe and cleanenvironment.’ What we try to do is reachout not only to our demographic, but alsoour corporate environment and offer theman affordable way they can connect withtheir employees.”Financial institutions, for example,have held corporate outings with 25employees, while some parties haveincluded more than 1,000 people, Murphynoted. On Time Warner Cable CustomerAppreciation Night, more than 7,000fans came to The Joe, and Time Warnershowcased some of its new offerings andrewarded their clients, just for bringingtheir cable bill.“Getting a better understandingof our marketplace has only helped usenhance the product that we want to putforth,” Murphy said. “People think we’re inthe baseball business; actually, we’re in thepeople business.”After winning the New York-PennLeague championship in 2010, theValleyCats had a trophy tour that went offto various locations. They’ll showcase thetrophy again this summer at The Joe onthe opening weekend of June 17, when theteam raises the championship banner andgives away a championship ring to a luckyfan.“The success of last season is reallygoing to carry over to the start of thisseason,” Murphy said. “We’ve really takenthe championship and melded it intothe start of the 2011 season. We provideentertainment and everybody likes to beassociated with a winner.”The ValleyCats also continue toreach out to Little League organizations,spending a day renovating four youthbaseball fields in 24 hours as part of its “4in 24” campaign.“We partner with Friendly’s, PriceChopper, CDTA and Brickman Group toperform an extreme makeover on thesefields,” Murphy said. “We’ve renovated 10fields in 10 years. That really fits in withour community-based mission. We reallyare stewards of the game of baseball butwe also want to be a really good neighborand be a part of the Capital Region for along time to come.” •May 2011 | VISIONS | 15