I saw in the paper last
week that the Rays are looking—desperately, no doubt—for a new ballpark. Something about the funereal air and
weird-looking turf at Tropicana Field keeps the fans away.
Of course, I never tire
of pointing out this was the place the White Sox threatened to move to if they
didn’t get their publicly-funded ball mall.
Had the Sox gone South (as opposed to south, as in this current
rebuild), I suspect that by now they would be threatening to move back to
Chicago if some sucker in Florida didn’t build them a new home. I also saw that the Diamondbacks and Maricopa
County officials have entered into a preliminary agreement to release the team
from its Chase Field lease in 2022. My
heart goes out to any team that has to play in a 20-year old facility.
And I’m
ever so worried as to where public funding for replacement stadiums would come
from. Both Florida and Arizona want to
cut back on Medicaid, and they aren’t too wild about paying their teachers a
living wage (Arizona partially excepted in the wake of massive teacher protests
there). How will these two hotbeds of
Tea Party sentiment react to MLB owners coming hat in hand to ask for a handout? Maybe they could work a deal where able-bodied
Medicaid recipients work on the stadium construction projects to keep costs
down.
It only seems like the
chain gang reborn.
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