Happy Friday, everybody! Or happy for everyone except Arizona Diamondbacks fans, who are going to be stuck buying souvenir jerseys with an extremely ugly shoulder patch for the foreseeable future after MLB decided to start selling ad space on players’ shoulders for the upcoming season. (Some other teams’ are not so bad, though the Houston Astros‘ might be even worse.) Or maybe, given the design of a stark black square, this is actually a memorial patch for an electronics company that tragically passed away during the offseason? R.I.P., Avnet.
And now for some other ways sports team owners are making life demonstrably worse for all concerned:
- Speaking of the Diamondbacks, team CEO Derrick Hall spoke to the media this week about plans for a new or renovated stadium, which he didn’t actually say anything concrete about, though he did say “we’re still looking at what other options might be in Maricopa County, not outside of Maricopa County, and there’s been some interested parties.” Oh, do tell, some other cities in the Phoenix area want to build the D-Backs a new stadium? This isn’t going to be a Canadian girlfriend thing, is it? Hall also said “we’re prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, we’re not looking for a handout,” which is amusing coming after the team lobbied the state to let it use a sales-tax surcharge for stadium improvements.
- Madison Square Garden’s special operating permit expires on July 24, but even if that happens without a renewal by then, the New York Knicks and Rangers probably won’t be evicted, since the city would likely let the arena keep operating during a review process, reports The City. (Sorry to those of you who were getting your hopes up for the city parking a zamboni on center ice.) There was a public community board hearing on Wednesday on the operating permit, which according to AMNY’s report was dominated by sports fans shouting that they love their teams and rail station fans shouting that they’d love to see MSG gone so they could have a new Penn Station. There are probably better and even more democratic ways of solving policy debates than having people shout into microphones while power brokers largely ignore them and do what they want regardless, but that doesn’t seem the direction we’re headed.
- St. Petersburg is spending $250,000 to hire an outside law firm to negotiate a term sheet for a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium, and know what, this probably isn’t a bad use of tax dollars: City lawyers are so historically awful at writing sports contract language that hired guns who know what they’re doing might actually earn back their pay and more. Unless city officials tell them to just get a deal done and not worry about the fine print, that could always happen, but as a glass-half-full kind of person I prefer not to think about what could go wrong — okay, my motto is actually “prepare for the worst, adjust if your expectations are exceeded” and it’s never steered me wrong, but sometimes things have to work out better than expected, it’s just the law of averages, right? Anyway, St. Petersburg is talking about building a billion-dollar stadium, at least it’s not cheaping out on lawyers to determine who pays for it, that’s better than nothing.
- No, WIBC-FM, “Indy Eleven Owner, Ersal Ozdemir, Speaks on the New Indy Eleven Stadium” is not actually a news story, especially not when Ozdemir’s entire quote is “We do not need to go to the MLS to build a stadium the project should self-generate enough, we’re making a transformational impact to this area (downtown).” (“Transformational”! Everybody drink!) And no, Indianapolis Business Journal, it’s not any better when you give space to Ozdemir to say he would love to own an MLS franchise if someone gave him one, jeez, journalism people, are we going to start reporting on rich guys’ drink orders next? (Answer: You don’t want to know.)
- The fight against the Philadelphia 76ers owners’ plan to build a new arena bordering the city’s Chinatown has reached the Miley Cyrus parody lyrics phase.
- Sick of me always harping on about what a bad deal stadium and arena subsidies are without talking about all the other dumb things elected officials spend money on? Then you will enjoy my recent article for Hell Gate investigating what kind of bang for the buck New York state is getting for its film tax credits that Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to see increased. (Answer: Not a very good one!) Unless you are one of the commenters who works in the film industry and wonders why I didn’t focus on tax breaks for jet fuel for the airline industry instead — sigh, wait here, I guess I’ll be back in a couple thousand words’ time…
I think the Diamondbacks should move into a new multipurpose stadium with the Coyotes. Make it 4,000 seats and they could both sell out regularly.
Bazinga!
Only if they have a $1 student section and comp 1,000 seats.
hey, a sell out is a sell out.
Is it just me, or have the Houston Astros historically had some of the worst jerseys in baseball?
I don’t know what your jerseys look like, but the Astros have been pretty bad, yeah. Diamondbacks maybe even worse, though?
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/14285664/uni-watch-arizona-diamondbacks-go-rogue-bizarro-new-uniforms
This article ranks all of the jerseys, with the original being the best.
https://www.gophnx.com/2022/02/18/ranking-every-jersey-in-arizona-diamondbacks-history/
I look forward to the day Neil when you post about a BADLY needed replacement for 30+ year old SAP Center in San Jose; home of the “no body gives a damn about the NHL in the Bay Area!” Sharks. Or at least a major $9-digit renovation. Can’t get the A’s because of the %$#@ Giants/MLB, Google might bail on their proposed transit village; just want this damn town to have something nice!
I wrote about the zamboni door getting stuck, what more do you want from me, man:
https://www.fieldofschemes.com/2023/01/20/19574/friday-roundup-what-would-you-do-to-keep-the-bears-orioles-broncos-zambonis/
Stop whining and get on the city council.
In San Jose? Pretty sure that would be election fraud, since I live in Brooklyn.
San Jose does have something nice: San Francisco
Ouch.
FRISCO is our most beautiful suburb, I’ll give you that.
Ain’t nobody in California call “the City” Frisco. Pardon the poor English.
San Jose is technically a larger city, but that’s mainly due to a spread out geography.
The late Burt Bacharach (RIP) put that city on the map. SF has its fair share of songs. Can anyone name one for Oakland?
Too Short and MC Hammer (during the “Hammer” period)
Wasn’t there an episode of “The Streets of…” that covered that exact same thing Steve?
I seem to remember one… which is odd as I can’t remember anything else about the episode in question… Karl Malden maybe. But nothing else.
If no one cares about the Sharks, why would they need a new arena? You want people to attend Sharks games, move them somewhere people are willing to drive to. Which isn’t anywhere down the peninsula.
Attendance has certainly dropped off post pandemic (is that more to do with the bad team or changing economics – specifically in the tech sector – or ??? Who knows), but it is a stretch to say that “no-one cares” about the Sharks.
https://www.hockeydb.com/nhl-attendance/att_graph.php?tmi=7877
Th Coyotes held a “community information session” at a brewpub near their proposed development in Tempe last night praising what a great deal Tempe is getting. Fortunately they brought a good amplifier because the nonstop flow of airplanes was deafening. Nick Wood and Xavier Gutierrez were throwing out increasingly ridiculous numbers about the benefits to Tempe of their development. When confronted with the Coyotes endless history of failure, their response always was “Alex Meruelo is a different owner with deep pockets and 45 successful busenesses” Although Alex Meruelo appears to have virtually no involvement with Coyotes operations, they are magically turning around into an organization that can privately finance a $2.1 billion arena development. Maybe I Dream of Alex would be a good sequel to I Dream of Jeannie.
Gee, you know, somehow I really thought this would work out totally swell for everyone.
https://theathletic.com/4252370/2023/02/25/mlb-pitch-clock-violation/
We focus grouped this and everything and everyone was really sure we were onto a winner.