Monday, with the formal announcement that Jamestown is losing its New York-Penn League franchise, was a day the region’s baseball fans had hoped would never come.

It was likely a reality ever since the day in March 2013 when rumors started circulating that a new stadium in Morgantown, W.Va., would house an NY-P League team. We all had a bad feeling 17 months ago that Morgantown’s stadium was the final nail in the coffin of minor league baseball in Jamestown even while hoping at the same time it would be Batavia that lost its team.

The New York-Penn League had a 75-year history in Jamestown that will close within the next week. Jamestown residents had the privilege of seeing a young Randy Johnson trying to harness the mechanics that would turn the 6-foot-8-inch pitcher into a Hall of Famer. College Stadium, as it was called then, was home to a series of players such as Andres Galarraga, Delino DeShields and Marquis Grissom who helped keep the Montreal Expos near the top of the National League East for years. Jammers’ alumnus Dave Roberts’ steal of second base in the 2004 ALCS changed the course of Boston Red Sox history. Giancarlo Stanton, who played for the Jammers in 2007, is now one of the most noted power hitters in all of baseball.

So, yes, Monday was a sad day for all area residents who had an attachment to the team similar to that of Ryan Papaserge, a Post-Journal copy editor who so eloquently shared in Tuesday’s edition his memories of the Jammers as a youth growing up in Jamestown.

Team relocation is simply the reality of minor league baseball. The New York-Penn League that welcomed Jamestown so many decades ago is merely a memory as small cities like Jamestown lose their teams to bigger cities with newer, bigger stadiums, media rights deals, amusement parks and insane amounts of vehicular traffic. Some cities lost teams fairly quickly – Olean, Bradford, Wellsville and Lockport among them. Others – like Utica in 2001, Oneonta in 2009, Niagara Falls in 1993, Geneva in 1993 or Elmira in 1995 – are more recent.

Minor league baseball is big business these days. Teams with minor league affiliations aren’t locating teams in Rust Belt cities with older stadiums whose backdrop features the idyllic rolling hills and pine trees behind venues like Diethrick Park or Damaschke Field in Oneonta.

Just as losing the Jamestown Savings Bank Arena losing the Ironmen spawned a new venture, we’re hopeful the loss of the Jamestown’s New York-Penn League franchise spawns a team to take its place. After all, this isn’t the first time Jamestown has lost a franchise. Each and every time a team has left, a replacement has been found to take its place.

We hope history repeats itself once again.