Many argue that the business of baseball is that of entertainment- a product sold to fans for their enjoyment. But that isn’t truly the business of baseball.  Owners get it wrong so often, and its clear when they do.  This week the Yankees are taking part in what they have dubbed HOPE week - Helping Others Persevere an Excel- as this Tyler Kepner article discusses. Its one way, for one week a year, the Yankees players and coaches can visibly do many wonderful things for their fans. Its wonderful they do so many things for so many people.

The Mets, despite what you read about these days in New York papers, also do some wonderful things in the community.  We all know about the Christmas party each year where a Met dresses as Santa. Additionally, though they do other good deeds through out the year.

But here is the  thing that baseball owners don’t get- with perhaps the exception of the late George Steinbrenner- a team is only worth something to the community it plays its home games in if it adds value to that city each day.  The core business of baseball is not entertainment it is community relations.  The Yankees are the best at it, because Steinbrenner quickly figured out that for the city to even pay attention to his team, they had to be winners, just like New Yorkers as a whole.

Be it small market or big, the only way fans of a city will begin to care about a team is if the team adds value to their lives and their city.  Think about the focus that comes to a place like Tampa when the Rays made the playoffs and went to the World Series.  Think about how many viewed Boston for so long, before 2004- as a city second to the New York.  That comes from their teams.

When the world stops to focus on a city like Minneapolis or say Cincinnati, everyone in town stands a little taller and walks just a little bit prouder.  Of course, that kind of attention comes from winning.

And winning is the best form of entertainment, as well as the best form of shining a light on your community, but it is not the only way of doing such things.  Bringing fans together, inside and outside the ballpark also helps to bind neighbors together, and create loyalty.  And of course, giving back does that as well.

A team can’t add value just by winning, but it needs to balance that with honest care for the city it lives in.  Its easy to see when fans become untrusting, say when a team threatens to leave- but that has more to do with the poor job the team did in building a partnership with the fans.  Many teams though leave the community building to an understaffed, and poorly paid department called community relations.  They are often represented at a game with a folding table and some autographed memorabilia at silent auction for charity.  They aren’t paid much attention to because they don’t bring in money for the organization, they give money away.  But building community can’t be one departments job.  It has to be every team members job from the President down to the interns who sell tickets.

Teams can’t win without us.  They can’t sell sponsorships or broadcast rights if we don’t care.  And if they aren’t selling tickets than they clearly haven’t recognized that they are a part of our community.  They can’t help that community on certain days of the week.  They must be helping the community in everything they do on and off the field.  Its in building that partnership with the entire community that a team can find real ways to win.