Ah, the dog days of summer, when news slows to a trickle and [opens up Instapaper and is hit by a firehose of saved items] BLEEAARGH!
Twenty-five years, people. I’ve been writing this stupid blog for 25 years, and the only thing that’s changed is now there are fewer decent outlets providing actual news, and the number of zeroes on the subsidy price tags keep going up. I hope you’re enjoying continuing to read this stuff, because it seems like we’re going to have to keep on rehashing the same tired absurdities even longer than The Simpsons, and nobody’s ever going to learn not to build the monorail.
Anyway, it’s Friday, let’s do what we do:
- Former Anaheim mayor Harry Sidhu has agreed to plead guilty to obstruction of justice charges and will face up to 40 years in federal prison following an FBI investigation for soliciting bribes around a new Los Angeles Angels stadium land deal as well as something about illegal helicopter registration. (In classic getting-Al-Capone-for-tax-evasion fashion, the guilty plea is for the coverup, not for the initial alleged crimes.) That land deal is now dead, along with Sidhu’s political career; it’s possible that the Anaheim city council could even void the Angels’ sweetheart stadium lease extension on the grounds that Sidhu negotiated it, though given that no current council members would comment on the possibility when asked by the Voice of OC, probably best not to hold your breath there.
- The Philadelphia 76ers held the first of five online forums about their new arena plans this week, one that some people criticized for only showing team executives on camera while not allowing the public to speak live. Sixers co-owner and lead developer David Adelman replied during the event, “Some people are disappointed that they can’t harass us on Zoom,” and the team subsequently rebranded the forums from “community meetings” to “community info sessions,” all of which went over about as well as you’d expect.
- MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, in trying to argue why the Kansas City Royals need a new stadium either in downtown K.C. or North Kansas City, declared that it would be “a tremendous opportunity for this community — forget the Royals,” and then in the next breath said that “new facilities provide a ballclub with an opportunity for revenue generation that simply doesn’t exist in older footprints.” All evidence continues to be that Manfred is very bad at this, but also that he doesn’t have to be very good at it to be successful.
- The Clark County Commission has voted to spend $440,000 in pandemic recovery money on bringing corporate CEOs to the Super Bowl in hopes that they’ll move their businesses to Nevada. Apparently neither spending $750 million on an NFL stadium for the Raiders nor being Las Vegas was enough to put the city on the corporate relocation map, but once the billionaires have been wined and dined at a Super Bowl, that’ll surely do the trick.
- Longtime Cleveland city official Ken Silliman has a new book out about the city’s sports deals, and Signal Cleveland’s review includes some enticing snippets, including that Silliman shielded details of Guardians subsidy talks from public records requests by briefing public employees verbally but not in writing, and that he thinks Congress should “resurrect 1998 legislation written to curtail what’s known as ‘franchise free agency,'” which maybe means Rep. David Minge’s Distorting Subsidies Limitation Act that would have made sports subsidies subject to a federal excise tax, though that was actually 1999. [UPDATE: Silliman writes to say it’s actually this bill, which would have exempted sports team relocations from antitrust law.] Clearly I’m going to have to read the book before reporting fully on it, this journalism thing is a lot of work!
Congrats on celebrating 25 years of doing this. Or maybe it’s condolences?
Great simpsons reference by the way.
As the Straight Dope slogan used to go, “it’s taking longer than we thought.”
https://www.straightdope.com/
To celebrate (or commiserate) 25 years, how about a week of reprinting posts from the wee early years? They could focus on the same teams that were “negotiating” then and again now.
Oh wow, that sounds depressing! I’ll have to consider it.
Happy Anniversary Neil.
Interesting that Sidhu is sort of going to jail for soliciting bribes (though not really, it wasn’t the murder that was the problem it was the improper and unsafe use of the shovel to bury the body and also maybe littering…) in the same week that the Clark County Commission is bragging about bribing CEOs with free superbowl trips in the hopes they will relocate their businesses to Vegas.
Reminds me of the time Bernie Ecclestone paid 100m euro to settle a bribery investigation… which, well, as one of my friends put it “he bribed his way out of a bribery charge”.
Ken Silliman writing about his time in Cleveland City Hall should be a violation of Son of Sam Laws. Even if you think all the sports deals are awful, they pale in comparison to the incompetence of the city’s leadership especially when he was Chief of Staff to the idiot mayor.
Happy(?) Silver Anniversary.
Really appreciate this blog. Thank you.
Thanks for doing the dirty work lo these many years, Neil. Much appreciated.
Happy Anniversary Neil. Continued success!
Has anyone been to Kauffman Stadium recently? From what I have seen, it appears to still be a beautiful ballpark. For It’s age, it looks better than over 1/2 of the new ballparks which have come out in the past 20 years. I would still rank it in my top 10. I assume the plan to move is more about the “entertainment and business district” with new ballpark as the vehicle being used to get it done.
I have not. I see photos on Twitter if people having a great time though.
The main criticism I see is that it’s too far away from the Kansas border and the Kansas side fans don’t like that drive. It’s only been there since the early 1970’s so you would think they would be used to it.
There are a lot of fans that also enjoy the Power & Light district by the T-Mobile arena that want that for the Royals.
Made my first visit to the ‘K’ just last week; lovely stadium with a sense of rural grandeur suitable for its locale & fans. However it’s isolationism from any form of city life makes it understandable why the newer owner to mull a move downtown-ish. Come every September they become irrelevant, there’s no place to go in the neighborhood after a game – the hotel I stayed at has the ghost print of a recently demolished restaurant in its parking lot, tho lots of space if the two teams wanted to cleverly unite & create a ‘Game Day Town’… lack of big money is huge hurdle I’m guessing.
The two best-attended and most lucrative franchises in baseball, the Dodgers and Yankees, play in stadiums where there’s no place to go in the neighborhood after a game. (Well, there are a few places along 161st Street in the Bronx, but most fans don’t patronize them.) They seem to survive okay.
Thank you for the tip, Steve.
Unfortunately I will be busy during the Las Vegas Superbowl and the Paris Olympics, stabbing myself in the thigh repeatedly with a titanium spork.
Neil,
Congrats for the great work and the 25 years!
I have to believe that there has been headway – there seem to be, anecdotally, a tad more people pissed off, but that just means that there are a few more to commiserate with.
Some day there will a billionaire who will turn down taxpayers money…and pigs will fly.
Royals are jealous of the Kansas City Current, the soccer club that soon will move into a stadium built to accommodate a women’s team. The Guardian had a story this week about the facility and its primary tenant — whose owners are Patrick & Brittany Mahomes.
Boy, things are sure quiet on the John Fisher front these days.
I guess having a natural second baseman play centerfield while you have a natural outfielder manning second could be part of it… man, strategy is HARD.
Maybe he’s finally figured out (as his options dwindle) that he and Angelos might be fighting over who gets to move to Greensboro in 2024/25
I found this interview, with a NV legislator who opposed the A’s deal, to be infuriating and illuminating.
She needs to move away from her camera by about 10 inches, but that’s a minor quibble.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQHFAldfMJg?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=640&h=360]
Seen some rendering of the Downtown KC ballpark. Obviously they look wonderful and as far locations go, from the Google street view, it seems like it would be replacing mostly surface parking lots. Seems like something that a billionaire could plan and do without needing a ton of public money
https://ballparkdigest.com/2023/08/22/royals-unveil-two-potential-ballpark-site-release-new-renderings/
Pretty much any baseball owner these days is rich enough to build a stadium without public money. The question is, why would they want to, since it would be a billion or two dollars out of their pockets with very little gain to show for it?