December 16, 2004
Sad day in baseball
The D.C. Council passed legislation requiring half of the new baseball stadium's cost come from private funds. Major League Baseball responded. Not only did they reject the legislation, but they immediately put all business and promotional activities on hold and offered refunds for anyone who'd put a deposit on season tickets. They called it "wholly unacceptable."
I thought DC baseball was a sure thing. It was no longer an issue of hoping, it was an issue of when will the next season start. How could this happen?
Michael Wilbon wrote that while he believed that DC shouldn't be picking up the while tab and that private funding was a good idea, the timing was not.
The time to say no was before, not after. The time for Linda Cropp to ask for amendments and show the city how tough (not to mention ambitious) she is was before Mayor Anthony A. Williams and other city officials agreed to do it baseball's way. If you're that tough, that smart and so creative as to come up with these measures now, why wasn't that done two months ago? Why not 10 months ago? (Caught Between Cropp and a Hard Place (washingtonpost.com))
It's not like baseball doesn't have other options. It's not like there aren't other cities salivating for the chance to host the Expos, or the Nationals, or whatever they're going to be called.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004, wasn't the best day for me as a baseball fan. The real kick to the crotch is that not only did DC lose its baseball team (almost), but Boston lost Pedro. Thanks Linda Cropp for being such a "savvy" negotiator. Thanks Pedro for being a dickhead. And thanks, MLB, for the tease. Nice. Real nice.
David Ely at December 16, 2004 11:47 AM
I posted this on DCist:
I would *love* to see baseball in DC, but I there's no reason that the team shouldn't have to build its own stadium. DC businesses shouldn't have to pay taxes for another business. What if the team fails? Why should businesses be forced to take that risk? The team should have to use its own money to build the stadium.
People have argued that the long-term benefits of a restored waterfront and increased tax revenue from a team would outweight the costs of handing a stadium to the team, but wouldn't these things happen anyway if the team built its own stadium?
The answer is "yes," and you only have to travel a few miles to see where it happened. The MCI center was *built by the Wizards*. It *did* revitalize its neighborhood. It *did* bring in tax dollars.
Why should DC have to pay for a stadium for a team that doesn't even have a real owner? Would you build a grocery store, fill it with food, and then hope that someone comes along and starts working the cash registers?
===========
I kind of think this is what DC and MLB gets for not acting like they're a normal business. Why should they get a free stadium? Why should they have to do all this before selling the team? Shouldn't someone buy the team first before naming it, deciding what city to put it in, and committing to build a stadium?
I don't blame Linda Cropp for looking out for the taxpayers and businesses, but I think that everyone played this one wrong. The mayor shouldn't have committed the district without a better plan, and she shouldn't have wrecked everything so close to the wire.
But if anything, the process has been very democratic, representing all the opinions about this.
end
kenji at December 16, 2004 11:56 AM
I agree. I've always felt that it's a little odd that these really expensive stadiums get built with tax payers money. DC wouldn't be the first, and it won't be the last, but that's not a reason that it's right. I guess the point I was putting forward was that these issues should have been discussed way before the December 31st deadline. Not on December 15th.
end
David Ely at December 16, 2004 02:34 PM
Yeah, it should have been worked out a long time ago.
What I don't get is why it's so unreasonable for someone to *want* to buy the team and build the stadium. Granted I don't hang out in the millionaire/billionaire crowd, but wouldn't building the stadium be really lucrative? Why aren't there any developers who want to get in on the group floor of a soon-to-gentrify neighborhood? Especially since there's already evidence it'll work in DC(MCI Center/Chinatown).
end
kenji at December 16, 2004 02:42 PM
Well, I'm glad you asked. Last weekend, when I was hanging out with my billionare friends (they don't play WoW, so I don't see them much anymore), this very subject was brought up...
Seriously though, I think it has more to do with MLB and greed than anything else. If MLB can assure that a stadium will be built (with neither their money nor the owners money), then they can package it all together and sell it for more. If there was no stadium, then they would make less money. Less money is bad in their eyes.
end