Happy Friday! Let’s check out the non-sports-stadium news for a minute and see if there’s anything cheerier to start our weekend with and … no … no … nope, okay, sports stadium news it is, here we go:
- Buffalo Bills fans in Buffalo want a new Bills stadium built in Buffalo, which is what you’re going to get when you make the debate about where to put a stadium rather than how much it will cost, but Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown says the “smartest,” “safest” place to build one is in suburban Orchard Park, because a downtown stadium could require displacing residents and businesses and cost more and take longer to approve — and those are bad things because it might make the Bills move out of the area entirely and then where would Buffalo be, huh? It’s hard to tell how sincere Brown is about all this and how much he’s just trying to let down Buffalo stadium advocates easy about the Orchard Park site being a fait accompli, but it sure sounds like the site-location debate is all over but the shouting, which means we can now move on to the who’ll-come-up-with-$1.4-billion-and-why-anyone-should debate, which should arrive as soon as next month.
- Oakland is set to release its final environment impact report for the A’s proposed Howard Terminal stadium today, with a vote to approve the report to follow by February. Then all that’ll be left to do is, what was it, oh right, find another half-billion-dollars in infrastructure funding.
- MLS commissioner Don Garber says that the fact that two teams in his league just sold for less than the asking price of an expansion team isn’t a sign that the market is oversaturated or he’s charging too much for expansion franchises, because those sales took place during a pandemic, see? Also any expansion teams in Las Vegas and Phoenix would be required to have domed stadiums because of the weather there being so hot, “which obviously would be quite costly,” but Las Vegas is still the frontrunner for a new team, despite there being no domed stadium plan in the works, hmmmm.
- Hey, remember how the Worcester Red Sox‘ new $160 million stadium was supposed to be able to repay its $150 million in public costs via new tax revenues? Not that it was really ever going to anyway, but now it turns out that tax revenues are coming in slower than expected and the city is paying off its loan with more loans and hoping that more money will come in eventually and also the city hasn’t yet set up an accounting system to figure out how much the stadium is costing or generating, but don’t worry, Worcester city manager Edward Augustus says, “At the end of the 30 years, it is going to be more profitable than we initially thought,” and you can trust him!
- New York City F.C.‘s MLS Cup victory celebration was interrupted by supporters chanting, “We want a stadium! We want a stadium!”, and team CEO Brad Sims replied with “It’s coming. It’s coming, guys. It’s coming.” Perhaps not this evening, but surely tomorrow.
- There are “pretty good chances” of a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium being built in Tampa eventually, according to two people from the Tampa chamber of commerce, which is advocating for a new stadium in Tampa, you know, I’m already regretting even starting typing this bullet point, just move along to the next one, please.
- There are no more items? In that case, you are free to go! Have a good weekend, get your booster shot if you haven’t already, wear your damn masks, try not to live near water, and see you back here on Monday.
Politicians of Worcester bought Lucchino’s snake oil. A 30 year plan for a stadium that will need renovations in 10 years and will be considered obsolete by the team in 20 years, (if minor league baseball still exists in 20 years).
Whaaat? No Yotes. The “get along little doggie” saga is the best story all year.
We’ve discussed Anchorage, Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Charlotte, Cleveland, Hamilton, Hartford, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Ontario, Phoenix, Portland, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Quebec City, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Tempe all as possible relocation cities.
What about California’s 5th largest city. Fresno! Who doesn’t want visit Fresno? Amirite? It’s the Jacksonville of California.
How ’bout the Portland Pocket Weasels? (Thanks, John Bladen.) It has a ring to it, better than the Houston Homeless Howlers.
A news item about the market feasibility for vegas came out. Its clear the As vegas thing is to prod Oakland pols to take votes they dont want to take
Thank goodness cooler heads are prevailing on the downtown Buffalo stadium idea.
Why can’t MLS use the Raiders Stadium with its removable grass field? I know they love their Soccer Specific Stadi, but a lot of MLS teams are doing just fine in football fields, some even playing on artificial turf. I’d hate to see Soccer Specific Dome Stadiums becomes a thing we all have to start paying for.
Not only the Raiders stadium, but also the Arizona Cardinals stadium with its removable rollaway grass field.
I hope this doesn’t break copyright rules (it shouldn’t, it’s Garber’s alleged verbatim answer at the SoL…)
“…Our audience continues to grow, and our media partners are pleased with the makeup of the audience and the size of the audience that we’ve been able to deliver. But the real exciting opportunity for us and what is creating lots of interest in the marketplace is an unprecedented package with the possibility for a partner or a series of partners to have every MLS game in every format, with unlimited distribution possibilities, combined with other intellectual property offerings, like our data deals and sports betting deals, or potentially being part of a new relationship…”
Oh, man. If that isn’t an infomercial for Ginsu knives or the pocket weasel, I don’t know what is….
… that should be ‘pocket garden weasel’… Apologies to Ron Popeil and his estate/heirs.
I dunno.. if “Ex-Rays” doesn’t fly, I think “Tampontreal Pocket Weasels” is a good alternative…
Don Garber is on the Satellite of Love?!?
I’m not allowed to say. Wink. Wink.
State of the League…. Shit outta Luck…. take your pick.
If I may, please get vaccinated. If already vaccinated, get your booster. If not, please wear a mask. If not for you, for the person near you who might feel more comfortable and isn’t that the unselfish thing to do?
Also, if you enjoy going to live sporting events, these simple things will allow everyone to continue to enjoy going to games. If not, then all of us will suffer because of a few people who are not fully informed or just selfish.
Let’s get to the point where we go back to criticizing owners for wanting us to pay for their ballparks and not criticizing each other because some people after seeing Covid-19 is on the upswing again, still refuse to even wear a mask to protect others and end this pandemic once and for all.
Well said, Philip. But really we need to get boosters (I got mine in October) *and* wear masks, certainly indoors. I know several people who’ve gotten infected lately, presumably with Omicron, despite having gotten boosters — and while it kept them from getting very sick, it wouldn’t have prevented them from spreading the virus further.
Any words to the vaccinated folks who have suffered blood clots or myocarditis or pericarditis? Or words to the families of those who have died after getting the covid vaccination? Do you have anything to say to those folks who have been fired from their jobs for refusing to take an experimental vaccine? Do you have any words of encouragement to those that have received the jab that there won’t be any long term complications because there have been no long term studies of the vaccinated? Do you have any guilty feelings when you pontificate on the value of mask wearing, when others don’t wear them because they have evidence that they are of no value or actually detrimental to the wearers?
Asking for a friend.
Nope, because all of that is either untrue or massively outweighed by the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives were saved by vaccines, and the hundreds of thousands more who would be alive today if they’d gotten vaccinated:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-deaths-800k-united-states-vaccines/
800,000 Americans have died of Covid-19. Somewhere between 5m and 20m have died worldwide of Covid-19 (between 400,000-800,000 die annually from influenza worldwide. This is worse. Way worse).
How many have died of complications from the vaccine Carl?
Make a pharmaceutical CEO a billionaire and get your booster shot for a dangerous unproven gene therapy that has killed tens of thousands and doesn’t work, except damage your immune system. Brought to you by the people who told you Jussie Smollett was attacked and thought defunding the police was a good idea..except in their neighborhoods. Remember, pharmaceuticals are immune from lawsuits. And firemen don’t wear cloth masks when they enter a burning building. Doctors wear masks to prevent droplets carrying bacteria from falling in, not to sto a virus.0000007” that you need an electron microscope to see. Suppress cheap Nobel prize winning medicines like Ivermectin and HCQ that have success in central Africa and India. Get our boob tube idiots on CNN and MSNBC to label it “horse dewormer”…are apples and water then “horse fodder” that you should not eat?
Reminds me of being in basic training and during NBC warfare they showed films 24 hours after the A bomb tests on Bikini “these crabs are still alive. Radiation provides no long term effects”. Or how in summer trucks would spray DDT in our neighborhood.
COVID is a small problem, mainly affecting the old and infirm. It is not the bubonic plague.
It’s a good thing for you this site only bans personal attacks in comments, not misinformation, because pretty much nothing you just wrote is remotely true. (Okay, the DDT trucks did happen, but that’s about it.)
Meanwhile, I would like to remind everyone that among the 5 million people killed so far by Covid was my former editor and friend Ward Harkavy, who was neither old nor infirm (the last time I saw him, he biked over to meet me) and who I trust is going to haunt anyone who tries to claim otherwise:
https://www.fieldofschemes.com/2020/05/18/16132/ward-harkavy-never-met-a-corrupt-blowhard-he-didnt-like-to-joyfully-skewer/
The vaccine is not “experimental” by any definition of that term accepted by the people who know what they’re talking about. Certainly not for adults over 18. The FDA has fully approved them.
Of course there haven’t been long-term studies. That’s not how medicine works when dealing with a deadly virus. We know that the benefits outweigh the risks because the odds of getting and spreading the virus are far worse without the vaccine than with it and the vaccine has proven to be safe, by normal people’s definitions of safe.
This has been well-established by actual science done by actual scientists. If you instead choose to believe random idiots on the internet, that’s on you, but the blood is on your hands, as they say.
People who are unvaccinated are more likely to die *of any cause* than people who are vaccinated. That is, of course, influenced by differences in who gets vaccinated versus the people who don’t. The people who don’t are likely making a lot of other bad decisions. But it underscores the safety of the vaccine.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7043e2.htm
Overall, people who are not vaccinated are about 11 times more likely to die from COVID than those who are. (Although that figure comes from studies was a few weeks ago. It may have shifted slightly, but probably in the vaccines’ favor.) The odds on hospitalization are even more extreme in favor of getting the vaccine.
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2282
https://www.nytimes.com/article/breakthrough-infections-covid-19-coronavirus.html
The value of masking indoors has been studied to death and shown to be beneficial if done right.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=masks&filter=datesearch.y_5
The odds of getting a blood clot from the J&J vaccine, and only that vaccine, are around 5 in a million. The odds of dying of COVID are now around 2,500/million and rising. The odds of dying because you’re not vaccinated are even higher.
https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/health/the-odds-of-dying-from-a-johnson-and-johnson-vaccine-related-blood-clot-vs-dying-from-covid-19/97-de75d270-1175-45af-8ce7-12de44f2d5e4
You’re spreading lies that are getting people killed. I think your comment ought to be deleted but it’s not up to me.
The only rule around here is “no personal attacks.” Misinformation is best handled by providing accurate information, which the above comment handles well.
Orchard Park, population 3107. Sure Ray, what better location to place a NFL football stadium.
We see the free for all if you will in Florida, Mississippi, Texas, and other places has not worked. No vaccine is 100% effective, but over 90% is a heck of a lot better than 0% protection.
On wearing a mask. Think of it as a doctor who performs surgery. Who is the one wearing the mask? The doctor to prevent his germs from possible infecting you. Is it really that difficult to use a mask while indoors if not for you, but for the people around you which you will help protect?
Some hospitals are now canceling surgery for people or are running out of beds because of the amount of Covid-19 patients being admitted. See my thought is, if you do not get an injection, if you come down with Covid-19, (I hope that never happens), you should not have priority to a hospital bed. It was your choice so why should someone in need be refused because of a person that refuses to try and protect themselves.
It is a choice, but then sporting venues, restaurants, and other places of business should have the choice not to allow you enter their places in order to protect their other customers.
I am curious, what is your suggesting in trying to end the pandemic when doing nothing shows to have no impact?
This comment was suppose to be in response to: Carl “the truth” Williams