We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Baseball

by Will Wilkinson on December 16, 2004

MLB’s extortion efforts seem to be falling apart here in the district! Jim Henley is your go-to man for reliable libertarian baseball analysis. Here. Here. Here.

For Carol Schwartz fans, here this tidbit from the NYT:

“I can just picture the baseball owners high-fiving each other until they collapsed from exhaustion” after reaching their deal with Mr. Williams, said Councilwoman Carol Schwartz.

Well, you showed ‘em Carol. Good work.

I admit it: I will be pretty disappointed if baseball stays away. But if it’s a choice between successful extortion or baseball staying away, that’s easy.

[UPDATE: A very reasonable column from Jim Caple at ESPN. I'm truly disgusted by the way sports journos and radio guys insist on doing their macho routine 24/7 and then go into a spurned welfare queen hissy when the subsidies for their adolescent hobbies don't come through. It's a really, really sad example of concentrated benefits/diffuse cost logic. So good for you Jim Caple!]

Robert Schwartz

I live in Columbus OH. A few years ago the Powers That Be asked for a sales tax increase to fund a hockey arena so we could host our first major league franchise. We voted it down. They built the arena anyway.

Will Allen

How much debt do the Giants carry due to building their own stadium?

Jay

It's pretty ironic that *San Francisco's* team is actually less competitive each year because its stadium was privately financed. I mean, out of all cities, San Francisco?! I think corporate welfare for sports teams is ridiculous, but I just find that interesting considering it's such a socialist city...

Will Allen

Here's my favorite sportswriter story. As Mickey Mantle lay dying, in need of a liver transplant, he attracted national attention, and then major national attention when a donor was found, and the transplant took place. The medical team held a fairly large press conference afterwards, large enough to require that they sat up on a dais to field questions from the assembled media, some from the straight news world, some from the sports news world. About midway through, after most of the expected questions were asked, a baseball writer was given the mike, looked up at the lead surgeon, and inquired, "How is the donor doing?" The look on the surgeon's face was priceless.

Jim Henley

Since Loverro started with the physical insults ("pencil-neck geeks"), I feel I should mention that he has a high queaky voice that is most unbecoming in a grown man.

asg

Hearing Loverro, a SPORTSWRITER for chrissakes, accuse anyone else of having little clue about economic benefits "or anything else" is pretty much the height of unintended irony. Sportswriters are the most insular, useless people on the planet.

Chuck

[UP

Do you know who's the worst with this shit? Fucking Michael Wilbon, that's who! Anyone who disagrees with him is instantly dismissed:

Stadiums for the Browns and Indians, plus the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, revitalized Cleveland's center city financially, culturally and psychologically. All those restaurants and bars and nightspots don't employ people permanently? Please.

Or how about this quote from one Thom Loverro?

The pencil-neck geeks who write economic reports and participate in panel discussions, such as the one held Monday by the CATO Institute, have no clue about that identity or the economic benefits — or much else for that matter.

~

For a dude who understands both sports and economics, y'all motherfuckers need to check out my man Skip Sauer, who blogs about sports and economics from South Carolina's upstate at www.thesportseconomist.com .

Will Wilkinson

Yes. You are missing something. The Mayor's office "agreed" to a deal. But the Mayor can't just unilaterally make deals. The Council contols the budget. If baseball had no deal with the Council, then it didn't really have a deal. "The city" didn't "consent" to anything until the representatives of the citizens on the City Council voted.

You've got to be freaking kidding about the bad-faith negotiations thing. First, the Mayor is not empowered to just reach into our pockets, which is what his negotiated deal does. Second, as above, there is no deal until the council says so. Third, if an elected representative "agrees" to do something that is in principle immoral ("I can assure you that the City of Washington will exterminate everyone whose last name begins with 'G' in exchange for a baseball team") one is no obligation to go ahead with the agreement simply because someone (who doesn't have the authority to do so) has already negotiated a deal.

There is no bait and switch. Williams was trying to force this down the city's throat, in part by going to the press and touting his triumphant agreement with baseball, as if it was already a lock, in order to engender a sense of inevitability and acquiescence. The council simply did its job.

There is no possible way to be a libertarian and in favor of even the REVISED deal. See Henley, J., 2004.

Joe Grossberg

OK, maybe I'm missing something here ... but didn't DC agree to that bad deal, and then just renege on it?

Are you seriously approving of this kind of bait-and-switch?

I mean, you can call the original deal "extortion", but the city did consent to it. Bad-faith negotiations are even more abhorrent to the libertarian in me.