The College World Series has a home in Omaha, but the ACC Baseball Tournament, by comparison, is a nomad.<\/p>\n
The ACC event deserves better. It spent the 2006, \u201907 and \u201908 years in Jacksonville, Fla., a nice place to play baseball but a long way most parts of the league.<\/p>\n
Then the event was scheduled to be in Fenway Park in 2009. But \u2013 whoops! \u2013 the Red Sox realized the Green Monster was booked that weekend, and had to ask for this year instead. Once the economy tanked, the ACC moved the 2010 tournament to Greensboro for financial reasons while saying that some day, some day it will play the event in Fenway.<\/p>\n
The allure of Fenway is obvious, but there\u2019s no way the tournament will draw much interest in New England. Finding a community that can support it \u2013 and maybe Greensboro will \u2013 makes more sense.<\/p>\n
The Triangle should be a great fit, with three teams here and two fine minor league parks. But the event gets overlooked in the market when the Carolina Hurricanes are in the playoffs, as they were last year. The event still drew 36,639 at Durham Bulls Athletic Park, the ninth-highest total in the event\u2019s history, but there just wasn\u2019t much buzz with the Canes dominating sports talk. <\/p>\n
Greensboro makes more sense. The city has now a great minor league park in NewBridge Bank Park and it has a chance to claim this event as its own. That\u2019s what happened with the CWS, with Omaha showing such enthusiasm for the event that others don\u2019t have a chance.<\/p>\n