Back in the day, Oriole Park at
Camden Yards was the standard of new, or should I say new/old, ballpark construction. When it opened in 1992, Camden Yards was
hailed as a throwback to Comiskey, Ebbets et al (even though the absence of
loadbearing posts made any such comparison meaningless) and an engine of
economic development for central Baltimore.
Even now, mlb.com calls Camden Yards “the ballpark that forever changed
baseball.” And I am the walrus.
Show me a new stadium that has
pulled the surrounding community out of poverty, and I’ll show you the first of
its kind. By the way, Wrigley Field and
Fenway Park don’t come close. Both those
venerable venues are privately owned and have been renovated with private
funds. You could argue that having to
put their own money on the line is what made the Ricketts family so aggressive
about redeveloping the area around Wrigley.
And Baltimore?
Well, I’m sure that when the
Orioles were drawing, it was good for nearby businesses but the entire city of
Baltimore? Not so much. The O’s have started 2019 by going 3-10 at
home, with six games drawing fewer than 10,000 fans. It shouldn’t too hard to get a table at a
Baltimore restaurant these days when the team’s in town.
According to
ballparksofbaseball.com, 96 percent of the $110 million cost for Camden Yards was
publicly funded; that’s close to $199 million in today’s dollars, and it
doesn’t include debt service. Imagine—which
I’m sure Baltimore residents and leaders oftentimes do—what that money could pay
for in terms of city services. But, hey,
the Orioles are in serious rebuild mode and should be back in contention in a
few years, maybe. Give or take Chris
Davis’s contract.
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