Chico, Redding make double play

The North State is being drafted by the majors. Drafted into newsprint by a major newspaper, that is. The New York Times highlighted the area—one recent issue featured Chico; another, Redding.

The online version of “Root, Root, Root for the Start-up,” an article in the Sunday, July 9, issue about the history and future of the Golden Baseball League, of which the Chico Outlaws are a part, includes a number of photos taken in Nettleton Stadium. Chico is apparently one of the two most profitable clubs in the six-team league.

The league, started last year and backed by a group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, isn’t your garden-variety pro league. What makes it unique: It’s all about the collective. The GBL, sponsored by Safeway, markets itself like crazy. It’s even had to put up special billboards in some areas just to accommodate more ads. The New York Times story can only help that cause.

“Our hope is that the publicity helps the league,” said Bob Linscheid, the Outlaws’ general manager, about the Times article. “We’re constantly looking for more notoriety about this business model, and hoping this kind of publicity gets us more people, more businesses interested in what we’re doing.”

The business model he speaks of is the brainchild of two Stanford grad students—they came up with the idea during an entrepreneur class and decided to sell it. It calls for a baseball league in which all of the teams are centrally owned, rather than having each team owned by a different individual or group. Because it’s a group enterprise, the profitable teams can finance the not-so-profitable ones and make way for growth. The GBL hopes to grow to 40-plus teams in the next few years.

The league also offers entertainment beyond the average—baseball legend Jose Canseco was recently signed, and then sold, by the San Diego Surf Dawgs. (He struck out three times in a row in Chico!) Still watch for him, though, as part of the Long Beach Armada, which will be in Chico starting July 24. The league’s all-star game will be in Nettleton Stadium, too, on Tuesday, July 18.

If Chico hit a double in the New York Times, then Redding brought it home in the July 7 issue as the paper’s latest 36-hour “escape” destination. The story highlights local eateries (i.e. where to find the best steaks in town—Jack’s Grill), hotels and cool places to go, like the huge Sundial Bridge and Lake Shasta Caverns.

“Redding was once considered just another Podunk,” the article says. “But in the last seven years the city … has remade itself and is becoming a destination.”

For the articles, visit http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/travel/escapes/07hours.html and http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/business/yourmoney/09golden.html .