November 01, 2002

Great American Ballpark no boon to payroll

With the cellar-dwelling Detroit Tigers, Pittsburgh Pirates and Milwaukee Brewers already having exploded the myth that new baseball stadiums mean winning teams, the Cincinnati Reds have become the latest club to downsize their dreams. (In baseball terms, that comes to 0.83 Sterling Hitchcocks.) The bump in player payroll when the new publicly funded Great American Ballpark opens next spring could be as little as $5 million, says the Cincinnati Enquirer. No word yet on whether Cincinnati will sue the Reds if forced to sit through another year of Brian Moehler.