December 21, 2009
Ravens snow cleanup team includes prison labor
I'm always on the lookout for offbeat subsidies to sports teams — bridges to nowhere and the like. Well, this is certainly a new one:
The Baltimore Ravens used actual convicts -- 125 inmates and supervisors from the Department of Corrections -- to join the 700 workers at M&T Bank Stadium to clear the building for this afternoon's game with the Bears. ...
The Baltimore Sun reports that the inmates and workers, many of them volunteers, are putting the finishing touches on clearing a record December snowstorm. The area was hit with 21 inches of snow, the most for the month since records started being kept in 1883.
Needless to say, most Baltimore residents don't get the services of state-supplied labor to help dig them out when a storm hits — as one Baltimore Sun reader pointed out. It's also still not clear whether the state (or, I guess, the prisoners) were paid for their labor, despite the efforts of citizen journalists to clear this matter up the best way they know how.
March 29, 2009
Colts leaving good for Baltimore?
I've read a bunch of good reporting from Baltimore Sun writer Childs Walker, and even been interviewed by him, so I'm not happy to have to nominate him for dumbest observation of the day on the 25th anniversary of the Baltimore Colts moving to Indianapolis:
With 25 years of perspective, however, it's possible to argue that March 29, 1984, was actually a good day for Baltimore sports. It allowed the city to cut ties with a desperately flawed franchise and a deeply unpopular owner. It spurred elected officials to get serious about plans that would keep the Orioles in Baltimore and attract a new NFL team. Those plans bore fruit in Camden Yards and M&T Bank Stadium, beloved facilities that are now as intrinsic to downtown as the Inner Harbor. The Ravens arrived in 1996 and won a Super Bowl six years before the Colts brought Indianapolis its first Lombardi Trophy.
Uhhhh, so let me get this straight: It's good that the Colts moved and left the city without an NFL team for a decade because it ended up forcing the state to spend $330 million on two new stadiums? Isn't that a bit like saying the economic crash was good because it forced the government to increase unemployment insurance?
Also nowhere to be found in Walker's article: Any mention of the fact that the Ravens, after all, "arrived" from 50 years of being the Cleveland Browns, a move that forced that city to pony up $283 million for a new stadium to get football back. Though I guess when the thesis of your article is "Hey, it worked out okay, we ended up with a better team and all it cost us was $330 million!" there's no room to worry about how things worked out for the next guy.