I am a tremendous baseball fan. I grew up in New York City. I travel to Seattle for Mariners games and follow the Mets at spring training and games in New York and around the country. I attended Beavers baseball games back in the day and have been to the Pickles and the Hops. I would love nothing more than a Major League Baseball team in town. I stayed silent until reading John Canzano’s Dec. 12 column (“Portland Diamond Project should plot for Tampa Bay Rays”):

“Portland is a young city. It’s underserved. It has a tremendous growth curve. We’re long past the days when this city had to sell itself as a viable candidate for baseball.

It is.”

This is nonsense. I attended Beavers games with them in first place, a give-away promo and $4 Fred Meyer seats … and saw only hundreds of seats filled?!

We are not a baseball town. The “youngsters” could not care less about baseball! Why are they not packing Hops and Pickles games?

The Hops and Pickles do not usually sell out, and even the Hops playoffs and finals were half-empty. Timbers? Heck yes! Football? Maybe. Blazers? Definitely! Hockey? Pretty good. But if we are not expanding the Hops or Pickles arenas to handle excess capacity, there is no reason to go Major League Baseball. We will sell-out for a week and then 5000 a night, tops!

-- Leonard Berman, Portland