The Out in Left Weekly: May 12, 2024
Kansas City Royals, stadium subsidies, and more
MLB
The Kansas City Royals are trying!
It shouldn’t be a surprise that the Royals are off to one the best starts in franchise history. Homegrown players like pitcher Brady Singer and first baseman Vinnie “The Italian Nightmare” Pasquantino are finally producing. Cole Ragans is pitching like an ace. Superstar shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., already with 2.8 bWAR on the season, is justifying the contract that makes him a Royal until the end of time. And the team signed or traded for the following veterans in the offseason:
Seth Lugo, RHP
Michael Wacha, RHP
Hunter Renfroe, OF
Chris Stratton, RHP
Will Smith, LHP
Adam Frazier, 2B/OF
Garrett Hampson, INF/OF
Nick Anderson, RHP
Experienced, effective, and unremarkable, they’re the equivalent of middle managers who buy their khaki pants from JCPenney.
The surprising thing is that the team tried at all.
MLB’s revenue-sharing model incentivizes small-market teams like the Royals to spend as little as possible, and as with many teams their TV broadcasting deal had been in flux. Besides Witt Jr., the team has developed little talent of note recently and there were few reinforcements in the wings. In March, MLB ranked their farm system third-to-last. The Royals’ spending spree before the season looked at best like a vain attempt at finishing .500 and out of the playoffs. At worst, it looked like a cynical ploy to buy goodwill among Jackson County voters. (The tax measure to fund a new ballpark ultimately failed.)
Whatever their motivations, the Royals sporting a .600 winning percentage and holding one of the American League’s wild card spots should be applauded. Trying to win is too rare in American sports, and the Royals are doing it with a time-tested, if endangered strategy: surround a generational talent with cheap youngsters and expensive veterans. It turns out Herm Edwards was onto something.
Other news
We need federal action on stadium subsidies, cont.
I published an essay about stadium subsidies last week, then a few days later MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred repeated the inaccuracy that stadiums are economic drivers. A couple days after that, The Atlantic published a piece by Dan Moore titled “Taxpayers Are About to Subsidize a Lot More Sports Stadiums.”
Moore and I cover similar ground, but Moore recommends closing a loophole related to tax-exempt municipal bonds. I say break up Big Sports and make closed leagues illegal. In any case, the “obvious solution is federal legislation,” Moore correctly states.
The 76ers’ proposed new arena in Center City Philadelphia should serve as a new model for stadium development. It’s a privately financed project in the middle of the city accessible to all corners of the Delaware Valley via public transit. The opposition to the proposal centers on the specter of gentrification in Chinatown, but if gentrification is an economic process, and stadiums have no economic impact, then how would the stadium in and of itself cause gentrification?
The displacement the neighborhood faces is due in large part to the U.S. conceding the provision of housing to the private sector. To put it another way, we’ve commodified housing but socialized stadiums. It should be the other way around. Philly would have had more funds to preserve and develop affordable housing in Chinatown (and elsewhere) had state and local governments not spent a combined $750 million in today’s money on developing the Phillies’ Citizens Bank Park and the Eagles’ Lincoln Financial Field. (There are also climate and social impacts of placing these venues in an industrial hell hole, which I previously wrote about.)
Both things can be true at the same time: we can protect vulnerable communities, because human beings are worth it and working people are the lifeblood of dynamic cities, and we can let billionaire team owners build their own stadiums near people, because sports are fun and culturally important. A world of abundance is possible. We are not going to get there by saying no to everything.
Recommendations
Because it curates “the finest football writing on the internet”: Cultured Football’s newsletter (link)
Because you car drivers are deranged and are going to kill someone: stop driving into the crosswalk, without first stopping, to make a right on red.
