Just Plain Stupid

Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred is verging on breathless over the opening of the Braves’ new $1.1 billion complex.  MLB has now reached the point where you don’t talk about ballparks or stadiums, even, but complexes.  The mall goeth before the fall.

“There has never been something this massive around a baseball stadium,” says Manfred, “and it’s really an amazing accomplishment.”  Or not.  Somebody should point out to the commissioner that Wrigley Field, Tiger Stadium and just about all the classic ballparks were located smack dab in the middle of cities.  What’s Wrigleyville if not “massive,” in 2017 or 1947, for that matter?

No, what the commissioner is talking about is the furthering of baseball into a daylong “experience” ala Disney or Universal.  It’s nice, if you can afford it and don’t particularly care about the quality of the product on the field.  And the media, as ever, is playing along as the uncritical observer, as when USA Today says the 41,149 seating capacity “will make for a far more intimate ballpark experience” than the “old”—as in twenty years old—Turner Stadium, which seated 50,000.  In a pig’s eye it’ll be intimate compared to Wrigley Field or Fenway Park.

Those facilities have posts that carry the upper deck close to the field of play; SunTrust Park is more of the same old same old, cantilever construction carrying the upper decks up and away to the stars.  And what’s so great about a smaller capacity?  Sporting events are all about supply and demand for tickets.  If your team is good and tickets are scarce, both the primary and secondary markets will be sky-high expensive.

I guess Commissioner Manfred didn’t take economics in college.