Winters’ colleagues and clients find it hard to believe that Day Air Ballpark is home to a High-A Minor League baseball team. Winters’ children, now grown, bring their own friends to games.
“It’s an experience,” said Winters, a Centerville resident and mortgage loan originator for PrimeLending. “And I think that’s what truly makes the Dayton Dragons different from most other Minor League baseball teams.”
Robert Murphy — the Dragons’ president since the team’s 1999 inception — has had the experience of a fan approaching him to recall how he celebrated a childhood birthday party at the downtown stadium. Now, that fan’s own children enjoy games.
The 2025 season would have been the team’s 26th in Dayton, but for the cancellation of the 2020 season for COVID-19 concerns. So the milestone season is celebrated now.
Murphy has a photo of early demolition of the site where Day Air Ballpark now sits, taken in 1998. In an early trip to Dayton, Murphy asked a cab driver to take him to the site.
Credit: Mary Cleveland
Credit: Mary Cleveland
Getting to that point was hard work. Building a successful Minor League baseball team in Dayton meant more than building a stadium. It meant helping people see possibilities.
“People were really just like vehemently against this,” Murphy recalled in a recent interview.
“There were a lot of skeptics,” said Anthony Capizzi, a former Montgomery County Juvenile Court judge who was among the first to advocate for a Minor League team while serving on Dayton City Commission. “In fact, 80% of people were skeptics.”
In the early days, when he spoke with community leaders and local groups, Murphy heard from those who said they had not visited downtown in years.
“The general perception was that it was unsafe,” he said. “When I looked at this site, it was clearly, at that point in time, probably the worst part of town.”
‘Incredible impact’
A downtown Sears store opened at the corner of Monument Avenue and Patterson Boulevard just after World War II, on part of the property now occupied by Day Air Ballpark.
The store enjoyed a prosperous few decades, but closed as a full-service department store in the early 1990s, at about the same time as the Mall at Fairfield Commons opened in Beavercreek.
Attempts to revitalize the site failed.
“The shuttered building was covered in graffiti, and was called a major eyesore as well as a ‘long shadow’ over the new (Riverscape) development plans,” wrote Andrew Walsh on his Dayton Vistas blog.
Walsh, a Sinclair Community College librarian and researcher and Dayton Vistas blogger, said the team and its stadium have had an “incredible impact” downtown.
A case can be made that the stadium and its energy helped lead to the Water Street developments, new downtown condominiums, the Fairfield Inn & Suites and AC Hotels, and Riverscape, each a short walk from the stadium.
“Those probably wouldn’t have happened without the ballpark,” Walsh said.
No minor league team, in any sport, had financially succeeded in the Dayton area before the Dragons.
The Dayton Bombers hockey team, the Dayton Dynamo soccer club and other franchises had their enthusiasts and fans. None enjoyed the success the Dragons have had.
“What do you think you’re going to do differently?” Murphy recalled being asked as he made the case for the Dragons.
Among Murphy’s answers: Sell fewer tickets.
‘Sell down’
Mandalay Sports, the team’s first ownership group, gave the team what it needed, including the flexibility to sell scaled-down ticket plans that fit different budgets.
“We had to train sales people to actually ‘sell down,‘” he said. Instead of immediately selling a 70-game ticket plan, salespeople were taught to find a plan that fit customers.
The idea: Offer a variety of ticket packages that could be tailored to different budgets.
Said Murphy: “We were open to selling smaller game plans (packages of tickets) to potential buyers.”
“It was completely contrary to what everyone else in sports does,” he added.
Games had to be affordable, Murphy said. They had to be family-oriented. The organization wanted to make a major impact in philanthropy. And owners wanted to create a draw for corporate partners.
The Dragons’ first season was sold out before the first pitch was thrown on April 27, 2000.
At this writing, the sellout streak — the best in professional sports — stands at 1,573 home games.
Impact
Murphy thought if the team could draw 2,000 to 3,000 fans a night, it would be success. (Day Air has a capacity of 6,831 seats, 25 luxury seats and seven permanent concession stands.)
Why did it work? Murphy lists his reasons: Great fans. The backing of the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce, the Dayton Development Coalition, the Downtown Dayton Partnership and others.
And an ownership group willing to invest, Murphy said.
More than $3 billion of downtown investment have happened since the Dragons starting playing, Murphy said.
Citing figures from a Wright State University analysis, Murphy said $27 million of spending downtown can be traced to Dragons baseball each year.
Said Murphy: “That’s a huge economic impact over the lifetime of this franchise.”
‘That didn’t deter me’
Former Dayton City Commissioner Capizzi grew up watching a AAA team in Rochester N.Y. He knew Dayton’s history with Minor League baseball teams, which ended around 1950.
Capizzi didn’t hide his desire to bring a franchise here. He recalled a 1980s story in the Dayton Daily News or former Journal News faintly mocking that desire.
“It sort of made a mockery of what my dream was,” Capizzi recalled with a laugh. “Of course, that didn’t deter me.”
Working with the city manager at the time, Maureen Pero, and Dan Sadlier, then president of Fifth Third Bank’s Dayton operations, Capizzi made the case. Former U.S. Rep. Tony Hall became supportive, as did Capizzi’s fellow Dayton commissioners.
U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, a former Dayton mayor, said the city proposed “a unique structure” to make the team a reality.
“Dayton would agree to own and lease a stadium to the team, if the team built the stadium at a fixed price to the city of Dayton, assume all cost overruns, and be responsible for operational, maintenance, and capital costs — capping the risk to the Dayton taxpayers," Turner wrote in a Dayton Daily News op-ed.
In time, convincing Marge Schott, then the irascible and blunt-speaking owner of the Cincinnati Reds, became a primary challenge.
“We had to get Marge Schott to support this,” Capizzi said.
He recalled visiting Schott for the first time in Cincinnati. He argued that having a franchise in Dayton would be good for injured Reds and would stoke enthusiasm among area fans.
Capizzi’s first visit to Schott yielded a soda from an office vending machine — and a refusal to endorse the idea.
“I’ll never forget, she asked if I wanted a drink. I said ‘Yeah,‘” Capizzi said.
“We didn’t get it the first trip,” he added. “We got it the second time.”
The difference-maker: Schott drove up to Dayton one day by herself to eye the area where the stadium would be built, Capizzi said.
“She didn’t tell us she was coming. She came up on her own,” he said.
An endorsement of the team soon followed.
“She was a very shrewd business-woman,” Capizzi said.
He compared Day Air Ballpark to a “mini-Camden Yards,” the Orioles’ home in Baltimore.
“I think it helped change Dayton forever,” said Capizzi.
The Dragons home opening night game is 7:05 p.m. Tuesday at Day Air Ballpark, 220 N Patterson Blvd.
Downtown investment:
- Since 2010, $3.68 billion in private and public investments have been made in greater Downtown.
- In 2024, downtown saw $400 million in projects completed, the largest downtown investment since 2010.
- One of the projects completed in 2024 includes The DELCO, just across from Day Air Ballpark (the former Mendelson’s building and DELCO factory).
Source: Downtown Dayton Partnership.
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