Category: Chicago Cubs

Friday roundup: Possible VA locations for $3B Commanders project revealed, Tulsa mulls USL stadium on race massacre site, and more!

access_time personNeil deMause

Too much news to recap this week to have time writing an amusing intro, sorry!

  • WUSA-TV “went in search of tax plans for the new [Washington Commanders] football stadium. What we found was so much more.” Actually, they didn’t find anything about the tax plans, but they did find an internal document from December, provided by “a source close to the Washington Commanders stadium project,” showing which three sites in Virginia team owner Dan Snyder is looking at for a stadium: the Loudoun Quarries in Sterling, across the highway from Dulles Airport; a plot of undeveloped land between Summit School Road and Telegraph Road in Woodbridge, off I-95 about 25 miles south of D.C.; and Potomac Shores in Dumfries, a new development even farther south along the west bank of the Potomac River. Each site would be developed with not just an NFL stadium and training facilities but “a 14,000-seat amphitheater, hotels and a conference center, residential buildings and mixed-used retail including nightlife.” No price tags were included ($3 billion has been the going figure), nor plans for who would pay for acquiring the land, whether it would be on the public rolls and thus skip out on paying property taxes, or anything like that, but if anyone wants to start debating the vital question of how long it would take to drive to Commanders games — up to 90 minutes during a Thursday night rush hour, according to WUSA — have at it.
  • One Orchard Park councilmember wants the Buffalo Bills owners to pay for extra police on game days if they get a new stadium, and one New York state assemblymember wants the Bills owners to lower food and drink prices if they get stadium subsidies. Both of which are reasonable asks — if you’re going to hand over close to a billion dollars in tax money for a stadium, you may as well get something in return — but both are also likely to amount to a rounding error compared to the state’s price tag for a stadium, so neither would be so much a win as a consolation prize.
  • Oklahoma Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell says there’s talk underway of building a new stadium for the F.C. Tulsa USL team on the site of the Tulsa Race Massacre, and surprisingly this isn’t going over real well, not just because the city already built a Tulsa Drillers minor-league baseball stadium on a possible burial site for victims of the massacre, but because the surviving descendants of the city’s Black community still live there, and a soccer stadium isn’t especially at the top of their development list.
  • Bruce Murphy of Urban Milwaukee reports on the roots of the Milwaukee Brewers owners’ demands for upwards of $70 million in stadium upgrades under their state-of-the-art lease clause, and notes a list of things the money would go for, including replacing the air conditioning, replacing parts of the retractable roof, replacing all the seats, replacing all the lights, replacing the LED ribbon ad boards, replacing the LED ribbon ad boards again 10-15 years later, and upgrading the sound system to a “multi-zone system.” A Brewers exec said this list wasn’t “comprehensive,” so put on your owner goggles and imagine your own wish list as well!
  • “Will a new Denver Broncos owner mean a push for a new stadium, too?” The Denver Post actually has no idea, but the Broncos‘ current stadium is a whole 21 years old already, you can’t expect these things to just last forever before tearing them down and building a new one, and another new one, and another…
  • John Mozena of the Center for Economic Accountability, an FoS reader and maker of excellent stickers, published an essay at Baseball Prospectus asserting that the baseball lockout makes stadium subsidies even worse, since now stadiums aren’t even providing the meager tax revenues that they usually do when baseball games are being played. This prompted an email discussion between myself and John about whether the substitution effect means that when stadiums are shuttered people will just spend money elsewhere in the area so it’s really a wash; and then more emails between myself and an economist about what the data shows about whether, say, a stadium in a city can at least be a net plus by siphoning off spending from the suburbs. No conclusive evidence yet, will report more later if and when I find out if we have yet another reason to hate Rob Manfred.
  • Chris Fedor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer tweets: “NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said they are estimating a roughly $100 million economic impact for the city of Cleveland as a result of All-Star Weekend.” Asked and answered!
  • Neither the Boston Red Sox nor the Chicago Cubs are planning to move out of their popular, historic ballparks, and yup, that qualifies as a reason to write a whole Athletic article these days.
  • And here’s a whole article about the housing group that pointed out that the Los Angeles Angels‘ stadium land purchase likely violated the state Surplus Land Act, I guess there’s just a lot of sports-page space to fill what with spring training getting wiped out by the lockout. Not that I’m complaining, they’re interesting enough overview articles, but it would be nice if publications were investigating things we didn’t know instead of rehashing what we already do, that’s all.
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:

Friday roundup: New Rangers stadium scam movie, Nevada arena petitions rejected over technicality, and many many dumb ideas for getting you (or cardboard cutouts of you) into stadiums this year

access_time personNeil deMause

Welcome to the end of another crazy week, which seems redundant to say, since that’s all of them lately. I spent a bunch of it working on this article on what science (but not necessarily your local newspaper) can tell us about not just whether reopening after lockdowns is a good idea, but what kinds of reopening are safe enough to consider. And important enough to consider, since as one infectious disease expert told me, “It’s not ‘open’ or ‘shut’—there’s a whole spectrum in between. We need to be thinking about what are the high-priority things that we need to reopen from a functioning point of view, and not an enjoyment point of view.”

And with that cheery thought, on to other cheery thoughts:

  • If you’re a fan of either sports stadium shenanigans or calamitous public-policy train wrecks in general — and I know you are, or why would you be reading this site — you should absolutely check out “Throw A Billion Dollars From The Helicopter,” a new documentary about the Texas Rangers‘ successful campaign to extract half a billion dollars from the city of Arlington so they could play in air-conditioning. It’s a story that has everything: a mayor who was elected as a stadium-subsidy critic then turned around to approve the biggest stadium subsidy in local history, George W. Bush grubbing for public money and failing to do basic math, grassroots anti-red-light camera activists getting dragged into stadium politics, a trip back to the Washington Senators’ final home game before moving to Texas which they had to forfeit because fans ran on the field and walked off with the bases, footage of that 1994 Canadian TV news story I always cite about how video-rental stores comedy clubs in Toronto were so happy with extra business during the baseball strike that they wished hockey would go on strike too, plus interviews with stadium experts like Roger Noll, Rod Fort, Victor Matheson, Allen Sanderson (the man whose line about more effective ways than building a stadium for boosting your city’s economy gave the documentary its title), and me. Rent it here on Vimeo if you want some substitute fireworks this weekend.
  • Opponents of the publicly funded minor-league hockey arena for the Henderson Silver Knights got enough signatures to put a recall on the November ballot, but have had their petitions invalidated for not including a detailed enough description of their objections on every page. This will almost certainly result in lawsuits, which is how pretty much every battle for public oversight of sports subsidy deals ends — that, and “in tears.”
  • The San Diego city council approved the $86.2 million sale of the site of the Chargers‘ former stadium to San Diego State University, which plans to build a new $310 million football stadium there. Whether this is a good deal for the public is especially tricky, because not only do you have to figure the land value of a 135-acre site in the middle of an economic meltdown, but also San Diego State is a public university, so really this is one public agency selling land to another. It’s all more than I can manage this morning, so instead let’s look at this rendering of a proposed park for the site that features bicyclists riding diagonally across a bike path to avoid a woman who stands in their way with arms akimbo, while birds with bizarre forked tails wheel overhead.
  • You know what would be a terrible idea in the middle of a pandemic that has closed stadiums to fans because gathering in one place is a great way to spread virus? An article telling fans what public spaces they can gather in to catch a glimpse of game action in closed stadiums, and Axios has you covered there! And so does the Associated Press!
  • Sure, hundreds of thousands of people have died and there could be hundreds of thousands more to go, but won’t anyone think of the impact on TV network profits if there’s no football to show in the fall?
  • And speaking of keeping an eye strictly on the bottom line, the NFL is considering requiring fans (if there are any) who attend NFL games this fall (if there are any) to sign a waiver promising not to sue if they contract Covid as a result. But can I still sue if someone goes to a football game, contracts Covid, and then infects me? I’m not actually sure how easily one could sue in either case — since you can never be sure where you were infected with the virus, it would be like suing over getting cancer from secondhand smoke — but I always like the idea of suing the NFL, so thanks for the idea, guys!
  • New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner says he wants to see fans at Yankee Stadium “in the 20-30 percent range,” a number and prediction he failed to indicate he pulled from anywhere other than his own butt. Meanwhile, the Chicago Cubs are reportedly planning to open rooftops around Wrigley Field at 25% capacity for watching games this year, something that might actually be legal since while would mean about 800 fans in attendance, they wouldn’t all be in attendance in the same place, so it could get around rules about large public gatherings.
  • If you want to spend $49 and up so a cardboard cutout of yourself can watch Oakland A’s games, you can now do that on the team’s website. If that sounds like a terrible deal, know that with each purchase you also get two free tickets to an exhibition game at the Coliseum in 2021 (if there are any), and if you pay $129 then you also get a foul ball mailed to you if it hits your cutout, all of which still sounds like a terrible deal but significantly more hilarious.
  • If you were hoping to make one last trip to Pawtucket’s 74-year-old McCoy Stadium to see Pawtucket Red Sox baseball before the team relocates to Worcester after this season — it was on my now-deleted summer calendar — you’ll have to settle for eating dinner on the field, because the PawSox season, along with the rest of the minor-league baseball season, has been officially called off. Also, the Boston Herald reports that the Lowell Spinners single-A team won’t be offering refunds to those who bought tickets for non-canceled games, only credits toward 2021 tickets — shouldn’t ticketholders be able to sue for not receiving the product they paid for? I want somebody to sue somebody, already! When will America’s true pastime be allowed to reopen?
  • Here’s a New York Times article on how new MLS stadiums are bucking past stadium trends by being “privately financed, with modest public support for modernizing infrastructure,” which is only true if you consider $98 million (Columbus) and $81 million and up (Cincinnati) to be “modest” figures.
  • I apologize for failing to report last week on the Anaheim Ducks‘ proposed development around their hockey arena, less because it’s super interesting or there is amusing vaportecture than because it’s supposed to be called “ocV!BE,” which is the best name ever, so long as you want to live in a freshly built condo in what sounds like either a randomly generated password or an Aughts rock band.
Share this post:

Friday roundup: Remembering Jim Bouton, and the latest in stadium shakedown absurdities

access_time personNeil deMause

One day maybe 16 or 17 years ago, I was sitting at my computer when my phone rang and a voice at the other end said, “Hi, this is Jim Bouton. Can I speak with Neil deMause?”

Once I’d picked my jaw up off the floor that the author of Ball Four (and winner of two games in the 1964 World Series) was calling me, we got down to business: Bouton was in the midst of writing a book about his attempts to save a nearly century-old minor-league baseball stadium in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and had some questions about how attempts to save old ballparks (and save the public’s money on building new ones) had gone in other cities. We soon fell to chatting amiably about the nuances and absurdities of the stadium game — I’m pretty sure Jim had only one setting with people he’d just met, which was “chatting amiably” — and eventually ended up having a few conversations about his book and his work as a short-term preservationist and ballclub operator. (The preservation part was successful — Wahconah Park is still in use today — but he was eventually forced out from team management.) I got to meet him in person for the first time a couple of years later when he came to Brooklyn to talk with local residents then fighting demolition of their buildings to make way for a new Brooklyn Nets arena, an issue he quickly became as passionate about as everything else that touched his sense of injustice; when I learned (at a Jim Bouton book talk, in fact) that the initial edition of Field of Schemes had gone out of print, he enthusiastically encouraged me and Joanna Cagan to find a publisher for a revised edition, as he had never been shy about doing for his own books, even when that meant publishing them himself.

The last time I talked to Jim was in the spring of 2012, when he showed up at a screening of the documentary Knuckleball! (along with fellow knuckleball pitchers R.A. Dickey, Tim Wakefield, and Charlie Hough) to help teach kids how to throw the near-magical pitch. We only got to talk briefly, as he was kept busy chatting amiably with everyone else who wanted a moment with him. Soon after that, he had a stroke, and eventually developed vascular dementia, which on Wednesday took his life at age 80.

I’m eternally grateful to have had a chance to spend a little time with one of the nicest, smartest, funniest world-famous authors and ballplayers you could ever hope to meet, especially when we crossed paths on a topic that was so important to both of us. The image I’ll always retain of Jim, though, was of getting ice cream with him near his home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and him looking at my cup and exclaiming, “Sprinkles! That’s a great idea!” and then sprinting back into the shop to get some added to his as well. To the end, Jim Bouton remained boyishly intense about things that were truly important, whether fighting General Electric to save an old ballpark or eating ice cream, and that’s a rare and precious gift. My sympathies to his wife, Paula, and to all who loved him, which by this point I think was pretty much everybody.

And now, to the nuances and absurdities of this week’s stadium and arena news:

Share this post:

Cubs owners bankroll opponent to alderman they’re still mad at for denying them a bigger Jumbotron

access_time personNeil deMause

If you were following the Chicago Cubs‘ battle over renovations to Wrigley Field a few years back, you’ll probably remember Tom Tunney, the alderman who squabbled with the team owners (and even himself) over the size of video boards and other minor issues. The Cubs’ owners sure remember him, because now they’re apparently trying to use their billions to get him thrown out of office:

Elizabeth Shydlowski, one of Tunney’s rivals in the Feb. 26 vote, is funded primarily by donations from Cubs management. The team also has clear links to a dark money group that in recent months has papered the ward with anti-Tunney mailers.

Regardless of what you think of Tunney — I, for one, haven’t followed his positions on more important issues than video board size, because it’s outside of the scope of this blog — that is some serious 800-pound-gorilla vengefulness to fund an entire campaign challenger just because you’re mad at someone who caused you minor headaches half a decade ago. Though the more we find out about the Ricketts family, the more that vengeance seems to be one of their defining motivations.

As for Shydlowski, she criticized Tunney for owning the Ann Sather’s restaurant chain — okay, Tunney’s other interests are outside the scope of this blog aside from his cinnamon rolls — and hence having to recuse himself from lots of council votes, which is pretty hilarious for someone who’s hoping to be responsible for lots of votes involving her main funder. She also chimed in on the “Joe Ricketts is a serial Islamophobic email forwarder” controversy, saying she disagreed with Ricketts’ statements but that she wouldn’t be returning his money, because voters only “care about not having rats in the streets.”

Anyway, this has been today’s reminder that the rich are very different from you and me: When they think their local elected official is a self-interested hack, instead of calling his office or writing a letter to the editor, they simply buy him an opponent. Next time any journalists ask me why local politicians are so eager to placate sports team owners, I’m just pointing them to this post and leaving it at that.

Share this post:

How Joe Ricketts Cost Himself $300m in Stadium Subsidies By Forwarding Racist Conspiracy Theories

access_time personNeil deMause

This is going to take a minute to get to the stadium connection, so bear with me:

Joe Ricketts, the patriarch of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs, and also the man who started the news site DNAinfo and bought my current part-time employer Gothamist before shutting them both down in a hissy fit when they unionized, recently had a cache of his old emails leaked to the news site Splinter (which is owned by Gizmodo Media Group, whose site Deadspin I sometimes write for). The whole series is well worth reading — I’ve previously mentioned here the revelation that Joe’s son Todd once suggested moving the Cubs in a hissy fit after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel bragged about refusing to give them public money for stadium renovations — but today’s installment, collecting all the racist and/or crazy email memes that Joe Ricketts shared with his family, includes this invaluable nugget he forwarded in 2011:

It appears Barry fled New York to Chicago using his new identity to get a job . He likely ordered a fake diploma to bolster his new identity as “Obama”. Fake diplomas were very big in the 80s and diploma mills were even being used by federal workers to get promotions. There is evidence his alleged attendance at Columbia was faked (Barry never attended Columbia) and Barry lied his way into Harvard (he had no transcripts to get in)… Including telling the Saudi royal family he was fighting in Afghanistan with the Muslim Jihad against the Russians, so they would help him get into a law school.

“Barry” is Barack Obama, and the rest of it is the conspiracy theory that the then-president was secretly a Muslim and faked his birth certificate and maybe was a male prostitute and … you may have heard the rest from a certain then-presidential candidate.

Fine, so Joe Ricketts believes unverified things he reads on the internet, like a lot of people. Unlike a lot of people, though, shortly thereafter he also considered spending $10 million on an anti-Obama attack ad, only to have to pull it when people started canceling their accounts with his brokerage TD Ameritrade. But Emanuel, who prior to being elected Chicago mayor had served as Obama’s White House chief of staff, was reportedly “livid” about the proposed ads, and stopped talking to Cubs officials entirely about nearly $300 million in public money he’d been considering providing for the Cubs’ private renovations to Wrigley Field. Ricketts never got his public money, ended up spending his own money on Wrigley renovations, and now people are blaming that for the Cubs not wanting to spend money on Bryce Harper this winter. (Though it doesn’t make any sense economically — if anything, spending lots of money on a renovated stadium creates more of an incentive to spend money on a winning team in order to fill those more-expensive seats with more expensive fannies. And there are plenty of other explanations why the Cubs, and everybody, haven’t signed Bryce Harper.)

Ricketts apologized yesterday for some of his emails, though he didn’t specify which ones — he also had written that “Islam is a cult and not a religion” and replied “good one” to an anti-Muslim Star Trek joke, so there’s a lot to choose from. Anyway, just one more week before pitchers and catchers report to Cubs spring training! Feel the excitement!

Share this post:

Cubs co-owner once got so steamed at mayor for refusing subsidy demands that he suggested selling or moving team

access_time personNeil deMause

This doesn’t quite rise to the level of news per se, but it’s getting lots of attention and it’s a Deadspin scoop and they’re nice and pay me money to write for them, so what the heck: Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts once got so mad at an interview where Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel bragged about refusing the team’s stadium subsidy demands that he suggested moving the Cubs out of town.

Having received a final proposal for the Ricketts investment in the Cubs, Emanuel told the Chicago Tribune [in 2013]:

When I first started this discussion, the Cubs wanted $200 million in taxpayer dollars. I said no. Then they said we’d like $150 million, and I said no. Then they asked whether they could have $100 million in taxpayer subsidies, and I said no. Then they asked about $55 million in taxpayer subsidies. I said no. The good news is, after 15 months they heard the word ‘No.’”

Todd Ricketts, a prominent Republican fundraiser and the current finance chariman of the Republican National committee, forwarded the story to his father and siblings, writing:

I think we should contemplate moving, or at least recognize that we are maybe not the right organization to own the Cubs.

That’s pretty weak tea, but it is amusing to see that the hissy fits thrown by rich dudes come off just as petty in private emails as in public statements. But then, Todd Ricketts is a guy whose dad, according to another part of the email cache that Deadspin’s sister site Splinter has uncovered, once sent his entire family a list of bullet points about how great rich people are, so it only makes sense that he’d respond to being told “no” on his subsidy demands by threatening to take his ball and go home. He didn’t do it — the Cubs are the third most valuable team in baseball precisely because they play in Chicago, so presumably either his siblings talked him down or he came to his senses — but as a first reaction, that’s so very Ricketts.

Share this post:

Friday roundup: Crew claps back at Modell Law suit, Cincy mayor thinks his citizens are dumb, Wrigley Field is a construction zone again

access_time personNeil deMause

This week brought thundersnow that led to a fireball in a subway tunnel, but the stadium and arena news was reasonably exciting too:

  • Columbus Crew owner Anthony Precourt says the lawsuit to force him to offer the team for sale to local owners before moving it to Austin is groundless, since he made “significant investments” in the team “both on and off the field” and yet the team isn’t making money hand over fist like he’d like it to. I would have gone with “fine, you can buy the team if you want, my asking price is one quattuordecillion dollars,” but that’s why Precourt pays himself the big bucks.
  • Oakland Raiders management says it has identified room for 27,000 parking spaces within 1.5 miles of its Las Vegas stadium, and 100,000 spaces within three miles. “Now, obviously, people don’t want to walk three miles, so you have to have a pretty strong infrastructure program and transportation plan in place,” said Raiders president Marc Badain. “We’re working on all of that.” Cool, get back to us!
  • Residents of the West End opposed to building an F.C. Cincinnati soccer stadium on the site of a revered high school football stadium there are all about “maintaining disinvestment, maintaining the status quo and not closing racial and economic gaps but keeping them divided,” Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley said this week. “I think that’s wrong.” But enough with the pandering to your constituents, Mayor Cranley what do you really think about them?
  • Because no arena project can truly be cost-free for the public, the new Muni Metro stop being built at the Golden State Warriors‘ new San Francisco arena has now risen in cost to $51 million, and the city of San Francisco hasn’t figured out how to pay for $17 million of that yet. Not that a new mass transit stop isn’t a public benefit for people other than Warriors fans, but just saying.
  • This is what Wrigley Field looked like as of a couple of weeks ago. There’s still time before opening day, so hopefully this renovation will go better than the Chicago Cubs‘ last big one.
  • Does an “asteroid the size of a sports stadium” zooming past Earth count as stadium news? It does to my custom RSS feed for “stadium” news, so enjoy!
Share this post:

Cubs giving high-priced Wrigley fans own private bar, bathrooms

access_time personNeil deMause

Speaking of stuff sports teams owners build because they think it’ll help them make more money, the Chicago Cubs ownership has revealed the next renovations to Wrigley Field coming down the pike:

As part of the 1060 Project, an overhaul to the stadium and the area surrounding the venerable ballpark, the Cubs revealed plans for the first of four “premier experiences” Tuesday and launched a priority list for those interested in plopping down a $500 deposit to secure their spot for the right to some exclusive amenities.

The American Airlines 1914 Club is scheduled to open for the 2018 season underneath the club box seating bowl between the home and visiting dugouts.

After the last out of the ’16 season, crews will begin tearing apart the lower bowl behind home plate to build the shell for the club, which will not provide a view of the field but will give fans with tickets in the area a place to go before and during games for upgraded food and beverage options, shelter from the elements and private restrooms. The re-done seating area will be ready for the ’17 season and construction will continue underneath.

Cubs owner Tom Ricketts is paying for this out of his own pocket, so at least there are no worries about public subsidies going to create what will effectively be an upscale private bar in a baseball stadium. And as far as the Wrigley Field experience goes, the effect should be minimal: The dugouts will be moved a little bit farther down the lines, but probably hardly anyone will notice otherwise.

Mostly, it’s a reminder of what “state-of-the-art” is all about in stadium construction: ways to sell well-off people stuff that can justify sky-high ticket prices. Cubs VP for sales and marketing Colin Faulkner told the Chicago Tribune, “They’re paying up to $350 a ticket in that area and the value that we’re providing them right now is not in line with what they expect.” Apparently what makes people who can afford $350 a ticket feel like the expense is worth it is some marble tabletops to sip their top-shelf liquor at, and not having to go the bathroom next to the hoi polloi. Strange world we live in.

Share this post:

Cubs’ new images of Wrigley’s “Brand Plaza” are just as depressing as that sounds

access_time personNeil deMause

The Chicago Cubs owners have released new renderings of what the outside of Wrigley Field will look like after the next round of construction projects, including one of the new “triangle building” and public plaza that will sit next to the ballpark’s third-base side:

81364_1448899663_2015_11_30_cubsbrandplaza-largeThe saddest part of this for me of this isn’t the blandly generic architecture that does nothing to complement baseball’s second-oldest ballpark, or even the fact that Cubs fans appear to be milling about aimlessly on a grassy lawn while the Cubs players celebrate some kind of victory on a garish video board looming overhead. Rather, it’s that the building’s name is still given as “Brand Plaza,” in a your-ad-here moment that looked just as awful when it was included on a sketch of a planned pedestrian bridge:

20131121BrandI guess it’s more honest than pretending signs will say “Wrigley Field” when they actually say “Budweiser.” Still, it’s all a reminder of how whereas the Boston Red Sox took pains to integrate more ad signage and commercial activity into Fenway Park in the least obtrusive way possible, the ongoing Wrigley renovations are first and foremost a way to rebrand the Cubs’ stadium as a retro centerpiece to a prefab “entertainment district.” It’s the attention to detail or lack thereof that can make all the difference in the actual fan experience; I still wonder what Janet Marie Smith could have done with the job, but I guess that’s water under the Brand Plaza arch now.

Share this post: