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With the Oakland A’s set to leave Oakland for Las Vegas, there are a lot of rumors about expansion around MLB, and the city of Charlotte is at the heart of the rumors. Along with Nashville, Charlotte has been identified as an ideal spot for an expansion MLB team, if and when the sport expands to 32 teams, just like in the NFL. The growth of Charlotte as a sports town has been well-documented, ever since the Hornets arrived in the 1980s. In the 1990s, the Carolina Panthers arrived, and Charlotte FC is currently in their second year of MLS play. Additionally, the city has hosted the Final Four, seen the Charlotte Knights relocate to uptown and much more.
Earlier today, at a Charlotte Touchdown Club event, former Braves pitcher, and 2015 Hall of Fame inductee, John Smoltz spoke on Charlotte Sports Today on WFNZ, about the possibility we see the MLB in Charlotte saying “Yeah I hope so. Baseball has reached a point in my opinion, that if you can add two more teams, you’ve got so much more you can do with an even number of teams. The game is starting to become so young, and so talented, that you can start an expansion team a lot quicker than in the days when we did. It took a long time. I would think Charlotte would be a great city.”
With Charlotte not having an MLB team to call their own, there are a lot of Braves fans in the local area, along with the Reds, and even the Orioles. National brands like the Yankees and the Red Sox are well-represented, and even the Mets (we’re partly to blame for that), but as baseball looks to grow its audience, Charlotte might be the perfect spot to start up a new franchise. Not to mention that Charlotte is the only pro sports city in the country, that has an NFL, NBA, and MLS team, while not having an MLB team. Even if a team were to relocate to Charlotte, like the Tampa Bay Rays, with the way that the Knights draw crowds on a consistent basis, there is reason to believe that Charlotte would adequately support baseball enough to justify MLB taking a chance on them.
Could We Really See a MLB in CLT? John Smoltz Believes So was originally published on wfnz.com
