Let’s get serious about it.

Do we want the Detroit Tigers’ Minor League franchise or don’t we?

For years, former mayor Sam Nader and his partner, retired businessman Sid Levine, have assured warm nights watching the Tigers at Damaschke Field have been part of Oneonta summers, and all of the city’s baseball fans owe them a debt of gratitude.

Things move on. Nader and Levine’s final gift was finding able successors who, if anybody can, will make baseball thrive here.

There’s no reason why that shouldn’t happen, and plenty of reasons why it should.

Every year, the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum attracts more than 300,000 fans to Cooperstown, 22 miles up the road from Damaschke.

Every year, 100,000 young players and their families come to our county’s baseball camps.

Plus, we’re on I-88. Thousands of cars drive by on a summer’s day. Many of those drivers and riders stop for the evening at the Holiday Inn or the Hampton Inn or the Clarion. Many of them are looking for something to do. Many of them are baseball fans.

Not to mention, we repeat, not to mention – 15,000 people live in Oneonta year ‘round; 62,000 live in Otsego County; 38,000 live in Delaware County– and many of us, too, love America’s Game.

The question shouldn’t be: Can the Tigers survive in Oneonta?

The question should be: Are the 4,000 seats in Damaschke Field enough?

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But let’s get serious about it.

E. Miles Prentice III, the New York City lawyer who heads the investment group, owns two successful Minor League teams, in Huntsville, Ala., and Midland, Texas, the latter for almost two decades. The management team knows what to do.

Prentice and his general manager, Andrew Weber, have been talking about additional marketing and promotion, and this is essential.

They are talking about creating the buzz that has come to characterize the Minor League experience – picnic grounds in right field, O-Nee the Mascot front and center at all home games, between-inning contests, group sales to get Scouts and other now-and-future fans into the stadium.

At the “Meet The New Owner” Luncheon the other day, Prentice cut to the chase on one potentially iffy issue: Beer sales at the stadium, which will require City Hall’s blessing on the state permit.

Across the nation, for better or for worse or for neither, high-margin beer sales have made the difference between the red and the black.

Prentice’s Midland Rockhounds pioneered responsible management of that potentially volatile innovation. Security guards check IDs at the gate and issue wristbands to those 21 and over. Buy a beer, your hand is stamped. Buy another, it’s stamped again. And that’s it.

Beer sales are cut off in the seventh inning. If you feel under the influence, alert the management and they’ll arrange for you to get a ride home.

Sensible. Prudent. Do-able.

That system should assure the required beer permit will be issued with dispatch.

At base, there’s nothing wrong – and much right – with a beer and hotdog on a steamy evening. Even better, make it an Ommegang or Old Slugger.

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Oneonta’s growing entertainment district – the restaurants, the taverns, the theaters, the arts center, the hotels – only stand to benefit from the Tigers’ success.

It’s within reach. Let’s ensure no reasonable obstacles are put in the way of a group of investors that can make a difference.

If we don’t want it, someone else will. But we do, so let’s make it happen.