Back in February, soon after the Arizona Diamondbacks sued Maricopa County to get out of their Chase Field lease because the county was refusing to pay for $187 million in maintenance and upgrades (most of them items that the lease appears to say are team responsibilities), MLB commissioner Rob Manfred chimed in that “to be a major league-quality stadium,” the stadium “needs work.” Apparently he thinks no one was listened then, because yesterday, he said it again:

Manfred spoke at the ballpark and reaffirmed statements supporting the club that he made during spring training. He said for Chase Field to remain a major league-quality stadium, substantial capital expenditures must be made. He said if they aren’t, there may come a point when the franchise seeks an alternative home.

Manfred said Major League Baseball has reviewed studies of state-of-the-art ballparks and determined what is required in renovation and capital investment.

“We concur wholeheartedly with the Diamondbacks’ position that there are substantial needs here with respect to this stadium, to keep it as a major league-quality stadium,” Manfred said.

This is, let’s remember, exactly the job that sports commissioners are hired for: Dropping vague move threats when team owners are too worried they’d get burned in effigy if they did so themselves. Manfred got off to a slow start in the blackmail-enabling department, but he seems to be getting the hang of it now. (That bit about “we’ve done studies of what state-of-the-art means” is an especially nice touch, since “state-of-the-art” is an inherently undefinable term that just means “whatever the next guy down the road has that this owner wants.”) Who he’s trying to convince, given that this is going to be decided by a court and not public opinion or an elected body, is anyone’s guess, but at least he’s proving that he can learn to be a more competent shill.

The art and craft of writing headlines is a tricky one: Do it well, and you have something that is both enlightening and intriguing at a glance, long enough to tell the meat of the story while short enough to fit on social media, not to mention in print if your news outlet does that as well. Do it poorly, and you just end up confusing readers, or even misleading them entirely.

Which brings us to this, from yesterday’s Arizona Republic:

Could a lucrative contract keep Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field?

My first thought: Well, sure! Give the D-Backs a rich enough deal, and they’d probably agree to play games in the Chase Field swimming pool.

But by “lucrative contract,” it turns out, the Republic headline writers don’t mean with the team. Rather, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors was set to discuss a new stadium management contract yesterday, to determine who will replace SMG in running non-baseball events. The D-Backs owners are in the midst of a lawsuit trying to get the county to pay $187 million for a bunch of upgrades they say the stadium needs (and which the county says the team should pay for if they want them, since it’s not the county’s job according to the lease); part of the lawsuit gripes about how the stadium “isn’t being utilized anywhere near its potential” for non-baseball events, but now a team rep is saying that who the county picks to run the place isn’t going to stop the lawsuit, because duh:

“It’s not going to affect the lawsuit,” [Diamondbacks attorney] Leo Beus told The Arizona Republic. “… At this stage, we just need the ability to look elsewhere.”…

Beus said whoever wins the new contract would not reassure the team. Team officials do not believe any contractor can generate enough money from events to fill the financial gap between the stadium’s reserves and the anticipated cost of repairs.

In other words, just adding a few more concerts isn’t going to stop the D-Backs owners from suing for $187 million, which makes total sense if they think they have a shot at winning. Beus added that they’re only suing for “the ability to talk to other alternatives so we don’t risk our franchise altogether when they don’t do the capital repairs they’re required to do,” which is pretty hilarious for a franchise worth an estimated $1.15 billion and that had an estimated $47.2 million in profits last year, but nobody ever said that lawyers had to be 100% honest.

Oh, and as for that county meeting, they ended up sending both bidders back to the drawing board and reopening the bids, because they weren’t happy with the offers. Which isn’t all that likely to do much better given the limited number of venue managers out there and the limited amount of money you can make staging concerts at a baseball stadium, but hey, worth a shot.

The owners of the Arizona Diamondbacks have started off 2017 with a bang as well, moving forward with until-now-idle threats by filing suit to break their lease with Maricopa County on Chase Field, on the grounds that the county owes them $187 million in repairs and upgrades:

Diamondbacks Managing General Partner Ken Kendrick said the team attempted to resolve the conflict out of court.

“We have made a promise to our fans, who have been partners with us on the building of this stadium and our franchise, to provide the best experience in all of baseball in a safe and welcoming environment,” he said in a written statement. “The inability of the Maricopa County Stadium District to fulfill its commitments has left us with no other option.”

Kendrick and his corporate overlords indeed no doubt saw this as their only option after county officials told them where to stick their stadium upgrade demands — whether than makes it a good option is another thing entirely. But given that the county report that identified the $187 million in needed (maybe “desired” is a better way of putting it) improvements in the first place also noted that $145 million of that was specifically on the team’s shoulders, it seems like the D-Backs owners are going to have an uphill battle in court, if they indeed plan to proceed to court and not just make this a negotiating gambit.

Anyway, expect the upcoming months, if not years, to now focus on questions of how to “solve the Diamondbacks stadium standoff” and where the team might try to relocate to if it successfully breaks its lease (which otherwise prohibits any move until 2028, or even talking about a move until 2024), much as we’ve seen in recent years with the Tampa Bay Rays. Which, come to think of it, is probably all the team owners want at this stage: to get people talking about replacing a 19-year-old stadium like it’s an urgent priority. There’s crazy, and then there’s crazy like a fox.

The bizarro plan to have private investors buy Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, from Maricopa County and maybe build a new one already wasn’t going well when the putative investors never showed up to any meetings, though they did have their lawyer send a letter to the local newspaper. And now it’s really not going well, as recounted by the Arizona Republic’s Rebekah Sanders:

• The Diamondbacks undermined investors by releasing to The Republic notes from a discussion that Stadium Real Estate Partners II had asked to remain confidential. According to notes by an attorney representing the team, attorneys representing the investors criticized the “structural integrity” of Chase Field and the anticipated high cost of repairs — as much as $180 million. Touring the ballpark “scared the s*** out of” the investors, according to the notes. “Putting money in this aging facility is a waste.”

• The investors hoped to use the Government Property Lease Excise Tax incentive program to avoid millions of dollars in property and excise taxes on a new stadium, according to the notes. No property taxes are currently paid at Chase Field since a government entity — the county — owns the land.

That’s a lot of tea leaves to read, but it sounds like: 1) the Diamondbacks owners are more interested in making a case for their stadium upgrade demands than for a sale plan that was the county’s idea in the first place, and 2) the private investors didn’t really know what they were getting themselves into, other than “hey, let’s get a stadium and get subsidies for it somehow,” which is working the D-Backs owners’ side of the street.

The problem remains much the same one as with Donald Trump’s infrastructure privatization scheme: If a project isn’t making any money, just shifting it from public to private hands isn’t going to suddenly make it more profitable, unless there are new subsidies involved. The only real hope for this stuff is that you find a private developer who’s able to come up with an innovative way of making money that the government hadn’t thought of (not likely, but possible) or who’s dumb enough to throw money at a gamble that’s likely not going to pan out (also not likely, but possible); the danger is that either you have to subsidize the project up front, or that the private entity goes belly-up and leaves its public partner holding a half-billion-dollar bag, which is all too possible. So it might actually be easier for all concerned if these private buyers bail on the plan, and just leave the D-Backs owners and the county to keep fighting it out over who’ll spend on what — if nothing else, that kind of subsidy battle is way easier to understand.

UPDATE: The plan is now totally dead. In lieu of flowers, send ideas for fixing Shelby Miller.

What is this, mysterious private developer interest in rebuilding sports venues week? The private group that expressed interest in buying the Arizona Diamondbacks‘ Chase Field from Maricopa County then didn’t bother showing up for any meetings to discuss the plan have instead taken their case to the Arizona Republic:

“For decades the Arizona taxpayer has funded billions of dollars for the construction and renovation of stadiums and arenas,” wrote Nick Wood, a Valley attorney for the private investors, Stadium Real Estate Partners II LLC. “Today, my client, together with real estate developer Egbert Perry, Chairman of Fannie Mae and President of Integral Group LLC, has stepped up to relieve the taxpayer of that extraordinary expense and seeks to not only purchase Chase Field, but to also construct a brand new, state-of-the-art, downtown baseball stadium for the Diamondbacks using all private money.”

What’s undisclosed: the proposed location of a new stadium in downtown Phoenix, when construction could begin and the cost, which likely would run to the hundreds of millions. Wood would not clarify any of those questions.

So, yeah. This is a complicated three-way dance between the county, the D-Backs owners, and these would-be private stadium developers, but so far we’re barely at the dueling press releases stage. Promising a brand-new stadium with all private money is certainly a great way to get attention — and hey, if it’s for real, more power to them. If anyone here thinks it’s likely to be for real, please raise your hand. Then see me after class for a remedial lesson in sports venue operations financing.

The crazy-ass plan for Maricopa County to sell the Arizona Diamondbacks‘ Chase Field — which the Diamondbacks owners want either upgraded or replaced or they’re threatening to move — to some out-of-state investment bankers turned out to be even more crazy-ass than anyone expected, as the potential buyers haven’t even shown up to any meetings to discuss a sale price. Apparently a used stadium with an angry tenant who has to approve your purchase and probably won’t isn’t a hot commodity among real-estate investors, who knew?

Instead, the county may hire an outside firm to appraise the stadium and its surrounding land, to see if its $60 million asking price was reasonable. Which, sure, go for it, Maricopa County. But it’s still hard to see how shifting ownership of the stadium resolves the underlying problem, which is that D-Backs owner Ken Kendrick is demanding at least $187 million in stadium upgrades, mostly for things his lease says he has to pay for, a battle that is likely to end up in court. Maybe the county should sell the stadium to a bunch of lawyers — at least they’d guarantee themselves lots of billable hours.

Going into yesterday’s Maricopa County board meeting on the possible sale of the Arizona Diamondbacks‘ stadium to a private investment firm, two of the big questions were: Could the county craft a deal that the Diamondbacks owners, who have the right to block a sale, would approve? And would any public money be required?

Coming out of the meeting, the Arizona Republic reports:

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Wednesday to move forward with negotiations to sell Chase Field, the downtown Phoenix home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, to private out-of-state investors…

But the county vote raised several key questions that went unanswered, including whether the team would support a sale and whether a taxpayer subsidy would be included.

Yeah, we’re cooking with gas now!

County supervisors told the Republic that the deal would extend the Diamondbacks’ lease through 2028, which sounds awfully presumptuous given that nobody’s actually talked to the team owners about this. The paper also reports that “the buyer would be required to reach a deal with the team within the first two years of the contract to pay for capital repairs over the life of the stadium,” which seems nuts — if the two sides just stare at each other saying, “You pay for it!” “No, you!”, what happens, do the buyers go back to the county for a refund?

On the subsidy front, supervisor Andy Kunasek, who you’ll remember from his profanity-laced “go to West Virginia” tirade in response to the D-Backs’ subsidy demands, raised the possibility of giving the private investors either a property tax exemption or a kickback of sales taxes, which apparently he doesn’t think would be “parasitic” if it’s someone other than the Diamondbacks owners getting it. (Maybe he’s still pissy over the Shelby Miller trade?)

Of course, all this is still in the very early stages, so it’s probably best not to think of anything as more than a harebrained scheme that somebody threw out there to see if it’ll stick. I mean, listen to this, from the Republic:

New shops, restaurants and hospitality services could spring up at the ballpark, as the buyer seeks to develop the site into a sports and entertainment “destination.” Among the ideas: Add retail and dining to the open plaza outside the stadium and within the stadium by reducing the seating capacity from 48,000 to 30,000.

This is for a stadium with a retractable roof, mind you, so it’s not like you can easily reduce the building’s footprint in order to jam in more steakhouses. I guess you could rip out all the seats down the left-field line and build a giant sushi bar or something, but that doesn’t seem like a much better idea. Besides, do you really want people eating raw fish before having to watch Shelby Miller?