Category: Los Angeles Dodgers

Friday roundup: Royals float stadium atop public park, A’s financial plan may not be ready until December

access_time personNeil deMause

And so we come to the end of another programming week, one that at least managed to avoid having anyone propose building a new privately used stadium in a public park — oh, wait!

  • Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas has revealed that Royals owner John Sherman is considering other downtown stadium sites after there was so much opposition to his plan to build one atop the Crossroads neighborhood, and naturally one site is on top of a public park, that will go over so much better. Also, Washington Square Park and the adjacent site that would be used for the stadium only total 11.6 acres, which isn’t really enough for a modern MLB stadium and certainly not for one plus a whole entertainment district like Sherman wants. (The Crossroads site would have been 17.3 acres.) Can’t wait to see how the eventual renderings avoid explaining this!
  • Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s financing plan for a Las Vegas stadium is “rounding third and heading home,” according to Nevada authority chair and unregistered A’s lobbyist Steve Hill, which is another way of saying it may not be ready until early December. Yesterday’s stadium authority meeting did include a bunch of lease details, like Fisher committing to keep the team in Vegas for 30 years but having the option to extend it to 99 years if he wants, and Fisher having the option to buy the stadium for its appraised value at the end of each lease term, and if there’s anything Nevada taxpayers get out of the lease other than $600 million in debt and tax expenditures, the news coverage didn’t mention it.
  • Cleveland.com has noticed that $461 million in city spending on Browns stadium renovations over 30 years isn’t the same as $461 million now, good work, gang. (Their estimate of the present value of Mayor Justin Bibb’s offer is about $234 million, mine was $240 million, reasonable people can disagree.) They also note that it’s not clear in Bibb’s plan who would sell the stadium bonds — Bibb’s office sent a terse text: “City will not bond. Some other public entity” — or how they would be paid off if alcohol or cigarette taxes fell short — Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam didn’t text “Not us. Taxpayers somehow,” but they really didn’t have to.
  • Speaking of the Browns, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has entered the chat.
  • The California state legislature is auditing the Los Angeles Angels lease extension that was approved in 2019 by Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu while he was in the midst of negotiating a new stadium deal in exchange for (allegedly) demanding $1 million in campaign contributions. There was previously some talk on the Anaheim city council about voiding the lease on the grounds that the whole deal was covered in slime; we’ll see where this audit leads, if anywhere.
  • WUSA-TV reported this week that the Washington Wizards and Capitals arena renovation deal with D.C. still hasn’t been finalized despite passing a July deadline, and I’m still waiting for any other news outlets to think this is worthwhile news and not just haggling over the fine print, but keep one eye on it nonetheless.
  • The Dodger Stadium gondola project lives! No matter how dumb an idea it is!
  • This has nothing to do with stadiums, but if you think I’m going to pass up an article that begins “Billionaire Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio has allegedly been stealing sand from an exclusive Southern California beach,” you don’t know this site at all.
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Friday roundup: Opposition builds (somewhat) to sports subsidy plans in Virginia, Kansas City, elsewhere

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been a rough week, what with new stadium demands dropping every couple of hours, half of them from Jerry Reinsdorf. But there have also been signs of new organized opposition from all corners, some of them involving heavy hitters:

  • The Northern Virginia AFL-CIO came out against the proposed Washington Capitals and Wizards arena in Alexandria after being unable to reach an agreement with the teams and the state on whether a hotel that would be part of the $2 billion project would employ union workers. “If they’re against it, then the arena deal is probably going to have a very difficult time,” remarked Virginia House Speaker Don L. Scott Jr. afterwards, as the arena bill heads for reconciliation talks between the house, which passed it, and the senate, which didn’t even give it a hearing. “If it dies, it dies.”
  • Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas, meanwhile, upped the ante on her opposition to Alexandria arena plans, challenging D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Twitter to “compete by both offering $0 in taxpayer dollars to these teams and let them decide where they want to pay to build their own arena.” (Bowser’s account did not respond, unless this counts.) Former Alexandria mayor Allison Silberberg, who is part of the Coalition to Stop the Potomac Yard Arena campaign, was so pleased that she brought Lucas a cake.
  • After the Kansas City renters’ group KC Tenants came out against the upcoming April 2 referendum to renew Jackson County’s 0.375% sales tax surcharge and give the money to Royals owner John Sherman as part of a potential $1 billion in public money for a new downtown stadium, calling it “$167 per household, per year, all to pay for a playground for the wealthy and for tourists,” a group of city residents have formed the Committee Against New Royals Stadium Taxes to likewise oppose the tax hike. The group has “little to no money in its bank account,” according to the Kansas City Star’s account of campaign manager Tim Smith’s characterization, but it does have a parked domain name and its organizers are members of the extremely active Save Kauffman (Royals) Stadium at Truman Sports Complex Facebook group, which is a recommended follow if you want to see how extremely angry many Kansas City residents, and Royals fans, are about this whole state of affairs.
  • Arthur Acolin, a real estate economics professor at the University of Washington, released a three-page report on the proposed downtown Philadelphia 76ers arena that found that disruptions to existing businesses during construction and operation could cost the city and state between $260 million and $1 billion in lost tax revenues. The math is a little rough — it looks like Acolin just added up all the economic activity in the area of the proposed arena and calculated what would happen if it fell by sample round numbers — but as he writes, “the 76ers have provided nowhere near this level of details nor any of the analysis behind their figures.” It was enough to get the 76ers to respond by calling the report “fatally flawed” and “another attempt by those who oppose the project to obfuscate the truth by pumping out misinformation and half-baked theories instead of engaging in productive dialogue,” in a CBS News article that repeatedly refers to Acolin as “Albert Alcoin,” which should get all their copy editors immediately fired, if they had copy editors, which they probably don’t.
  • Arizona Republic sportswriter Greg Moore wrote a column about Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick’s threat to leave town if he doesn’t get public stadium money that includes the subhead “I don’t like bullies,” and really the rest of the column is just icing on that four-word cake.
  • I brought my mighty rhetorical weight to the airwaves, or at least the internetwaves, by going on the Sox Machine podcast to talk about why giving Reinsdorf $1.7 billion in tax money for a new Chicago White Sox stadium development (since upped to $2 billion) would be crazytown.

So that’s it, then, the tide is finally turning, and maybe soon we can all stop pushing this damn rock back up this damn hill day after day? Hahaha of course not, the forces of vacuuming up money and giving it to rich people so they can have more money (because that’s what makes them rich people) continue unabated:

  • The Utah legislature advanced a bill to hike sales taxes in Salt Lake City by 0.5% to generate $1 billion for an arena for a nonexistent NHL team, with the backing of Mayor Erin Mendenhall. This would be on top of $600 million or more in proposed hotel tax hikes to help pay for a stadium for a nonexistent MLB team. Hockey bill sponsor state Sen. Dan McCay denied that this was giving in to threats by the Jazz ownership that they could move out of the city limits without a new subsidized arena, then added, “you’d hate to see downtown lose the sporting opportunities they have now,” so, yeah.
  • Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson delivered up a fresh bowl of word salad about whether he’ll endorse city money being used for a new White Sox stadium: “As far as public dollars, we haven’t gotten into any of those specifics just yet. But I will say that we’re gonna explore all options. … Everything is on the table here. But again, I want to make sure that there’s a real commitment to public use and public benefit. … There’s no guarantee that they’ll get it from the city. What I’ve said repeatedly is that we need to make sure that our investments have real public benefit and that there has to be a commitment to public use. Those conversations are being had, and there are some promising developments that eventually we’ll be able to talk about out loud.” He has it right here on this list…
  • The new $27 million Rhode Island F.C. soccer stadium in Pawtucket will now cost state taxpayers $132 million over 30 years, because the Pawtucket Redevelopment Agency got a terrible bond rate. State commerce secretary Liz Tanner defended the pricey borrowing by pointing out that even though the state legislature could have just appropriated the money and saved taxpayers a ton of interest payments, “there would’ve been a level of uncertainty without knowing whether the legislature was going to pass those dollars or not,” and we can’t have that, now can we?
  • The Dodger Stadium gondola project — surely you remember the Dodger Stadium gondola project — lurched forward again on Thursday when the Metro Board of Directors signed off on its environmental impact report. The gondola still needs approval from the city of Los Angeles and parks and transit officials, plus to figure out who exactly will pay for its potential $500 million price tag, but if nothing else it lives to gondola another day.
  • Oakland A’s owner John Fisher is reportedly focused on staying in Oakland until a new Las Vegas stadium is open in 2028, and also Sacramento is the frontrunner to be the temporary home of the A’s, this is way too blind-men-and-the-elephant for me, maybe let’s all calm down about the latest rumors you heard, guys.
  • And in non-sports news, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry defended signing a bill to remove the requirement that recipients of state development subsidies report how many jobs they’ll be creating, because “this program is about capital investment. It is not about job creating.” Just gonna sit here and let that roll around in my brain for a while, have a great weekend and see you back here Monday!

 

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Friday roundup: Chicago mayor endorses Sox plan (whatever it is), Jazz owner seeks NHL team (and new arena), Jaguars public price tag still $1B

access_time personNeil deMause

Was it a week and a half for you too? Sure was here! I’m a little afraid that the sports powers that be have decided to address popular anger over the great stadium swindle by dumping so many new subsidy deals on us at once that outrage fatigue kicks in, and I’m even more afraid that it’s working. Are your eyes starting to glaze over like mine at all the billion-dollar-plus figures? Are you ready to stop demanding that your elected officials stop catering to billionaires, and instead just watch some TV, as long as you can afford TV? Some Soma would sound pretty good about now, wouldn’t it?

I’m just joshing you, I know that the only people left reading this site have deep wells of outrage. In which case, the bullet points that follow will be like a long, cool drink of water to slake your thirst for laughing to keep from crying:

 

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Friday roundup: Royals and Chiefs subsidy compromise rumors, Rays name fight looming, plus more gondolamania!

access_time personNeil deMause

It must be Hanukkah, because there’s miraculously already more than a week’s worth of stadium news! (Don’t think about it too hard, just go with it.)

  • Both Kansas City Chiefs president Mark Donovan and Royals president of business operations Brooks Sherman met with Jackson County executive Frank White this week, presumably to discuss putting a referendum on the ballot in April for a sales-tax surcharge extension to fund new or renovated stadiums for the two teams. Fox4 reports that “a source close to the situation” says the team owners might be willing to give up park levy money and insurance coverage they get from the county currently — the insurance money, you may recall, is what had the county figuring a new Royals stadium alone could cost more than $1 billion in present value costs, so this could potentially trim the subsidy demand to more like $500-700 million, which is better without actually being good. More unconfirmed rumors as events warrant.
  • Tampa Bay Rays president Brian Auld has announced that the Rays have no intention of changing their name to St. Petersburg Rays after moving from St. Petersburg to next door in St. Petersburg. The St. Petersburg city council is set to vote next week on a requirement that the team do so in exchange for getting at least $600 million in city money for a new stadium; Auld had previously warned that “Serious people recognize that putting this entire project at risk over a 25-year-old name of our organization is probably not something worth doing,” which sounds like a threat to me, plus a personal attack by calling councilmembers unserious, it would definitely be disallowed if Auld had tried to post it here in comments.
  • Not only is the Los Angeles Dodgers stadium gondola dream not dead, but it has a new price tag: $385-500 million. Plus another $8-10 million a year to operate it. The environmental impact report that gave the new projections says the money could be covered by private bond financing (which isn’t actually a way of covering anything, just a way of borrowing), sponsorships (uh, sure), naming rights (uh, suuuuuure) and fares (though trips to and from Dodgers games, which are most of the point of the thing, are supposed to be free). The report acknowledged that there’s suspicion that the whole gondola scheme is just an excuse to develop the parking lots around the stadium — which former Dodger owner Frank McCourt, who is behind the gondola idea, still owns — but says there’s no proof of McCourt’s plans to proceed with “a larger, more grandiose project in the future,” so just try not to think about that, and focus on the glory that is gondola.
  • Add the Soldier Field parking lot to the list of potential stadium sites Chicago Bears ownership is considering. No indication of whether or how that would work any better than building on the current stadium site, but at this point the team is just kicking tires on any site it can to hope one comes with a huge pile of public cash, which hasn’t worked so far, but they only need to find one sucker to be successful, so can’t fault them for trying. (Except for 100% faulting them for extracting public money for private profit, that’s the whole point of this site, haven’t you been paying attention?)
  • So it turns out it’s the state of Maryland that wants to separate the Baltimore Orioles‘ new lease from its new development agreement, that makes more sense than the other way around. It sounds like the whole issue is more about lack of time to get the documents finalized before next season starts than the state actually looking for some kind of leverage to negotiate a better deal; the O’s may go to a month-to-month lease in the meantime, the better to keep everyone on tenterhooks until they get all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted on their
  • Plans for a new NYC F.C. stadium in Queens cleared a community board vote after the city agreed to build a new police precinct there, which was apparently the board’s main demand. Still unclear: Who will pay for hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure costs and whether the team will get hundreds of millions of dollars in property tax breaks, maybe if we’re lucky we’ll find out before the city council grants final approval in the spring, but don’t count on it.
  • Jon Styf at The Center Square wrote a report on economic impact consulting reports for sports venues and interviewed both J.C. Bradbury (who called them “fantasy reports”) and me (who called them an attempt to “put across B.S. as fact”). He left out my explanation of the clear plastic binder effect, but you can’t have everything.
  • A high school football team that had to play all its games on the road because first its home field was destroyed to make way for a new New York Yankees stadium and then the replacement field that opened years later fell apart and was left unplayable has won the state championship! I can’t actually tell if this story is supposed to be heartwarming or scandalous, let’s go with both.
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Friday roundup: Fresh A’s vaportecture incoming, OKC readies for $850m arena vote, Revolution stadium hits snag

access_time personNeil deMause

I don’t even know where to start with this week, but suffice to say that this keeps rolling on, with no end in sight. At least, for the second consecutive day, Henry Kissinger remains dead.

And, like death and union-busting, the great stadium swindle shows no signs of going away anytime soon:

  • New Las Vegas stadium renderings for the Oakland A’s are due to be released on Monday, and A’s owner John Fisher is even scheduled to show up. (Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz notes that “Fisher is known for not interacting with fans and making public appearances to discuss his baseball team,” which is a polite way of saying that he don’t like people.) Ha ha, the Las Vegas Sun illustrated its article on this with the June stadium renderings that Fisher’s honchos immediately declared to not actually be what the stadium will look like — LOLSun, go read Snel’s coverage instead, if only for his awesome photo filenames. Meanwhile, Nevada Independent sports business reporter Howard Stutz warned that Fisher still has a lot of hoops to jump through before he can move the team — the referendum, the lawsuit, the finding another billion dollars — and “we’re not going to see much other than public meetings and different announcements over the next year,” so enjoy the dogs and ponies for now.
  • Elsewhere in A’s news, Fisher hasn’t officially notified Oakland that he plans to leave town, in order to postpone a $45 million payment to Alameda County for purchasing half of the Oakland Coliseum property. San Jose Mercury News columnist Daniel Borenstein notes that “county supervisors never bothered to require that the team stay in Oakland as a condition for acquiring the rights to the Coliseum property,” whoops, that would have been an idea, somebody make a note of that for next time.
  • The Oklahoma County Democratic Party held a panel discussion in anticipation of next week’s voter referendum on spending $850 million on a new Thunder stadium while team owners spend $50 million. Party affirmative action officer Nabilah Rawdah said the funding mechanism would be “a regressive sales tax,” which, yup, all sales taxes are regressive, and would cost city residents “around $1,200 per person,” which, yup, math. Central Oklahoma Federation of Labor president Tim O’Connor countered, “JOBS!!1!,” because he got an agreement that the project will use union labor. (Yes, it is possible to hate union-busting and to accept that actually existing unions are maybe not their most perfect selves right now.)
  • Plans for a New England Revolution stadium in Everett, just north of Boston, hit a speed bump in the Massachusetts state legislature when the plan was removed from a state budget bill in conference committee. The Boston Globe notes that the stadium would cost $600 million and “no public money is being sought — for now,” which is maybe not the most reassuring; the memorandum of understanding is only seven pages long and doesn’t provide any details on the project finances, more like a memorandum of misunderstanding, amirite?
  • They’re still talking about that damn Dodger Stadium gondola five years later — LOLgondola, don’t make me send Alissa Walker in there.
  • Baltimore Orioles owner John Angelos may now sign a new lease and work out the details of his insanely lucrative 99-year development rights agreement later, after insisting he wouldn’t sign one without the other, wut? Guess he’s convinced now that the state is happy to give him everything he wants and he doesn’t want figuring out what he wants to get in the way of having a stadium to play in next year, guess the state had leverage after all, somebody make a note of that for next time.
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Friday roundup: OKC mayor wants new Thunder arena because 22-year-old one is “getting older,” and other things to sigh deeply over

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we even get to the bullet points, we need to start with this: Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt announced yesterday in his State of the City speech that he wants to build a new arena for the Thunder to replace their current one, which just turned 22 years old and is receiving a $100 million upgrade begun in 2011. The present building is “simply not what it used to be,” according to Holt, and  “will keep getting older,” which, yep, that’s how time works. “Seats get old, scoreboards get old, elevators break,” said Holt. Everything breaks, dunnit?

To help pay for a new arena, Holt wants to extend the 1% sales tax surcharge that paid for the old one and which is currently set to expire in 2028. Holt described this as “no tax increase will be necessary,” which is true if you mean that Oklahoma City residents won’t have to pay any more in taxes than they do now, but not true if you mean whether they’d have to pay more than they would if the Thunder were forced to continue to play in their aging more-than-two-decade-old arena instead of an aging new one.

The tax extension would at least require a public vote, as the original one did. Still, J.C. Bradbury has a point:

Nothing wrong with getting a new arena every year, so long as you’re not the one paying for it. And now, on to the week in bullet points:

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McCourt’s Dodgers gondola plan still undead, “working on” ways to pay $125m+ cost

access_time personNeil deMause

Despite having extremely sad renderings and being derided as a “combination transit-slash-sightseeing ride” that can’t actually get many people anywhere at all promptly, the Dodger Stadium gondola plan proposed by ex-Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt continues to shamble forward. There’s a new environmental impact report, a new public comment period, and a new price tag:

When the project was first announced, total costs were estimated to be $125 million. However, [McCourt’s company] LA ART said those have risen and it is working on a financing plan that will be submitted to Metro in the coming months.

Well, that’s certainly ominous. The Los Angeles Dodgers and Aerial Rapid Transit Technologies LLC (aka LA ART) had previously said it would pay the entire $125 million cost — this somehow despite rides to games being free with a Dodgers ticket, and nobody really having any reason to take a non-free gondola ride when there isn’t a game on — but if they’re submitting a financing plan to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (aka Metro), one can’t help but worry there will be some kind of public subsidy involved now, especially as McCourt’s initial financing plan was “put in some seed money and hope some other investors will fund the rest for some reason.” (The only news outlet reporting the price hike is the fan blog Dodger Blue, so more details are not at all forthcoming.)

All in all, it still seems unlikely that the Dodger gondola will happen, given the financing unknowns and growing opposition in the Chinatown neighborhood it would pass through. But these things do have a way of taking on a momentum of their own: LA ART said it wants to get the gondola built in time for the 2028 Summer Olympics — despite, as Dodger Blue notes, no Olympic events being planned for Dodger Stadium — and nothing bulldozes opposition and fast-tracks financing plans like “We gotta get this done for the Olympics.”

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Friday roundup: Buffalo wants to change Earth’s orbit for Bills, plus when is a USL stadium vote not a vote?

access_time personNeil deMause

Hey, look, it’s Friday again! I realize that I sometimes tell me about my week, but I seldom ask about yours. How’ve you been? Anything interesting going on? What’s that, you’ve already abandoned this paragraph and have skipped ahead to the bullet points where all the real news is? A reasonable response, I completely understand, let me now do the same—

  • Lots going on in the Buffalo Bills stadium campaign, for certain values of “going on”: On Tuesday, six members of the nine-member Buffalo Common Council passed a resolution calling for “strong consideration” to be given to locating a stadium in Buffalo instead of at the current site in suburban Orchard Park, complete with renderings showing the sun setting in the northwest; residents of the Old First Ward, one site being maybe considered for a Buffalo stadium, told WGRZ that they wouldn’t welcome an NFL stadium as a neighbor; and the Erie County Legislature voted to require at least three public hearings before any stadium deal is approved. Since the real question remains “Who the hell is going to pay for this thing, and how much?”, the rest is all pretty much just distraction right now, but at least we’re starting to see who’s lining up to fight about what once there’s something to fight about.
  • A supporter of New Mexico United‘s $68 million USL stadium plan has filed an ethics complaint against the opponent group Stop the Stadium, saying the group needs to register as a political action committee because it’s spent more than $250 on flyers opposing the plan. The real news, meanwhile, comes way down in the last paragraph of the Albuquerque Journal article, which reveals that a pro-stadium PAC funded entirely by New Mexico United owner Peter Trevisani has already banked $840,000 toward mail and TV ads — if the 100-to-1 rule holds, that probably bodes well for the stadium vote’s success, which would be a great return on investment for Trevisani, spending $840,000 to get $46 million in taxpayer cash.
  • Also about that New Mexico United stadium vote: The Journal reports that because the stadium bonds would be paid off with sales and use tax revenues and not property tax revenues, it’s actually just an advisory vote; the paper also notes that the wording of the ballot measure is confusing, since at one point it refers to “gross receipts tax revenue bonds” (sales tax money) and at another to “general obligation bonds” (property tax money), but since the vote isn’t binding anyway, what’s a little contradictory wording among friends?
  • Richmond wants to build a new stadium for the Flying Squirrels and is seeking developers to create a stadium-anchored “entertainment destination” district, which will hopefully “minimize public investment and risk and maximize private investment,” yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it. The Flying Squirrels are threatening to leave town in 2025 without a new stadium, not because they want to, mind you, but because MLB is forcing teams to upgrade their stadiums as part of its takeover of the minor leagues, I warned you this would happen, didn’t I?
  • Along the same lines, the Eugene Emeralds say they need a new stadium by 2024 or else MLB will vaporize them. No price tag or location yet, take hostages first, figure out your demands later.
  • The owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago White Sox are seeking to develop 53 acres of city-owned land near the teams’ spring-training site in Glendale, and if you’re wondering why the teams get to develop city-owned land, it’s all part of the deal where Glendale spent $150 million on a new stadium complex to lure the teams back in 2007. It’s kind of starting to make sense that Glendale city officials’ new policy toward sports teams is not to let the door hit them on the way out.
  • Not Tempe, though, which is planning a $50 million renovation ($40.9 million of it paid for by the city) to the Los Angeles Angels‘ spring-training stadium, to “improve the fan experience by adding shade” and “modernize the food court and the restrooms,” which haven’t been modernized since way back in 2005. Good ol’ Tempe, bet the Coyotes will be very happy there.
  • That Tampa Bay Times editorial stumping for a new Rays stadium surely has nothing to do with one of the developers leading the push for a stadium has loaned the paper $15 million, right? Surely a coincidence, not anything that would require a printed disclosure!
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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:

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More on Justin Turner’s maskless World Series celebration, which has nothing directly to do with stadiums but bear with me

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s a bad day to be Justin Turner. The Los Angeles Dodgers third baseman, who received a positive coronavirus test result during Tuesday’s Game 6 of the World Series, was pulled from the game, then returned to the field to take part in postgame celebrations after the Dodgers won the championship, has been savaged across the sports world, getting called “selfish” by Yahoo! Sports, “galling” by USA Today, and I’m not even going to check Twitter. Even Dodgers president Andrew Friedman, who semi-defended Turner’s presence on the field by saying that he technically became a free agent as soon as the game ended and “I don’t think there was anyone that was going to stop him,” acknowledged that it was “not good optics” to have him sitting for a photo, maskless, next to Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, a cancer survivor.

And then on the other hand there was Defector’s Albert Burneko, who beneath the superficially contrarian headline “It’s Not Justing Turner’s Fault” made the point that focusing the blame on individual behavior during an institutional crisis is completely the wrong way to go about things:

The bleak lesson of 2020—really, the bleak lesson of so much of the history of this society, but one the year 2020 seems hell-bent on teaching—is about the futility of individual responses amid institutional failure. This is how the real bad actors, the ones with the power to actually make significant changes, want things: with responsibility for containing the pandemic, or arresting climate change, or addressing systemic inequality and social injustice, litigated in society as matters of scattered individual choice. If baseball failed to contain the pandemic, well then it was because no individual person made the individual choice to thwart Justin Turner’s deeply human desire to celebrate the happiest moment of his life with the teammates who’d shared the journey with him, and not because Major League Baseball had a duty to provide and adhere to clearer and firmer protocols from the beginning. If a campaign rally doubles as a superspreader event, well, heck, we passed out masks, but it’s not like the literal president of the United States can just insist people wear them at an affair he’s hosting. If your preferred party loses an election, it’s because individuals selfishly withheld their vote, not because the party had, and fell short of, any responsibility to reach those people and earn their support. If the natural world swelters to death, well then it’s because not enough people bought electric cars or metal straws, not because neoliberal governments deferred to the corporate world for meaningful changes it wouldn’t make until forced by market imperatives, if then, if ever.

As several people raised down in the Defector comments, Justin Turner’s maskless run onto the field was a lot like college students’ maskless partying in the wake of reopening campuses — yes, it’s incredibly dumb, but when under the influence of alcohol/hormones/having just won the World Series, you kind of have to expect some people to do incredibly dumb things. Which is why we have rules against doing dumb things, and league officials and college administrators and U.S. presidents who are supposed to enforce those rules. It’s not Andrew Friedman’s job, in other words, to be as confused as Nigel.

And even as MLB has been frantically issuing statements that, hey, they told Turner to stay off the field and he wouldn’t listen, there are frankly more concerning things about the league’s actions here than how many security guards they assigned to the Covid isolation room. (Presumably if a fan had tried to run onto the field they would have done more than just ask them nicely to stop, right? But I digress.) Even if Turner had sat placidly and watched the celebration on TV, he’d been in close proximity to the rest of his team, often indoors in the clubhouse, for weeks prior to this, which according to both CDC and MLB rules meant everyone else on the team should be immediately quarantined. USA Today initially reported that “the team will have multiple rounds of testing before leaving Texas.” Instead, this happened:

https://twitter.com/someguynamedg/status/1321588804516376576

Yes, indeed, Some Guy Named G, you’re not likely to start testing positive until at least four days after you yourself are infected, but you can be infectious that whole time. So Mookie Betts testing negative yesterday is no guarantee that Mookie Betts isn’t silently transmitting coronavirus to everyone else on that team plane, or wherever else he goes back in Los Angeles once he gets off it. Justin Turner risking infecting his teammates for the sake of a photo op with the championship trophy was reckless and impulsive; the Dodgers and MLB risking infecting even more teammates by sticking a whole bunch of potentially infectious people on a plane together was an institutional failure of responsibility.

Getting back to Burneko’s point: There’s a common defense by people in power who want to deny responsibility for their actions that they’re just giving the people what they want, whether that thing that they want is carbon-spewing cars or cigarettes or guns or the freedom to decide whether to wear masks or, yes, billion-dollar sports stadiums to buy tickets to. (This is an especially common gambit by the people who stand to make money from the questionable items being sold.) But the whole point of being in power is that you have power, and by your actions, you set the stage for what behavior by other people is not just acceptable, but possible. So while it might be fun to blame Justin Turner for being a lunkhead, or people in Maine for holding that deadly wedding, a public health crisis like this one only highlights how vital it is to have some mechanism for authority — whether it’s an elected government, an unelected league management, or an anarcho-syndicalist executive officer of the week — who can and will establish and enforce rules about not being a lunkhead. All else, as we’ve so recently been reminded, ends in bears.

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