So, the Hagerstown Suns. They’d fielded a team in the South Atlantic League since 1993 and in other minor leagues for a dozen years before that, playing all that time in Municipal Stadium, built for an earlier set of minor-league teams way back in 1930. Then came the Manfred Snap, and the Suns were vaporized, along with 17 other minor-league baseball teams. The unaffiliated Atlantic League then offered a team provided that Hagerstown build “a facility that meets or exceeds the league’s standards,” a gambit that has worked stunningly poorly for a series of cities that ended up with no teams and stadiums abandoned before they reached drinking age.
You undoubtedly already know where this is going:
On Monday, a bill that would allow the Maryland Stadium Authority to serve as project manager for a new facility proposed for Baltimore Street and Summit Avenue cleared its last hurdle in the Maryland General Assembly. The authority can also issue up to $59.5 million in bonds to finance the acquisition, design, construction and related construction expenses.
Sixty million dollars! The Atlantic League stadiums for the now-defunct teams in Newark, Camden, and Atlantic City only cost about $24 million apiece, and while those were all built around the year 2000, that’s still only about $37 million in today’s dollars. I’m a fan of the Atlantic League (or used to be, before it shuttered all the teams I could easily get to), but that kind of money is crazytown. How could anyone in the Maryland state legislature — which passed the bill 44-0 in the senate, and 131-5 in the house — justify such a thing?
[State Sen. Paul] Corderman said previously the facility could also host movie nights, fireworks and other events, and bring more people through the city’s downtown to support other businesses in that area.
Because you absolutely couldn’t host movie nights at a baseball stadium that hasn’t been renovated since 1995! The mere idea is absurd!
Anyway, there’s another $59.5 million in cash transferred from taxpayers to baseball owners as a result of MLB’s minor-league contraction scheme, and even if it’s baseball owners in a league MLB doesn’t control, I’m sure they’re happy enough for the Atlantic League, which is now a “partner league” where MLB can do things like test-drive new rules. The best we can hope is that other cities that lost teams don’t follow suit in desperation to land any replacement franchise at all, and — oh, what now?
The city’s Economic Development Corporation is in discussions with the Atlantic League — a quirky eight-team league that signs former pros, but isn’t affiliated with Major League Baseball — to take over the lease from the defunct Staten Island Yankees at the Richmond County Bank Ballpark, THE CITY has learned…
[Former Staten Island Yankees president Will] Smith [not that one, or the other one, or the other other one] said the EDC and City Hall should be prepared to make numerous changes to the stadium — including installing synthetic turf, increasing parking capacity and adjusting seating.
I knew this was going to be bad — I believe the phrase I used back in December was “the next round of stadium roulette might not be too far off” — but I didn’t quite think it would be this bad this soon. Give MLB commissioner Rob Manfred this: He may be kind of a mumble-mouthed doofus, but he’s carried out this game of multi-million-dollar musical-chairs extortion to perfection. Does Cooperstown have an Evil Genius wing?
Actually, Atlantic City’s only cost $14.5 million to build, and Bridgeport’s, $19 million: https://pressofatlanticcity.com/news/local/atlantic-city-baseball-unlikely-in-2019/article_5169e3fa-275f-540f-a443-2909ebeca1ea.html
https://bit.ly/3s9Vj7L
Camden cost $24m and Newark $34m, bringing the average back up: https://web.archive.org/web/20190401151934/https://reason.com/archives/2019/04/01/70-million-minor-league-stadium-fail
Do we give Manfred credit for ‘playing his opponents to perfection’ when his opponents are clearly idiots desperately hoping to be played to perfection?
I mean, he hasn’t really had to DO anything of significance to make this happen.
The parallel I would draw is Manfred as someone who is walking/attempting to swagger down a street (hopefully without falling over) when the person walking toward him becomes overwhelmed with fear and hands Manfred their wallet or purse.
It doesn’t make him a criminal mastermind or the world’s greatest mugger.
Pure genius! Pure evil genius!
Anyone still worried about the Republican controlled Tennessee legislature, Knoxville and the “Tennessee Smokies” getting their new AA stadium?
As Julie Andrews sang, “And snap! The job becomes a game.” And the name of the game is getting cities and states to build MiLB baseball stadiums.
It’s going to become dog eat dog as cities and states all over the nation fight for MiLB teams. Meanwhile, the owners (MLB), sit back and laugh at how easy this all was. This is going to make the fight to keep the Pawtucket Paw Sox, Worcester Woo Sox and Polar Park look like child’s play.
America you’re being played. It’s not by elected officials. It’s not by Washington DC. It’s not that QAnon nonsense. It’s by the real owners of this country. The corporations and the billionaires who own them. And now they’ve come for your MiLB teams. Because they’re not your MiLB team anymore. It’s theirs. And if you want to watch MiLB, you’re going to have to cough up more tax dollars to watch them play in a new stadium, where the MLB pays the ballplayers peanuts. American you just got suckered (think P. T. Barnum). Again!
Wasn’t the Harbor Yard ball park in Bridgeport supposed to be converted into an amphitheater?
Yeah, it’s opening as soon as amphitheaters reopen again.
I didn’t include Bridgeport in my litany of Atlantic League despair because the Bluefish didn’t leave, they were kicked out. The Bears, RiverSharks, and Surf all suffered total existence failure by their teens.
Looks like August:
https://westfaironline.com/135241/first-ever-concert-at-bridgeport-amphitheater-set-for-aug-20/
Local businessmen will profit from public tax dollars. We have no news organizations to investigate how 59 million will be chopped up in Hagerstown for the stadium. We do not have enough police to fill regular shifts. We use tar and chip to cover roads not asphalt.