For the fourth time in two years, a pro sports team has announced it is leaving Memphis. After several years at the Mid-South Coliseum, the Memphis RiverKings will reportedly move to a new arena in DeSoto County, Mississippi, in 2000.
We have mixed feelings about all this. The RiverKings offer some fast-paced, fairly priced entertainment in a comfortable, but aging, facility. General manager Jim Riggs has been a pleasure to work with and has tried to put a competitive team on the ice. DeSoto County’s offer is apparently too good to refuse. For at least some Memphians, the new arena will be about as close to home as the old one. In fact, the team plans to keep the name “Memphis.”
Seventy miles northeast of Memphis, brand-new Pringles Park in Jackson right off Interstate 40 is the new home of the Class AA Memphis Chicks (now known as the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx). The Chicks drew poorly in Memphis the last couple of years, and their owner, David Hersh, left on bad terms with fans and the city and county. But Hersh and the city of Jackson weren’t kidding when they said they would welcome each other.
Memphis likes to think its competition is cities like Nashville, where the Oilers’ new $300 million stadium is taking shape. But it competes with much smaller communities, too. The “love them or lose them” ethic of the big leagues is just as much of a factor in minor-league sports.
Some teams and owners deserve our support. We would put the home-owned
Memphis Redbirds in this category. Some other owners of traveling
teams – namely Bud Adams and Kevin Hunter – would have better
served themselves by emulating Riggs’ class act. As Memphians
were reminded again this week, pro sports at any level is a full-contact
business. 
City employees did themselves and city government proud this month in cleaning up the mess left by the recent windstorm that severely damaged parts of Midtown.
The storm hit at around 3 a.m. on a weeknight and uprooted scores of old trees in and around the Rhodes College area. Some once-shady lots suddenly look like they belong in Cordova. Several streets were blocked during rush hour and power was knocked out to thousands of homes.
Within hours, crews from the city and MLGW were at work. Most main and secondary streets were reopened that day. And the speed with which downed trees and even stumps were cut up and removed was impressive. Homeowners who put brush and debris at curbside generally found it taken away within a few days.
All in all, it was a pretty good performance by a city government that often gets a bum rap for supposedly failing to deliver. Suburban Memphis-bashers wary of annexation should take note.
In the aftermath of the storm, Midtowners were debating whether
it was a tornado or straight-line 85-mile-an-hour winds. But there
was no argument about the city’s quick response to the storm,
whatever category it was.