For those of us who care about the comings and goings of Minor League baseball teams and where the Iowa Cubs will be playing on the road, the plans to build a new ballpark for the Padres Triple-A franchise in Escondido is dead. The California Supreme Court ruling on redevelopment funds means that there is no mechanism for funding the ballpark.

This means that the Padres are going to have to play in Tuscon for a while while they explore other options. The Padres current home is the former spring training field for the Diamondbacks and White Sox. It doesn't really live up to the modern standards of Triple-A ballparks, which are more like miniature major league parks. On top of that, playing baseball in Tuscon outdoors in the summer is not ideal. (Although Las Vegas has the same problem) The Escondido plan could be revisited sometime in the future, but the Padres are going to want a new ballpark as soon as possible.

Other cities could look at building a Triple-A stadium to lure the Padres. I know Boise has talked about building a new stadium for the Hawks that could expand to be a Triple-A stadium. That would be bad for me and probably the Cubs as they'd have to find a different city for their short-season team. But that's a long way off in the future.

This also may tie in with something I've been discussing over on the McCovey Chronicles, in which an Athletics move to San Jose would mean the SJ Giants would need a new place to play. And unlike the Padres, which can pretty much look at any city west of the Appalachians, the Giants would have to have a city in California and one preferably near the Bay Area. Perhaps part of any compensation for the Athletics move would have to be the construction of a new Class-A ballpark for the SJ Giants.