Minor League Baseball isn’t afraid to get weird—and it’s paying off

Just a short drive outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, the quaint city of Kannapolis is seeing a rapid economic revival. The city, which was traditionally known for its textile mills, has recently transformed into a research hub in the for Southeast.

And right in Kannapolis’s city center, less than a ten minute walk from the Georgian-style city hall, sits Atrium Health Ballpark: the home of the Minor League Baseball team known as the Cannon Ballers. 

Over the last five years, the Cannon Ballers have played an increasingly vital role in Kannapolis’s revitalization. Throughout the course of a season, the team’s total attendance is around 200,000 people—a number much larger than Kannapolis’s official population of 60,000.

“It’s a beautiful ballpark, and the community and small businesses love it,” says Trevor Wilt, who’s in charge of entertainment fan engagement for the Cannon Ballers. He adds that since there aren’t many large companies in Kannapolis, small mom-and-pops shops rely on baseball games to bring people downtown. “It helps out the economic development around the entire downtown Kannapolis. Businesses are now thriving, and they can’t wait for baseball season because they get more customers.”

A large factor of the Cannon Ballers’s growing brand is their mascot: a mustachioed daredevil with a baseball head and a devilish grin. His name is Boomer, and he was chosen by thousands of voting fans in 2019 as part of a large revamp of the team’s identity. In appearance, he resembles Dale Earnhardt, NASCAR legend and hometown hero for the small North Carolina town.

Compared to the buttoned-up branding of most Major League Baseball teams, Boomer might seem a little odd. But in baseball’s minor leagues, there are 119 other teams just like the Cannon Ballers. Team owners have the flexibility to be more creative with just about every aspect of their team: the name, the mascot, stadium traditions, and even the rules of the game. Mascots range from a bucktoothed lug nut in Lansing, Michigan to a smirking trio of nuts in Modesto, California. 

A recent spurt in creative freedom has ushered in an era of fun and surging sales in Minor League Baseball (MiLB). Last year, MiLB games around the country saw more 30 million fans in attendance; the highest number since COVID. This year, industry experts expect even more.  

What’s the MiLB?

With teams stationed in small towns and cities, the minor leagues develop young prospects with the goal of them  eventually playing for one of 30 MLB teams. 

Each MLB team has four MiLB-affiliate teams: players just starting out begin at the Single-A level, then they can move on to High-A, then Double-A. Finally, they can reach Triple-A, where they play at the highest minor league level before hopefully being called up to the major leagues, where their baseball skills will be broadcasted to millions of viewers across the country. 

The Kannapolis Cannon Ballers are the Single-A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, which means the players on the team are currently at the lowest minor league level. Those players will work to one day reach the MLB for the White Sox (or potentially get traded to another team along the way).

Oftentimes, MiLB teams are the only professional sports team that operates in a community. The Triple-A Albuquerque Isotopes and Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats are the only professional sports clubs that exist in the states of New Mexico and New Hampshire, respectively. MiLB games cater to families looking for a fun day or night out, and owners lean into the casual nature of the league. 

“We’re affordable and we’re accessible,” says Peter Freund, the CEO and cofounder of Diamond Baseball Holdings, a group that currently owns over a third of MiLB-affiliate teams. “Minor League Baseball is a night out that is really affordable, can feel really good, and can feel really local. I think that we’re a really critical piece for every city that we operate in.”

Minor League Baseball also acts as an “incubator and testing lab” for the MLB, says Freund. The pitch clock, which debuted in the MLB for the 2023 season, was first introduced in MiLB games seven years earlier.

Freund adds that baseball park staples like bobblehead giveaways once started as an idea from minor league teams. “Minor League Baseball owners historically have just been able to try things without controversy,” he says. “What works well trickles up, and it’s been really cool to see that happen.”

For the 120 teams across the country, the freedom to experiment means the freedom to create. That creativity and excitement is “the fun of Minor League Baseball,” Freund says. And it pays.

Mascots and Merch

Because the average player moves through all MiLB levels typically over the course of three to six years, teams can’t build brands and sell tickets based on star power. Instead, they play into their home city’s history and come up with hyper-local identities. The resulting team brands are nothing short of full-on wacky. 

In Alabama, the Montgomery Biscuits’s team identity reflects the delicacy of a fluffy traditional southern biscuit. Rome, Georgia, hosts a MiLB team called the Rome Emperors, which is represented by an Emperor Penguin mascot wearing a traditional roman toga and laurel wreath.

The name “Cannon Ballers” pays homage to Kannapolis’s history of being home to Cannon Mills, the onetime largest towel manufacturer in the world. Wilt says that the “old souls” of the town appreciate the reference to Kannapolis’s history; oftentimes game attendees will come up to him and tell him of their family’s history with the town and Cannon Mills. 

In South Carolina, the Hub City Spartanburgers are similarly drawing on its city’s history to debut a fan-friendly brand. This team is a rebranding of North Carolina’s Down East Wood Ducks, which was bought by Diamond Baseball Holdings in 2023. The Ducks moved locations to Spartanburg, South Carolina, and the team became the “Spartanburgers” just in time to begin operations for the 2025 season. 

The story of the Spartanburger name is simple enough, according to the team’s General Manager, Tyson Jeffers, who hopes this MiLB team will put his city “on the map.” 

“Someone from Texas says, ‘I’m a Texan.’ Someone from New York says, ‘I’m a New Yorker.’ And people from Spartanburg call themselves a Spartanburger,” Jeffers says. “It’s truly a community name. But we’ve put a very minor league spin on it by introducing and leaning into the hamburger.”

Yes, the hamburger. 

To go alongside the Spartanburger name, the team will flaunt a bat-wielding, conductor’s hat-wearing hamburger mascot named Chuck. Chuck’s signature pose is running, tongue out, as if he’s deep in concentration (or just really hungry). 

The striped conductor’s hat is a nod to Spartanburg’s history as the transportation hub of the Southeast—train lines would flow into Spartanburg and then disperse, says Jeffers. This piece of city history is also where the “Hub City” in the team name “Hub City Spartanburgers” comes from. 

And even though the Spartanburgers have yet to play a single game, that lip-licking burger is already bringing in cash. Jeffers says that the Spartanburgers have shipped merchandise to all 50 states and internationally to countries including Canada, Germany, and Spain. He adds that he sees people come to the Spartanburg ballpark every day just to buy merchandise. 

The Spartanburgers’s merchandise ranges from hamburger t-shirts and cooking aprons to more traditional-looking baseball jerseys with only text and no mascot. Jeffers says that he wants to have fun while respecting the fact that “not everyone wants to walk around wearing a giant hamburger.”

“We’re really conscious in the development of our brand to make sure that we hit as many people as we could, while still having a lot of fun,” Jeffers says. “The merchandise has been really well received.”

Back in Kannapolis, Wilt says that the Cannon Ballers’s fun, history-oriented brand similarly has led to soaring merchandise and ticket sales. The Cannon Ballers became the Cannon Ballers in 2019, rebranding from the Intimidators. The Intimidators were “bottom of the totem pole” for both merchandise and ticket sales, Wilt says. But after adopting the playful Cannon Ballers identity, Wilt says the team has been in the top 20 among all MiLB teams in merchandise sales for five years straight. 

Be Prepared

On April 15, when the Spartanburgers take their home field for the first time, the team will be bringing a new tradition with them: They’ll hand out wooden train whistles to attending fans in hopes that the stadium will squeal to life whenever something good happens.

The Spartanburgers are the High-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers. Jeffers says that the Rangers’s front office is just as excited for this new tradition as the team in Spartanburg is, because the noise will prepare these young players for one day focusing in larger, louder stadiums. 

“The Major Leagues see that these ‘distractions’ that minor league teams are doing are helping to develop and benefit their players,” Jeffers says. “If you’re the away team in a facility like Yankee Stadium, imagine the things that the crowd is saying to you. Huge distraction. So for you to be prepared for that as a player can be really beneficial.”

The train whistles are one chapter in a long history of wacky traditions among MiLB teams. The Montgomery Biscuits shoot real biscuits into their crowds. Wilt of the Cannon Ballers has a tradition of going on the field every game and wearing a gold sequined bow tie. These games become intimate experiences, unique to each city a team operates in. 

Going to minor league games has become a pastime for families who either don’t have access or the resources to get to a Major League Baseball game—which of course includes the newest, younger generation of baseball fans.

One extra bonus for the players involved: They get to interact with and build the next generation of baseball fans. Jeffers says that unlike MLB teams, most minor league teams allow opportunities for young fans to interact face-to-face with players for an extended period of time. 

“The kids get that opportunity to say hello to a player that they hope is going to be a superstar one day. And that’s a really special moment for that kid,” Jeffers says. “It’s also a special moment for that player: To recognize that this kid looks at them as this superstar already, even though they’re just at the beginning of the path to that.”