Category: Hagerstown Suns

Friday roundup: Tennessee, Tennessee, ain’t no place sports team owners hungry for public cash would rather be

access_time personNeil deMause

More stadium news this week from Knoxville and Chattanooga and Nashville, which has had this song stuck in my head all morning. That’s preferable to this one or certainly this one, though, so no complaints.

  • The Chattanooga city council signed off on $80 million in bonds for a new Lookouts minor-league stadium on Tuesday, notwithstanding that economists and even some local political leaders had said it was a terrible idea and 60% of local residents opposed it. The cost will be paid off by $49.8 million in property taxes kicked back from 470 acres around the stadium site, $17.5 million in lease payments from the team, $5 million in kicked-back sales taxes and $3 million in parking fees — assuming all that money comes in as projected, or else Chattanooga taxpayers will be left holding the bag. Also, reports The Center Square, “the property for the stadium, estimated in the announcement to be worth $10 million, will be donated to the stadium authority as part of the deal,” which sounds good until you realize that the stadium authority will now be the proud owners of land it can’t use for anything because it has a private baseball team’s stadium sitting on top of it, and also can’t collect property taxes on it now because it’ll be public property. At least Chattanoogans don’t have to worry about their baseball team moving for 30 years, at least, unless there’s an opt-out clause hidden somewhere in that lease, sorry for being the voice of doom this morning, but it’s why you pay me the big bucks.
  • Construction also started this week on the Tennessee Smokies‘ new $74.5 million stadium in Knoxville, which is likewise getting almost entirely funded by the public. (That whole “threaten to contract teams in order to extort stadium money” thing really is working out great for MLB!) WVLT’s news story on this includes the tidbit: “Both mayors Indya Kincannon and Glenn Jacobs approve the expanded TIF District. They said it’s because of the overall revenue the stadium is expected to bring to the area which is totaled at $480 over 30 years.” Typo or truth in advertising, you make the call!
  • Completing our Tennessee trifecta, here’s a Tennessean article answering “the top five questions” about the new Titans stadium subsidy plan, conducted entirely by quoting the team’s CEO. Oh, does the Tennessean want you to pay them first before you can read the team’s PR statements? Just go read Nashville councilmember Bob Mendes’ rewrites, then, they’re better anyway.
  • Thanks to a clause in the 1998 voter initiative that approved public funding of the Denver Broncos‘ stadium, local governments will be getting a share of the proceeds of the team’s $4.65 billion sale to Walmart heir Rob Walton. The original deal guaranteed a 2% cut of any franchise sale would go to seven Denver-area counties and cities and towns within them; former owners the Bowlen Trust got to subtract $247 million in team debt and $2.4 billion in capital contributions over the years, so the public is left with just a $41 million check. Still, good work by the 1998 government negotiators to get $41 million back on a $289 million public expense just 24 years later, which represents a return on investment of … okay, negative 85.81%, but it is better than nothing, which is what most government negotiators negotiate for, so half a gold star, anyway.
  • Does anybody anywhere even care that the Cincinnati Bengals‘ stadium is now going to be named after some payroll management company? Or that the local phone company has bought the naming rights to a stadium gate? That the Bengals now have a sponsorship deal to have an official canned cocktail? All of these were news articles, for some reason, which also for some reason failed to mention that the county taxpayers who paid for the stadium’s construction won’t see any of the proceeds from all these deals, though one did suggest that they might help fund $500 million in renovations the owners want — history doesn’t actually show that owners having more money makes them more likely to pay for their own stadium costs, but one can dream.
  • Hagerstown, Maryland, is spending $70 million in state money to build a new Hagerstown Suns minor-league baseball stadium, and it will have to spend millions of dollars on land acquisition first. Is that part of the $70 million, or on top of it? Baltimore Sun, anyone there find that out and feel like putting in the article? No? Just an 18-year-old photo of Willie Mays for some reason? Season 5 of The Wire was too kind, in retrospect.
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Maryland approves $1.8B in stadium subsidies one day after New York approves $1B in stadium subsidies

access_time personNeil deMause

Anyhoo, time to come down from the daily Buffalo Bills watch and take some time to decompress from the mad rush to a billion-dollar-plus subsidy in under two weeks, let’s take a look at today’s news for WHAT TH—

I am pleased to announce that over this weekend and on the eve of Opening Day in Baltimore, the Maryland State legislature passed an historic initiative committing $1.2 billion in public funding from the State of Maryland for reinvestment in and reimagination of the Camden Yards Sports Complex. This marks the second-largest public commitment of funding to a Major League Baseball public-private sports partnership, second only to the 2009 construction of the new Yankee Stadium.

That’s an oddly phrased flex, Baltimore Orioles CEO John Angelos — “We got the public to cough up more money than anytime since the Yankees snookered New York out of even more” — but the basics of it are more or less accurate: The Maryland legislature over the weekend approved $600 million in bond capacity for renovations to the Orioles’ stadium, and another $600 million for renovations to the Ravens‘ stadium. They also okayed $400 million for “infrastructure” around the Washington Commanders‘ stadium in Prince George’s County, though according to the Washington Post, “early conversations between the county and the stadium authority” would “curtail” the cash from being used for things like team offices and a training center; and also approved $200 million in minor-league baseball stadium money, because it wouldn’t be fair to leave the Delmarva Shorebirds out of the fun.

What will the Orioles and Ravens owners do with their loot, given that both have stadiums that are well-liked and are 30 and 24 years old, respectively? They don’t know yet, and they don’t have to know: The legislature didn’t approve bonds for anything in particular, it just granted the Maryland Stadium Authority the right to sell $1.8 billion in bonds for stadium thingies, to be repaid by future state proceeds from lottery ticket sales. (Or, if people stop buying lottery tickets between now and 2052, state general funds. Gamble like your state finances depend on it, Marylanders!) It’s a set of stadium slush funds, in other words, that the teams can draw from for whatever they like — any Commanders curtailment by the county excepted — so long as the Maryland Stadium Authority approves. (Spoiler: The Maryland Stadium Authority will approve.)

The Maryland stadium deals share more in common with the Bills deal than just a billion-dollar-plus price tag: In both cases, governors pushed through legislation in a matter of days at the tail end of the legislative session with little public debate. The Bills subsidy has its slush-fundy aspects, too — New York state’s “maintenance” funding can be spent on things like security costs if the Bills owners want. (Spoiler: The Bills owners will want.)

It wasn’t that long ago that people were legitimately asking whether the golden age of stadium subsidies had passed, now that Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke had built a multi-billion-dollar stadium largely with his own money, and the Tampa Bay Rays and Oakland A’s owners were struggling to get public cash for their stadium dreams. Then, in one weekend, upwards of $2 billion in government money went toward paying for goodies for billionaire sports team owners. I think it’s fair to say that we’re only going to see more stadium demands from other team owners in the near future: The ante has been upped, and the only thing that can stop this or even slow it down is if the nation’s legislative officials collectively put their hands on the public purse. (Spoiler: … you know.)

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Maryland house approves $600m in Commanders and minor-league baseball subsidies for, you know, stuff

access_time personNeil deMause

Okay, enough about art, let’s get back to the stadium news, where the Maryland state house yesterday voted 121-10 to approve $400 million in subsidies for development around the Washington Commanders‘ stadium, but not actually for a new or renovated stadium. What does this mean, exactly? Let’s let the Washington Post attempt to explain:

Maryland’s plan would use the Maryland Stadium Authority to funnel cash from the state lottery to Prince George’s County, which could use the $400 million to build infrastructure and a “sports entertainment facility” in the area surrounding the team’s current home.

Okay, not a stadium, but a “sports entertainment facility.” What’s that, exactly?

The current Maryland proposal does not directly invest in the Commanders or team owner Daniel Snyder, who already owns more than 200 acres surrounding FedEx Field and has a complicated relationship with Maryland power brokers.

Got it, not for a stadium. But what would the money be used for?

The Commanders and governments are exploring building a mini-city around a new stadium, with homes, restaurants, retail, office space and public amenities to make the area a year-round destination. The pitch Maryland officials developed included a bikeway, an elevated pedestrian bridge and a field house with basketball and volleyball courts. The vision relocated the stadium within a 15-minute walk of the Metro system.

Who would build this? Who would own it? Who would get the rents or sale prices from the homes, restaurants, etc.? Argh, we’re going to have to go read the damn bill ourselves, aren’t we? Fine, here it is, what’s it say:

“PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY BLUE LINE CORRIDOR FACILITY” MEANS A FACILITY LOCATED WITHIN THE PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY BLUE LINE CORRIDOR THAT IS:
(1) A CONVENTION CENTER;
(2) AN ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT AMPHITHEATER; AND
(3) ANY OTHER FUNCTIONALLY RELATED STRUCTURES, IMPROVEMENTS, INFRASTRUCTURE, FURNISHINGS, OR EQUIPMENT OF THE FACILITY, INCLUDING PARKING GARAGES.

So, could be new parking garages for the Commanders, despite all the talk of making the stadium more mass-transit accessible. Beyond that, though, the bill appears to mostly kick the actual spending proposal to the county, which surely will not look at this $400 million as a windfall of state money and therefore not spend too much time worrying about who it goes to benefit.

But wait, there’s more! The bill also includes $200 million for “sports entertainment facilities,” which turn out to have nothing to do with development around the Commanders stadium, but rather are minor-league baseball stadiums throughout the state:

(1) “SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT FACILITY” MEANS A STRUCTURE OR OTHER IMPROVEMENT IN THE STATE AT WHICH MINOR LEAGUE GAMES ARE PLAYED OR OTHER NON–MAJOR LEAGUE SPORTING EVENTS ARE HELD. (2) “SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT FACILITY” INCLUDES PARKING LOTS, GARAGES, AND ANY OTHER PROPERTY ADJACENT AND DIRECTLY RELATED TO A FACILITY DESCRIBED UNDER PARAGRAPH (1) OF THE SUBSECTION.

This minor-league slush fund, which could benefit the Aberdeen IronBirds, Bowie Baysox, Frederick Keys, Hagerstown Suns, Delmarva Shorebirds and Southern Maryland Blue Crabs, was first proposed by the Maryland Stadium Authority back in February, to accompany a proposal to spend $1.2 billion on renovations to the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles stadiums. It now appears to have been severed legislatively from that plan, which is still being pushed by Gov. Larry Hogan, and sutured onto the Commanders development bill.

All this is happening very fast, because — stop me if you’ve heard this one before — the legislative session only has a few days left to go, so this needs to be voted on fast, no time for reading or debating! The bill now heads to the state senate, which hasn’t even held a single hearing on it, but no worries, plenty of time for all that before the session expires on, uh, Monday night? Yeah, it’s all fine, there’s nothing good on TV this weekend anyway, this is democracy as it’s supposed to work, yup.

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Maryland authority wants to spend $1.4b in state money on Orioles, Ravens, minor-league baseball stadiums

access_time personNeil deMause

This came out of nowhere, and for some reason got reported in two separate articles by the same Baltimore Sun reporter: The Maryland Stadium Authority, which built and owns the home stadiums of the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens, is set to propose state legislation to establish a pair of giant stadium spending funds: one a $1.2 billion pool for stadium upgrades for the two Baltimore teams, and the other a $200 million fund to renovate the minor-league baseball stadiums of the Aberdeen IronBirds, Bowie Baysox, Frederick Keys, Hagerstown Suns, Delmarva Shorebirds and Southern Maryland Blue Crabs.

Stadium authority chair Thomas Kelso told the Sun that the Orioles and Ravens spending — more than three times what it cost to build those teams’ stadiums in the first place — is necessary to ensure that the teams don’t leave town, though Orioles ownership has promised that “the Orioles will never leave Baltimore” and the Ravens have only just started talks for a lease extension once their stadium turns 30 years old in 2027.

“The longer we can extend the life of these stadiums, the better it is for Baltimore City, Maryland and the teams, and that’s part of the goal here,” said Kelso. “The way people watch sports continues to morph from more traditional ‘buy a ticket and sit in a seat’ to something that’s completely different. And our teams need to have that flexibility.”

As for the minor-league stadium spending fund, a different MSA official, executive director Michael Frenz, told the Sun: “Major League Baseball has reorganized their minor league system. Cities have lost teams, and the primary reason has been the adequacy of their facilities. This will help Maryland’s municipalities keep their minor league teams.”

In fact, three of the teams eligible for the funding are not part of MLB’s affiliated minor-league system: The Blue Crabs have always been part of the independent Atlantic League (now an MLB “partner” league); the Keys got bounced to the unpaid college-player MLB Draft League; and the Suns currently don’t exist, though they’re set to join the Atlantic League next year in a new stadium that the Maryland legislature approved spending $59.5 million on last year.

To pay off the potential $1.4 billion in stadium renovation debt, the stadium authority would be allowed to tap into future state lottery revenues — money that currently goes to state education spending and the state’s general fund, as well as finishing paying off the state’s $20 million a year in debt on the Orioles and Ravens stadiums. “If we took the lottery out, we couldn’t afford what we provide now,” state Department of Legislative Services director Warren Deschenaux said in 2015, a quote that hopefully will be brought up in the upcoming legislative debates over the MSA’s stadium spending bills.

This mammoth spending plan is far from a done deal: The MSA can only ask for the money, and it’s up to the legislature to determine whether to provide it. But this is clearly an attempt to frame this as “Let’s address all of our sports teams’ ‘needs’ in one $1.4 billion fell swoop, never forget what happened with the Colts” — even if the true lesson of the Colts’ midnight relocation should be “if you’re going to use eminent domain to try to keep a team in town, sign the bill before the moving trucks have time to pack up.” And the Orioles and Ravens are unlikely to leave town, and certainly unlikely to leave if they were only offered a fraction of $1.2 billion in taxpayer money. And one of the minor-league teams that the MSA is afraid baseball will jettison has already been jettisoned, one was never part of organized ball to begin with, and the third is already getting a new state-funded stadium.

There are plot holes in this that you could drive a fleet of Mayflower moving vans through, in other words, but that hasn’t stopped this sort of public spending before, and with Gov. Larry Hogan already warning that he intends to dump a huge pile of money on the Orioles to get them to renew their lease at America’s favorite stadium, that has to give the MSA’s proposal a leg up as it heads to the legislature. More reaction to come soon, I assume, but suffice to say that another huge front has just opened up in the forever war over sports subsidies.

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Friday roundup: Bills threaten to evict selves in 2023, plus hurricane porn!

access_time personNeil deMause

Why yes, thank you, I was fine in the flooding: Our terrace was briefly a small lake, but it didn’t breach the door to our apartment. Still, I will be demanding a new state-of-the-art retractable-roofed terrace from the governor as soon as my lease expires.

And speaking of demanding things from the governor once your lease expires, the Buffalo Bills, amirite?

  • Pegula Sports and Entertainment senior vice president Ron Raccuia said that the Bills won’t renew their lease in Buffalo in 2023 unless a deal for a new stadium in in place by then. Asked what the team would do if there is no deal by then, Raccuia replied, “We’re not even focused on that, yet,” which will be familiar to parents as the “Don’t make me come in there” move: Threaten first, figure out what to do if your kid calls your bluff later. He also asserted that the current stadium’s upper deck “will fail” in about five years but that it definitely won’t fail before then, which is an oddly specific way for metal to age, confirmed that the planned new stadium would have a $1.4 billion price tag, and said the team owners have “never discussed” moving the team and “our sole focus is to get a deal done here,” which is slightly odd for an interview where you just threatened to leave if you don’t get a deal done. Raccuia did not say how much public money the team would be demanding, but did call a new stadium “the single-largest construction project in Western New York history,” and who can put a value on that? (Aside from economists, but they don’t understand the value of a team to a city’s “psyche and core,” now do they? That’s about enough out of you and your “measuring the value of a team to a city’s psyche with actual math,” Bruce Johnson!)
  • Speaking of evictions, Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo has officially submitted a bid for land in Tempe for a new arena now that they’re getting kicked out of Glendale. This is only the first step in a possible arena process — later steps will include such niceties as “who’s going to pay to build this thing exactly?” — but first Meruelo has to actually get dibs on the land, so watch this one closely.
  • And speaking of the Coyotes, here’s a nice article in Venues Now about the economic impact study that made Glendale city officials feel okay about evicting them — tl;dr version: hockey fans just buy a hot dog and go home, Elton John fans travel further and make a day of it. This seems slightly dubious to extrapolate to all concerts, but as Venues Now doesn’t actually link to the study, we’ll have to take their word for it for now.
  • Hagerstown, Maryland is getting a new Atlantic League team to replace the Hagerstown Suns, which were disappeared during the Great Minor League Purge of 2019. The cost: Only $59.5 million to build a new stadium, which is surely an excellent investment and won’t result in a deteriorating empty stadium with graffiti on the luxury box furniture once the team folds, you must be thinking of some other league, surely.
  • Alameda County’s sale of its half of the Oakland Coliseum site to A’s owner John Fisher may violate the state Surplus Land Act, because of course it may, all the kids are violating that law!
  • Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis is building a $14 million mansion designed to look like his team’s new taxpayer-funded stadium, as one does.
  • The New York Yankees clearly need a retractable roof, too. (In the headline I teased this as “hurricane porn,” but truly that term should be reserved for whatever the hell this is.)
  • Nice stickers!

 

 

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Maryland approves $59.5m for Hagerstown ballpark to lure league whose teams have lifespan of mayflies

access_time personNeil deMause

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?

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Friday roundup: We have entered the Golden Age of minor-league stadium scams

access_time personNeil deMause

Welp, that was another week. I know from comments that some of you think that the stadium and arena subsidy racket is about to come grinding to a halt, either because of the Covid economy or everybody already having a new enough stadium or something, but it sure looks like team owners didn’t get the memo — my RSS feeds are as hopping as they’ve ever been with tales of sports venue funding demands, and it’s still a rarity when local governments say no or even hmm, really? Check out this week’s roster, which, as yours truly predicted a couple of months ago, is especially jam-packed with minor-league baseball stadium plans:

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Could an indy league revive Hagerstown’s stadium after MLB consigned the Suns to oblivion?

access_time personNeil deMause

Reporting on plans for what to do with stadiums in the 18 cities that were completely jettisoned from minor-league baseball (separate from the 25 additional cities that are having their paid players replaced by college interns) has been sadly lacking since last months’ hit list announcement, likely because most news media in 2021 has the attention span of a gnat and the budget of one as well. But yesterday there was some news from Hagerstown, where the Suns have been dematerialized after 40 years, leaving behind a stadium that has hosted pro ball on and off since 1930, with several renovations along the way.

The Hagerstown city council held a work session on Tuesday to explore the options, and they are, in order of appearance in the Herald-Mail, the newspaper of the Maryland-Pennsylvania-West Virginia conjunction:

  • Host some “cost-neutral local events, such as high school baseball games” or concerts.
  • Build an indoor turf facility there (likely looking something like this), so locals don’t have to travel elsewhere for sports like youth soccer.
  • Bring in a baseball team in an independent league, two of which have contacted city officials already about using its existing stadium.

All these are reasonable ideas, as is surveying local residents about their preference before moving ahead with any of them. Mayor Emily Keller said that she doesn’t want to cost local residents more money, which also sounds good; there’s also the issue of who would staff games or concerts, since the city doesn’t have staff available. (Hopefully event organizers could either bring their own staff or pay enough of a fee for the city to hire some workers.)

The indy-league baseball option is especially interesting, not so much because it’s necessarily the best one, but because there’s been so much speculation that running unaffiliated minor-league teams wouldn’t be sustainable; one exec of an eliminated minor-league team told me his organization’s research showed it would take a guaranteed 3,000 tickets sold per game just to break even. If two independent leagues are at least sniffing around — the Atlantic League has to be one, thanks to its geography and the fact that it only has six teams currently including the newly created Gastonia Honey Hunters — that’s a good sign that maybe indy leagues will fill some of the vacuum left by the contraction of the affiliated minors.

All this would be significantly easier if North American baseball ran more like European soccer, with promotion and relegation, so that Hagerstown could just find some local willing to sponsor a semi-pro team and then watch it try to win its way back up to the professional ranks. That still wouldn’t be perfect, though — somebody has to buy enough tickets to pay the ticket takers and pay for turning the lights on — so if indy leagues can fill a similar role, that’s better than nothing. It will be very interesting to see how this unfolds as the season approaches, depending on when and if coronavirus levels decline enough for that to even happen.

 

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MLB just killed 18 minor-league teams that got $249m in public stadium funding

access_time personNeil deMause

MLB issued its final list yesterday of which 120 minor-league teams will get to continue as farm teams for big-league clubs, and which will be left to join a series of independent or amateur leagues or disappear altogether. While a few teams got official notice that they’d be switching levels — the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp jump from Double-A to Triple-A, the San Antonio Missions drop from Triple-A to Double-A, the Frederick Keys are bounced from Single-A to the new MLB Draft League where players will have to play for free to showcase their skills for the annual player draft, and the Fresno Grizzlies just yesterday afternoon accepted their demotion from Triple-A to Single-A once they saw what the alternative was — let’s focus on the truly SOL franchises, those that USA Today listed under the heading “No Current League” (state and former affiliation in parentheses):

  • Lowell Spinners (MA, Red Sox)
  • Hagerstown Suns (MD, Nationals)
  • Burlington Bees (IA, Angels)
  • Clinton LumberKings (IA, Marlins)
  • Kane County Cougars (IL, Diamondbacks)
  • Lexington Legends (KY, Royals)
  • Charlotte Stone Crabs (FL, Rays)
  • West Virginia Power (WV, Mariners)
  • Florida Fire Frogs (FL, Braves)
  • Salem-Keizer Volcanoes (OR, Giants)
  • Staten Island Yankees (NY, Yankees)
  • Batavia Muckdogs (NY, Marlins)
  • Auburn Doubledays (NY, Nationals)
  • Norwich Sea Unicorns (CT, Tigers)
  • Tri-City ValleyCats (NY, Astros)
  • Vermont Lake Monsters (VT, A’s)
  • Lancaster JetHawks (CA, Rockies)
  • Boise Hawks (ID, Rockies)

That is a whole lot of intercaps being thrown to the wolves, not to mention both of the minor leagues’ Burlington teams. (The Lake Monsters played in Burlington, Vermont.) And while some of these franchises may yet end up joining an existing non-affiliate league — the MLB Draft League has two spots available, according to the Washington Post, and the indy Atlantic League is currently down to just six teams and could add more — many will almost certainly follow the Staten Island Yankees into oblivion.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at how much public money was spent on stadiums for teams that have now been annihilated by MLB fiat:

  • Lowell Spinners: $11.2 million (construction, 1998)
  • Hagerstown Suns: $1.06 million (construction, 1930; renovations, 1981 and 1995)
  • Burlington Bees: $3 million (renovation, 2005)
  • Clinton LumberKings: $4.35 million (construction, 1937; renovation, 2006)
  • Kane County Cougars: $19.5 million (construction, 1991; renovations, 2008 and 2015)
  • Lexington Legends: privately funded
  • Charlotte Stone Crabs: $32.2 million (construction, 1987; renovation, 2009)
  • West Virginia Power: $25 million (construction, 2005)
  • Florida Fire Frogs: $45.9 million (construction, 2019)
  • Salem-Keizer Volcanoes: $6.8 million (construction, 1997)
  • Staten Island Yankees: $71 million (construction, 2001)
  • Batavia Muckdogs: $3 million (construction, 1996)
  • Auburn Doubledays: $3.145 million (construction, 1995)
  • Norwich Sea Unicorns: $9.3 million (construction, 1995)
  • Tri-City ValleyCats: $14 million (construction, 2002)
  • Vermont Lake Monsters: privately funded
  • Lancaster JetHawks: $14.5 million (construction, 1996)
  • Boise Hawks: privately funded

A couple of caveats: The Stone Crabs and Fire Frogs played at their big-league affiliates’ spring training sites, so those stadiums will still be in use on a lesser basis; and a couple of other stadiums get use as high school or college fields. Still, that’s $249 million in tax money down the toilet, with little hope of finding replacement teams in the future.

Little hope, I should say, without throwing more public money at the situation. You’ll note that a lot of those stadium construction dates above are from the 20th century — Centennial Park in Burlington, Vermont opened way back in 1906! — which is ancient in the what-have-you-built-for-us-lately world of pro sports. One of the reasons MLB gave for seeking to cut teams when it was first announced last year was to “improve Minor League Baseball’s stadium facilities,” and in fact the Boise Hawks owner specifically said he was told his team was marked for death because it was an age-defying 31 years old:

“We were told our current facility ultimately led to the decision,” [Hawks president Jeff] Eiseman said in a statement. “As we have stated since the day we purchased the Hawks, the venue is a challenge. The failure to not have replaced it in all of these prior years led to this move.”

Not having to pay as many minor-league salaries — in part by forcing minor leaguers to play as amateurs, whether in the new MLB Draft League or the conversion of the entire Appalachian League to a “college wood-bat league” — was obviously a prime reason for MLB’s restructuring of the minors, but increasing leverage for new or renovated stadiums could turn out to be the far more lucrative result. If Boise or Lexington or Batavia wants a new team, they will almost certainly be asked to upgrade their stadiums first; and if the cities that do get rewarded with teams, that will allow MLB to cast existing teams onto the scrap heap, in an endless cycle of stadium shakedowns.

Even now, the new minors structure isn’t 100% finalized: MLB and the surviving minor-league teams still need to work out a player-development contract that will determine exactly what each side will pay toward minor-league team costs; the Tacoma Rainiers owners have already released a statement that they “cannot accept the invitation until we’ve had time to review the deal that will govern our sport, and this relationship, for decades to come.” And there is still the possibility of antitrust lawsuits to fight the elimination of teams, since MLB has effectively taken control of all of its competitors for baseball fan dollars and ordered a bunch of them to shut down — recall that last year an unnamed MLB official told the New York Daily News’ Bill Madden, “My God, we’ll be sued all over the place from these cities that have built or refurbished ballparks with taxpayer money, and this will really put our anti-trust exemption in jeopardy.”

Still, a whole lot of minor-league baseball fans are about to lose their teams, and a whole lot of cities are about to see their investments in stadiums go up in smoke. And a whole lot of minor-league players are about to be, in essence, redefined as unpaid interns. Thus has it always been.

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Hagerstown losing baseball team, officials still want new stadium to “get back to business,” whatever business that might be

access_time personNeil deMause

The Hagerstown Suns have lost their affiliated South Atlantic League team as part of MLB’s crusade to stop paying as many minor-league players as possible. (The Suns still technically exist, with no league to play in, but their Wikipedia page has them in the past tense, which is never a good sign.) Hagerstown officials who have been angling for a new stadium still want one, even though there’s now no team to play in one. How do they reconcile these two facts? Let’s watch!

“I think right now the possibilities are endless,” [Hagerstown Mayor Emily] Keller said. “It’s all up in the air, but that’s not a bad thing. It gives us time to decide where we want to go as a community.”

This is more or less true, though the possibilities are not so endless as to include “let’s build a new stadium and have an affiliated minor-league team play in it,” which was the plan that made the most sense. (Along with “let’s keep the old stadium and have an affiliated minor-league team play in it,” which is also now off the table.) But yes, breakups can be opportunities, and when God closes a door he opens a window, and are we able to crawl out of bed yet?

Moving on:

[Councilmember Bob] Bruchey agreed that it is sad to lose minor league baseball in the city.

He said if an updated facility existed, however, the team might have kept its affiliation with the Nationals.

“It just never came about,” Bruchey said.

It might have! Sure, tons of teams playing in newer stadiums are being snapped out of existence, and the entire South Atlantic League has disappeared (bits of it will reportedly merge with the remnants of the NY-Penn League as a new Mid-Atlantic League in 2021), but it there is a non-zero chance that the Suns could have taken the place of another surviving team if the city had built them a new stadium. So definitely let’s blame that.

Bruchey said the goal now is to find a way to bring more people into Hagerstown to live and to patronize businesses, possibly with some sort of downtown venue for sports and potentially music.

He said it would be “foolish” to scrap talks of a new facility given the amount of funds available from the state for such a venture.

The amount of funds available from the state is, Delmarva Now reports, $300,000. That’s not going to go very far in paying for any sort of downtown venue for sports and potentially music or maybe sports musicals.

“We’re going to dust ourselves off, find an independent team, build a new ballpark and get back to business,” [Visit Hagerstown President Dan] Spedden said. “We’re continuing with this effort.”

Building a new ballpark for an independent team is never a great gamble, given the number of cities that have done that and then wound up with no team and an empty ballpark because indy-league teams come and go like mayflies. In a time when there are suddenly dozens of cities scrambling for teams and the viability of minor-league sports as a whole is uncertain thanks to the pandemic and the pandemic economy, it’s an even worse gamble.

Spedden said Visit Hagerstown worked with Suns General Manager Travis Painter at the end of the 2018 season to measure the team’s economic impact.

The team contributes nine full-time jobs and a number of part-time positions to the economy, along with $235,000 in purchases of food and other necessities, Spedden said. He estimated an impact of $53,000 in sales taxes and about $40,000 in charitable donations. Fans and visiting teams also booked rooms at hotels.

On the bright side, this is one of the few sports economic impact statements that actually sounds believable and based in actual tax receipts. On the other hand, $53,000 in annual tax revenues and nine full-time jobs is terrible economic impact, especially if it requires spending $30 million or so on a stadium; you’d be better off building a small supermarket, or maybe a large dentist’s office.

If I were mayor of Hagerstown, which I am not (checks election results, confirms this), I would start out by seeing if I could find a new baseball team to play in my old stadium, which has the advantage of having already been paid for back in 1930. (The stadium’s Wikipedia page claims it was built by the federal Works Progress Administration, which would be a neat trick seeing as that the WPA didn’t come into existence until 1935.) Or maybe find another kind of sports team — lacrosse, rugby, pesäpallo — to play there. Or see if amateur players want to rent out a historic stadium with a cool manually operated scoreboard. Depending on how that all goes, maybe a new stadium would be something to consider; in the meantime, there are far better and cheaper ways to convince people to live and spend money in Hagerstown.

Finally, a fond farewell to Woolie B., the Suns’ monstrous snaggletoothed caterpillar mascot. Won’t anyone think of the hideous chimeric mascots? Maybe they can form a Mascot League — I bet that would create at least nine jobs.

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