Category: Staten Island Yankees

Friday roundup: Everywhere from Reading to NYC is coughing up minor-league stadium cash, just like MLB planned it

access_time personNeil deMause

Happy Friday! Since Monday is a holiday for most FoS readers, this site will be taking that day off as well, and — sorry, you don’t want to hear about the future, only the past? That’s probably understandable, given the future, so off we go to the (extremely recent) past!

  • MLB’s minor-league downsizing and league-wide demands for stadium upgrades continues to pay dividends, as Reading’s Stadium Commission met Wednesday to discuss a $15 million renovation of the Fightin Phils (Double-A, no apostrophe) stadium that would be funded with $3 million each from the city and county, plus $7.5 million from the state of Pennsylvania. (The Philadelphia Phillies owners, who own the Fightin Phils, would kick in $3 million as well. Yes, that’s $16.5 million total. No, the Reading Eagle didn’t explain the discrepancy.) Commission chair James Schlegel said, “We don’t want the moving trucks out here like the Baltimore Colts in the middle of the night,” but also acknowledged that the Phillies haven’t actually committed yet to staying in Reading long-term if the money is spent on upgrades to the Fightin Phils stadium, which just received $10 million in renovations in 2011: “We should have some assurance from the big club, that after all of this is done, that they are not going to say, ‘Well, Trenton is a little closer.’ Then we kind of look like fools.”
  • Speaking of which, a whole bunch of cities that saw their minor-league baseball teams vaporized last winter are now looking to lure independent-league teams, which is likely to require, you guessed it, more stadium renovations. Among them: New York City, whose Economic Development Corporation, which was pretty much set up to do this sort of thing, is set to spend $8 million upgrading Staten Island’s 20-year-old ballpark so it can host unaffiliated ball instead of the Yankees‘ Single-A team, with a new Atlantic League team set to pay … nope, no details on rent payments or whether they’ll help cover the cost of replacing the seats and field, surely the as-yet-unnamed team with no owners will agree to a fair deal on that later, once the money is already spent and it’s too late for the city to back out.
  • It’s NBA playoff season, so of course it’s time for lots of articles on how people going to basketball games spend money. Do any of these articles talk about how people also spend money when not going to basketball games, or even ask a single economist who’s researched the topic? You’re asking a lot of our nation’s beleaguered journalists, pal.
  • Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno’s sweetheart deal to purchase the land under Angel Stadium from Anaheim may possibly violate state affordable-housing law, but the city has a plan for that: Get the state legislature to pass a special law to make it legal. Nice to have friends in high places.
  • Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker says that state funding for a new Chicago Bears stadium at Arlington Park is “not something we’re looking at right now,” which would be a lot more reassuring if he hadn’t added those last two words.
  • Finally, the nonprofit Financial Accounting Standards Board has decided to revise its rules for accounting principles — no, don’t stop reading here, this gets interesting and important, I swear — and not to require corporations to report tax breaks as subsidies, something that Good Jobs First calls “missing the bottom of the budget iceberg, because tax expenditures for economic development dwarf appropriated spending.” For more on why that’s important, see GJF’s Greg LeRoy’s brand-new interview with CounterSpin on a giant Texas tax break for oil companies that helped cost Texas school systems $290 million a year until it was finally repealed earlier this year. Who do those oil companies think they are, a baseball team?
Share this post:

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?

Share this post:

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.

Share this post:

Staten Island Yankees officially fold, sue Steinbrenner and MLB for “false promises”

access_time personNeil deMause

And we have the first lawsuit of the Great Minor League Baseball War of 2020:

The Staten Island Yankees, who lost their affiliation with the mother ship last month, on Thursday announced they are ceasing operations and filed a $20 million lawsuit against both the Yankees and Major League Baseball “to hold those entities accountable for false promises.”

False promises! That’s not exactly antitrust violations, but it’s something.

The crux of the suit seems to be that the New York Yankees “made repeated assurances” that the Staten Island Yankees would “always” be their minor-league partner, which presumably amounts to a verbal contract or something:

https://twitter.com/SIYanks/status/1334595858256564226

(The suit itself, according to the wretched excuse for a newspaper that is the New York Post, also charges “promissory estoppel,” which I’m not even going to look up because it is too platonically perfect an example of legalese. No, don’t tell me in the comments, I don’t want it ruined for me.)

There’s more to the suit, including accusations that the big-league Yankees ownership objected to the minor-league team wanting to change their name to the Staten Island Pizza Rats, but mostly this comes down to “We bought a minor-league team for its affiliation with the Yankees and then the Yankees pulled the rug out from under us and we went out of business so fire up the lawyers. If this is the last lawsuit we see coming out of this winter of minor-league discontent, I’ll eat my promissory estoppel.

 

Share this post:

Friday roundup: Raiders stadium runs short of tax dollars, Falcons owner makes film about how great Megatron’s Butthole is, and a Ricketts cries poor (again)

access_time personNeil deMause

Well, that was certainly something to wake up to on a post-Thanksgiving Friday morning. Not sure how many U.S. readers are checking the internet today, but if that’s you and you’re looking for some non-Canadian stadium and arena news for your troubles, we have that too:

Share this post:

Staten Island official endorses spending $5m on empty baseball stadium to steal rugby team from Brooklyn

access_time personNeil deMause

As I reported here a week and a half ago, New York City is set to spend $5.1 million on upgrades to the Staten Island Yankees‘ home stadium even as the Staten Island Yankees may cease to exist, or at least will certainly no longer be a Yankees affiliate. This weekend the New York Post took notice of this, and got Staten Island borough president James Oddo to say he thinks throwing public money at an increasingly empty stadium is a great idea:

Borough President James Oddo said it’s about time the city steps up to the plate and invests in the ballpark with vistas of the downtown skyline, adding that the Yankees’ decision two weeks ago to drop the “Baby Bombers” as part of Major League Baseball’s minor-league consolidation “needs to serve as a wake-up call.”

“This is a moment of time where we have to extract something more than the status quo,” he told The Post. “You have this great stadium that’s underused, and we have to make it a bigger part of the Island’s community than it’s been.

“It was a major investment in tax dollars to build, yet the stadium is dormant for the overwhelming majority of the year.”

It was indeed a major investment to build — $71 million in city dollars, in part thanks to environmental cleanup costs at the site near the Staten Island Ferry terminal — but what would the value be in throwing another $5.1 million on the fire? According to “officials,” says the Post, “the pro rugby franchise Rugby United New York has expressed interest in playing there once it’s reconfigured.”

If you’re not familiar with Rugby United New York, that makes you and most of the population of New York City. The team has played a season and a half so far, with announced attendance settling in at under 2,000 per game following the franchise’s home opener, playing at the Brooklyn Cyclones‘ home stadium in Coney Island. So the primary announced goal of the city rehabbing the Staten Island stadium, apparently, would be to add artificial turf in order to move a team in an extremely minor sports league from one city borough to another.

This is dumb enough, apparently, to even draw opposition from Fansided’s Staten Island Yankees blogger, who writes that spending money on a stadium after its main tenant has left “makes no sense,” and that the prospect of a rugby team is “kind of bleak” and “a tough sell.” Which is maybe what you’d expect from a minor-league baseball blogger suddenly faced with the prospect of not having a team to write about, but it’s also completely accurate. Unfortunately, the New York City Economic Development Corporation is spending this money out of its own budget, so it isn’t likely we’ll get any city council hearings — which is a shame, as I’d love to hear what Brooklyn elected officials think about this move.

Share this post:

Friday roundup: Charlotte approves $35m in soccer subsidies, NYC spends $5m on stadium upgrades for team that may disappear, NBA joins NFL in welcoming fans back to giant virus stew

access_time personNeil deMause

Even after dispensing with that crazy San Jose Sharks move threat story, there’s a ton of leftover news this week. So put down that amazing Defector article about how the British have fetishized the Magna Carta as a declaration of citizen rights when it’s really just about how the king can’t unreasonably tax 25 barons, and let’s get right to it:

Share this post:

Yankees axe Trenton, Staten Island, Charleston teams that received $112m in public stadium money

access_time personNeil deMause

The long-promised contraction and reorganization of minor-league baseball began in earnest this weekend, as the New York Yankees announced they would be cutting ties with the Trenton Thunder, Staten Island Yankees, and Charleston RiverDogs, while adding affiliations with the Somerset Patriots (formerly in the independent Atlantic League) and Hudson Valley Renegades (formerly a short-season team affiliated with the Tampa Bay Rays). The Thunder and Yankees owners apparently learned the news via Twitter:

https://twitter.com/SIYanks/status/1325840959456874499

The Patriots, who play about an hour west of New York City, have long been one of the top-drawing teams in the Atlantic League, though with roughly the same number of fans per game (just over 5,000) as Trenton. Both Trenton and Staten Island have been offered spots in the Atlantic League, reports CBS Sports, but “their futures are unclear at the moment,” which is what happens when you’re suddenly cast into a league that has seen a bunch of teams fold since its 1998 opening, even after getting tens of millions of dollars each in public stadium funding.

Speaking of which, both Trenton and Staten Island got a ton of stadium subsidies as well, money that’s now at risk of going for naught thanks to the elimination of teams. Trenton’s stadium was built in 1994 at a cost of $16.2 million, paid for entirely by Mercer County. Charleston’s stadium was built by the city in 1997 for $19.5 million, with another $6 million in upgrades since to stop it from sinking into the earth. And Staten Island’s was opened in 2001 and cost a staggering $71 million, thanks to cleanup issues at the site, all of which was paid for by the citizens of New York City. It’s possible that both cities will get new indie teams — or even new affiliated teams, though that’s unlikely with the Mets already having the Brooklyn Cyclones and the Philadelphia Phillies four existing affiliates in Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey, and both of them looking to cut back on farm teams as well — but if not, we could see a renewed wave of shuttered new-ish stadiums.

That would be bad news for baseball fans and taxpayers alike, but potentially great news for MLB owners, who would simultaneously cut back on minor-league payrolls, reduce travel costs by consolidating teams near their parent clubs, and potentially get cities and minor-league teams alike into bidding wars to make sure they have chairs when the contraction music stops. We haven’t seen that yet, but you know it’s going to happen: If the Trenton Thunder, say, can’t line up a new big-league affiliation, how long do you think before its owners go back to Mercer County to claim that stadium upgrades are needed to lure away some other town’s team?

The Staten Island Yankees, meanwhile, included in their tweeted press release this line:

The Staten Island Yankees made every effort to accommodate MLB and New York Yankees requirements, including securing a commitment from New York City for ballpark upgrades

Wait, they secured what now? This was news to me, and I followed New York City ballpark spending even more closely than that on the rest of the planet; I’ve reached out for comment to the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the quasi-public agency that owns and operates the Staten Island stadium (though it’s been trying to ditch the “operates” part), and will post here when I learn anything more.

All this is certainly only the first show among many, with 29 other teams still set to announce which affiliates will be cast adrift. Just last night, in fact, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the Giants are expected to ditch the Augusta GreenJackets and likely the Richmond Flying Squirrels as well. It’s still unclear when minor-league baseball will resume, thanks to the pandemic, but whenever it does, it could look very different than it has for the last several decades.

Share this post: