April 2015
| Business World
221
league baseball was just a struggle. Even the
big leagues just considered you just a neces-
sary part of doing business.”
“By the turn of the century, minor league
baseball came roaring back,” Bragan Jr. con-
tinued. “As the nation grew in population,
minor league baseball became a big part of
Americana for the big picture.”
Now in his 31st seasonwith the team, Bragan
Jr. has witnessed a resurgence of the sport in
Jacksonville, spurred on through a long, slow
process of building credibility with corpo-
rate sponsors and the hometown fan base.
“Whenwe bought the team in 1984, wewere
in the red for 1985, 1986 and 1987. People
kept telling us that we couldn’t make money
owning and operating a baseball team and
that Jacksonville was only a football town
and nobody gave a damn about baseball,”
Bragan Jr. said. “But in 1988, we broke even.
And since 1989, we’ve been in the black ev-
ery year.”
FIELD OF DREAMS
The reincarnation of the Jacksonville Suns
coincidedwith the introduction of a new sta-
dium in 2003. The buzz for baseball around
the city and the state was back. But again,
much like getting the fans to appreciate and
pay attention, Bragan Jr. had to fight in order
to make things happen. After Birmingham
built the Hoover Metropolitan Stadium in
