Braves ditching The Ted for suburbs

The owners are greedy. The cities are DUMB.

 

Look at what the Phoenix area will have to shell out in the next decade. The region will likely be building three new arenas in the next five years (Suns, Coyotes, Arizona St.), plus a baseball stadium. Arizona State is essentially getting an almost brand-new football stadium (most of the stands are being replaced) when Sun Devil Stadium renovations are finished in fall 2017.

 

It's not so much stupid, but likely these team owners buying local politicians with campaign contributions and possibly off-the-record grift. It's also a problem at the minor league level as well. It's a gigantic race to the bottom with these miserable tax incentives and subsidies, leaving unsexy things like infrastructure and schools to rot for lack of funds.

I call it the Edifice Complex. The bigger, the shinier, the better. More luxury suites. More top-dollar seats. Regular fans, you're banished to the bleachers and outer darkness. That's a shame because pro sports was once affordable entertainment for the lower and middle classes.

Pro sports is the only business I know of where a business owner tells his city that he can't make enough money with his facility and needs Joe Q. Taxpayer, many of whom aren't sports fans, to cough up money for a newer, shinier facility because he can't "compete." The greed of these team owners and the naivete of these local officials, who think a new stadium will be an economic boom is just startling. Building a new stadium will result in some construction jobs, sure. But once it's built, the people who would've gone to games will still go to games. The casual fan will take in a game every now and then. And those who don't give a rat's patoot will ignore it. There's no new economic activity being stimulated. Study after study has shown this.

Forgive me, the rant is ended, let us all go in peace.

 

Can't wait to see the screaming and pissing that takes place when King Arthur from the Burgh of Pitts, demands a new stadium or significant renovations at Heinz Field - which turns 15 this season. The new buildings that have opened since in Phoenix, Dallas and New York have made a stadium that was never very pretty look even uglier.

And no politician wants to be known as the one who let the (insert team name here) leave town so they'll cough up the dough.

 

The funny thing about public financing of stadiums is how it alters political views of the public. Even the most die-hard Tea Party supporter on this site is OK with hundreds of millions of dollars in handouts.

 

Until the Atlanta thing came along, the worst recent development (literally) in MLB park construction was Cincinnati. Maybe somone who's been there in person (unlike me) and likes it can set me straight, but I really don't like what I see. The oldest club in professional baseball deserves a park with dignity, class and postcard views of the Ohio River. Great American Park has none of the above.

 

Except for the libs in California.

 

Exhibits A-Z = the "Southern Strategy" of the major pro sports since the late-'80s: Working with all-to-willing partners -- from Charlotte to Nashville to Miami and points in between -- to open spanking new stadiums.
Unintended consequences include cost overruns, fleeced taxpayers and thousands of unused seats for visiting fans to claim.

 

Libs in California are busy spending billions on trains that will run mostly empty.

 

Touche.

I, nor anyone I know, has any want for this debacle.

 

I'm sorry, we were talking about an ass-backwards idea in a GOP stronghold, funded by unwitting contituents of GOP "Tea Party ready" lawmakers. Were you saying something?

 

Replacing Chase Field and The Ballpark in Arlington (or whatever the hell it's called now) is lunacy. I don't have as much of a problem with replacing Turner Field because it wasn't really built for the Braves, it was built for the 1996 Olympics and then retrofitted for baseball afterward. Other former Olympic stadiums used in baseball that I'm aware of were Montreal and the LA Coliseum (used by the Dodgers before Dodger Stadium was ready.

Just my opinion, but there doesn't seem to be anything at all notable about the place.

As for replacing the Rangers' park, a retractable roof is the only reason to do it.