Attendees at the 2010 American Legion Baseball World Series, to be held at Avista Stadium here Aug. 13-17, likely will account for 1,000 to 1,500 hotel room nights, and the five-day event will have an estimated total local economic impact of $3 million, the Indianapolis-based American Legion says.

The American Legion covers the cost of hotel rooms, meals, airfare, buses, and baseballs for the eight teams, their coaches, umpires, and its own key staff members for the event, renting about 100 hotel rooms in all, says James R. Quinlan, coordinator of the American Legion's high school-age baseball program.

"Our budget is probably $250,000," Quinlan says. He says the tournament typically attracts enough out-of-town fans to account for the renting of an additional roughly 1,000 hotel rooms.

"I think Spokane is going to even have more because the area is so beautiful and so unique," Quinlan says.

Some 18,000 fans attended the 14 games played at the 2009 World Series in Shelby, N.C., which was the second highest attendance in the event's modern history dating back to 1961, Quinlan says. Yet, Avista Stadium has twice as much seating as the field in Shelby and much more seating than at most other previous venues, he says. As many as 15 games could be played in the double-elimination tournament if the eventual champion suffers a loss before winning the series.

Quinlan, who toured Avista Stadium during a recent visit here, said the ballplayers in the 2010 World Series "are going to walk in there and go, 'Wow.'"

The strong attendance at Shelby increased the local economic impact of the 2009 series to $4.5 million, leaders in the North Carolina city estimated, Quinlan says. The Spokane Regional Sports Commission, which helped recruit the 2010 World Series here, has put the local economic impact here at $1 million, but says it derived that figure by multiplying the number of known attendees by an average visitor spending figure of $120 a day.

The commission says its estimate doesn't allow for strong attendance.

"It really is outstanding baseball," Quinlan says of the tournament. He says that after the regional finals last year, three American Legion players signed professional contracts, and 53 former Legion players, including Yogi Berra, have been inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, N.Y. Two of them, former Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller and ex-Kansas City Royals star and Spokane Indians co-owner George Brett, will make appearances at this year's tournament.

The 2010 World Series will be preceded by the American Legion Northwest Regional Tournament, at Gonzaga University's baseball stadium, Aug. 5-9. That tournament is projected by the Spokane Regional Sports Commission to have an economic impact here of $500,000 to $750,000.

Quinlan expects that the national publication Baseball America will cover the 2010 Legion World Series. He says the event will be televised via a high-definition Webcast, or Internet telecast. The Webcast of the 2009 World Series, which was the first such online coverage, had four times the projected 1 million hits, and viewers "were logging on hours before the game," Quinlan says.