Field of Talking Heads

Michael Cox

Note to editorialists, think-tank economists and "citizen activists": we know building ballparks with even a scrap of public funds is a "boondoggle." It's taking schoolbooks out of the hands of our children. It's forcing entire police forces to shrug their shoulders as crime runs roughshod over our upstanding citizenry. It's the only thing standing in the way of airlifting wheat to third-world countries.

You win. We give up. You were right all along.

Are they gone yet?

Good. Now that we're left with people who haven't actually said all of the above, we might be able to talk rationally about the recent problems with projects in San Diego and Seattle, temporarily derailing the former and simply causing a huge stink in the latter.

The Padres' new park, part of a planned 26-block development including commercial and residential complexes, hit a snag after a judge ruled the city improperly began acquiring land before completing an environmental impact report. The city had what sounds to me like reasonable legal advice -- that the city could use a previously created "master EIR" for the downtown area -- but there was one item the judge focused on. The snag? It was the ballpark. A special EIR will be required, she said.

As usual, the ruling was part of a bigger challenge by opponents to the project. The San Diego situation is a little different, however. The people who wanted to kill the project altogether suffered from a total lack of support or funding, so the group left fighting the ballpark right now apparently just don't want it in their neighborhood.

This hasn't stopped the generic sports stadia talking heads from chipping in their tuppence, however.

Economist Raymond J. Keating was happy to tell the local press, "When you start playing politics and get the government involved, sorry, this is the penance involved." He went on to reinforce the fact that this "penance" generally does little but cost time and money. "In the end, taxpayers are still on the hook for a good portion of it," the wise man said to all who would listen.

And despite the vacuity of his sound bites, Keating wasn't just talking to hear the sound of his own voice. He's selling a tome called "Sports Pork: the Costly Relationship between Major League Sports and Government."

Ooo, so there's a *whole book* like that?

On the other hand, maybe it's a fresh, different take on the subject, differing from such similarly-titled tomes as "Major League Lo$er$" or "Field of Schemes." Maybe he actually does the research to count the revenue that players and owners spend in the team's regional area, or does studies to quantify the attraction of a city's quality of life, before he tells the world that ballparks are A Bad Deal.

Naaaah.

Meanwhile, at the other end of I-5, something much more sinister is afoot: after months of almost-apocryphal-sounding anecdotes regarding the Mariners ownership ripping up and rearranging portions of their new ballpark to better make it Baseball Palace 2000, said guys have decided they aren't paying for it.

Pointing to a couple of statements made by King County in a lawsuit to protect the right to build the thing in the first place, and the fact that revenues diverted to Safeco Field are far ahead of projections, the M's say the County is obligated to use all their revenues to pay construction costs before the team can be held responsible.

In essence, although the Mariners are contractually bound to pay all overruns, they are arguing that the abundance of funds means that the definition of "overruns" has changed. Never mind that this whole situation is a product of the raging Northwest economy and that extra costs would be easily absorbed, this is a very, very stupid move on the part of the M's junta. Everyone (and by everyone, I mean everyone, even former political allies) is mad.

The owners could not even show their faces at the dedication ceremonies for The Safe, sending president Chuck Armstrong in their stead and confusing the 30K fans who had come to the event armed with overripe fruit. Soon after, Sen. Slade Gorton, who perhaps more than any other politician is responsible for the Mariners remaining in Seattle, snubbed the team when it offered him the first pitch on July 15.

Would the team be able to convince a court of law that they're entitled to spend the extra revenues as they see (or already saw) fit? Unless they begin to produce actual evidence from their signed legal agreements (which to date they haven't), it's doubtful. That only compounds the stupidity of the move.

Because two wrongs generally always make a right where the media is concerned, the Seattle Times has gone on a one-paper crusade to attack, attack, attack. Employing every device, from news stories featuring "anonymous sources" and "it could happen" scenarios to almost daily editorials fraught with wild-ass guesses (not fabrications, oh no! Please, no lawyers!) regarding the facts of the situation, the paper has been dripping National Enquirer-type venom for months now.

And after the crosstown Seattle Post-Intelligencer began taking an "it's not a good thing, but we want to print just facts" stance, an unnamed Times writer reportedly privately circulated his version of a balanced P-I editorial, with the word "Mariners" replaced by the words "Nazis" and "Hitler."

Now who's despicable?

And finally, seeking to find an "authority" on the likelihood that the M's could win if the dispute went to court, the local media pulled out anti-ballpark economist Alan Sanderson, who offered this nugget: "Never bet against a team owner." Wow, are all of his analyses that well-researched? And as always, there were the requisite people telling us that all the team would have to do, if caught on the losing end of the fight, would be to declare bankruptcy.

Believing that bankruptcy is some kind of magic weapon to get a sports team out of all their agreements is tantamount to believing that a cop accidentally using a split infinitive while reading the Miranda rights could be considered grounds to make a caught-red-handed multiple murderer a free man. Of course, a bankruptcy judge could always be insane, but you may notice that none of the pundits hyping the bankruptcy angle is pointing at the Pittsburgh Penguins, who have tried it and are finding it not as lucrative as advertised.

Nevertheless, in Media World, if we say it, it must be so.

about the author

To avoid problems with civil unrest and computer malfunctions as the New Year begins, send money to Michael Cox. Of course, if you still experience issues after the millennium changeover, it will only be because you didn't send enough. More disclaimers are available at mc@strikethree.com.