Jim Newell’s piece on the Atlanta Braves’ move from Turner Field to Cobb County is almost enough to make me stop watching major-league baseball:
Speaking of Cobb County putting up $450 million in financing: where the hell is it getting that money from? Sure, it’s one of the richer counties in the country, but that’s still $450 million. And it’s not like the county treasuries have been especially flush with cash to pay for everything their little hearts desire. Such as, say, teachers:
Cobb County’s school board approved a 2013-14 budget Thursday night that will result in five furlough days for all employees, the loss of 182 teachers through attrition and a slimmer central administration staff.
Give the Galtians who own the team a tax cut!
Mike E
Fix’t for extry racism.
Heliopause
Do you live somewhere where there’s an eensy-weensy, microscopic bit of resistance to giving the local sports teams whatever they want? How yankee of you.
MoeLarryAndJesus
But it’s not major-league baseball, it’s the National League.
Suffern ACE
I had no idea this was under discussion. Turner Field isn’t that old. I hope I never live in a city that gets it in its head to host an Olympics.
Raoul
Clearly a large slice of elite America has decided a meteor is coming, so we may as well watch baseball and frack everything in sight. Why bother with edumakashun? Or healthcare even. Those are for people who think they’ll survive the end-times!
Yatsuno
Basically the mayor of Atlanta told the Braves to go fuck themselves. Cobb County has its priorities, but educating kids has never been one of them. Most of their upstanding folk send them to military academies in South Carolina anyway.
David Fud
Cobb county residents I talked to (where I live…) can’t seem to muster up their usual anti-tax rhetoric on this one.
Considering that Cobb County voted down MARTA that was to stop next to an adjoining mall to the proposed site, this quote from the Braves is quite laughable:
It is also noted in the article just why Cobb County Republicans don’t want MARTA extended, either. That pesky Sheriff Near keeps showing up on trains, apparently.
lamh36
My friends in GA and those who used to live in the ATL were talking about this.
Most were not enthused about this…tax payer funds for a sports stadium, and yet the GOP governor wouldn’t expand medicare under ACA for millions of uninsured Georgians???
maya
I blame William Tecumseh Sherman.
Suffern ACE
The other part of this I don’t get is why the Baffler page shows with no text on it. But not reading an article hasn’t prevented me from forming strong opinions before.
Off with their heads. All of them. However many of them there might be.
Lee
@maya: For not being around again?
Zifnab25
@Yatsuno: Sounds like the city will come out ahead. Let some other sorry sods eat the traffic jams and drunken post-game hooligans and $10/mug beer. Atlanta isn’t going to suffer for being baseball stadium adjacent.
As a Houstonian, can I just say that Cobb County is free to take our loser franchise as well, if they’re interested.
JasonF
Come now, gentlemen. I know there’s some mistake.
maya
@Lee: For not lingering long enough.
Darkrose
Given that MARTA has been said to stand for Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta, this tells you all you need top know about the Braves’ move:
Schlemizel
What, you just noticed? This sort of shit has been happening around the country for 30 years. It used to be that the government would pay for upgrades to roads and utilities which is not totally unreasonable. But the extortion that has been going on since then is insane and just getting worse.
Here in Minnesota the other 86 counties joined together and passed a bill requiring one county to cough up half a billion dollars to increase the value of the Minnesota Twins(whos owner was worth over $2 billion) from $125 million to $250 million so “they could compete” since the new stadium opened they are 192 – 294
mclaren
That’s Shithole America, folks. Endless amounts of cash for sports stadia…not a dime for education. Limitless gushers of gold for Buck Rogers megadeath weapons, not a single penny available for starving children.
With luck, future civilizations will not find any fragments of America larger than a thimble.
Comrade Dread
@Lee: I’d guess for not killing all the Confederate assholes and salting the earth thereafter.
Ash Can
Not that MLB is anybody’s idea of a pristine institution, but this particular situation is on the Braves’ management. Fuck them.
Mike E
@maya: Sherman wanted to raze Raleigh to the ground for retribution after the president’s assassination, but Grant stopped him by pointing out no baseball franchise would ever want to play here anyway.
Cacti
@Darkrose:
I wonder if the Cobb County Braves will have a colored entrance at their new ballpark.
maya
@mclaren:
Show the proper respect.
maya
@Mike E: Recently read Burke Davis’ Sherman’s March. One of those books you just wish would go on and on.
Villago Delenda Est
@maya:
I blame him for being too candy-assed in his restraint in crossing Georgia.
RareSanity
As native and current resident of Atlanta, I’m glad the actual City of Atlanta told the Braves to pound sand. It’s also disappointing because, to me, it’s just always better when the sports teams have their stadiums in the downtown area.
The most interesting angle on this story for me is, the fact that there were a whole bunch of people up in arms that the City of Atlanta was going to increase the hotel taxes (which is mostly paid by visitors to our fair city) to kick in $200 million of the estimated $1 billion+ for the new stadium for the Falcons. All the rest of the tab is getting picked up by the owner and the NFL stadium fund.
But to move the Braves to the more affluent, predominantly white suburb?
Almost $500 million of the estimated $650 million is going to be paid by Cobb County tax payers. Is there the same amount of outrage? Nope…crickets. Everybody agrees that this is a wonderful move for everyone involved,
I wonder why that is?
That’s a rhetorical question of course, because when the Falcons were in scouting sites for the new stadium, and it came out that one of the proposed locations was closer to the northern suburbs, everybody thought that was great idea too. Once they decided to stay downtown, everybody had a problem with the deal.
I also actually credit Arthur Blank, the owner of the Falcons. He stated that he specifically wanted to stay downtown, because he feels that the Falcons are important to the identity and economy of the city, and that they belong in downtown Atlanta.
The owner of the Braves, however, is a multi-billion dollar corporation…Liberty Media…that only cares about increasing the value of the team, with money from Cobb County taxpayers, so they can sell the team and cash out on their tax break.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Heliopause:
Los Angeles City and County have both repeatedly refused to let the NFL hold them hostage for a team — if the NFL wants a pro football stadium in LA, they can damn well pay for it using private funds just like the NBA and NHL did with the wildly successful Staples Center.
Every once in a while, a county supervisor or city councilman will talk wistfully about how nice it would be to have a football team again, but the rest of them won’t go along with it, thankfully. It’s private funding or no football.
maya
@RareSanity: “The owner of the Braves, however, is a multi-billion dollar corporation…Liberty Media…that only cares about increasing the value of the team, with money from Cobb County taxpayers, so they can sell the team and cash out on their tax break. ”
Say, where did they learn that from?
Lee
Awhile back Dallas had an option to bring the Cowboys back into the city. The Mayor of Dallas would not even negotiate with Jerry. A different suburb of Dallas one without any mass transit ponied up enough money.
To be honest. My fair burg ponied up some cash for the Cowboys practice facility. In our defense, we were going to spend that money anyway for a new stadium and this way we get an indoor stadium and none of the maintenance costs.
Darkrose
@Cacti: I was thinking they could just name it after Ty Cobb.
RareSanity
@maya:
There’s an epidemic of this behavior in MLB. The
FloridaMiami Marlins, did the some of the same shenanigans to the City of Miami.Got the taxpayers to pony up for an unneeded new stadium, then once it was built, traded away any player making more than MLB minimum wage and fielded at team full of minor leaguers…basically telling the city, “What are going to do about it, the stadium is already here? Suck it!”
Mike in NC
Nobody has noted that Cobb County elected Newt F-ing Gingrich.
fka AWS
This is really no different than the corporate extortion that goes on with major companies when they blackmail local and state governments for tax breaks to keep their buildings around.
Violet
Team sports franchises don’t mean much these days. Players move around a lot. Owners will move teams if cities don’t give them what they want. Are the players even from the city or area where the team is? Usually not. Why do people in a city support “their team”? It’s no more “theirs” than the one in any other city.
catclub
@maya: Insufficient torchiness.
catclub
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Seattle voted down the Sonics new arena.
Of course, that was after they had built both a football and baseball stadium for the other major league teams, but still.
maya
@catclub: Yup. Not enough fire in his belly.
burnspbesq
@maya:
I do, too. He should have finished the job.
burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Los Angeles already has two professional football teams, the Spoiled Children and the Common Little Adults.
Also, nobody in the NFL really wants to put a team in Los Angeles. That would put an end to the practice of using the threat of moving here to extract concessions from local government.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet:
You could not be more wrong. Just read an NFL open thread on this blog – and people are rather restrained here.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: Not saying people don’t still think they mean something, but people are slow and are behind the reality of it. The team franchises themselves are meaningless–blow in the wind, move wherever, full of individuals thrown together for that season, or maybe only part of a season. Players who make a career at one team are few and far between.
Geoduck
@catclub:
Plus the guy heading the NBA has made it quite clear Seattle will regain the Sonics franchise quite literally over his dead body.
Darkrose
@Violet: That’s hardly new–just ask any Brooklyn Dodgers or New York Giants fan–or Boston/Minnesota/Milwaukee Braves fan. Teams move. Players get traded, or sign as free agents with someone else (thank you Curt Flood!)
For most fans, though, the name on the back matters less than the name on the front, and fans will fight to keep that name in their city because we feel invested.
Also, this gives me an excuse to post this picture, taken in 1992 when the Giants had announced they were moving to Florida. The kid in the picture is Brandon Crawford, now the starting shortstop for the Giants.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: You are cynical tonight.
FWIW the football team I support is owned by a large number of mall shareholders, is still in the city in which it started and from which it will never move, and only three or four of the players on its roster ever played for another team. The teams primary rival is still in the same city in which it began in the early part of the last century. Having followed football for years, I recognize the names of Bears players who have been in Chicago for a long time.
Darkrose
@Geoduck: Which is the only reason the Kings are still in Sacramento.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s been a crappy day and even crappier week and it’s not over yet. I don’t see the point of anything tonight, least of all overpaid athletes on so-called teams owned by excessively rich assholes. Who cares? I guess we do when it turns out those athletes are giving themselves traumatic brain injuries. Stupid.
Mike E
@Darkrose: No way! Hah, I compared his team picture to make sure. Wow, cool.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet:
Don’t make me make you reread Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus; I’ll do it.
BobS
@burnspbesq: Finishing the job would have included the execution of several dozen Confederate elites for treason, starting with Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: Good luck making me do anything. I can’t even make myself go to sleep.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: We all have bad days. And bad weeks. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Now since you can’t sleep, start rereading the essay. Dammit.
Shalimar
@Violet:
Players who make a career at one team have always been rare. For example, a list of players who spent their entire career with the Boston/Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves includes very few people even a fan of the history of baseball will have ever heard of. Just about every good Brave played somewhere else too, even if it was just at the very end when the Braves thought he was done and another team was willing to give him one more year. The Braves were usually horrible, so the reverse of that list is just as interesting: famous players nearing retirement for whom the Braves were that team willing to give one more year.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: Nope. Fuck Sisyphus. And bastards win all the time.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet:
Bullshit. Let’s quote Theodore Parker, paraphrased by MLK, Jr.:
Don’t let some bad experiences break you. That is all I am saying. The world is better than it was in 2008. If good people give up, we will regress. Do you want that? I doubt it.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: Tonight I just don’t fucking care. Bad and evil win all the fucking time. The arc of history may bend toward justice, but along the way a lot of people get fucked over.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: Okay. Be a nihilist for the night. Or as long as you wish. I’ve had bad nights too. I had bad weeks and months as well. So have shit loads of people. Your choices are to either give up or go on. You generally have seemed to be a positive person, based on your posts. Why abandon that?
Josh G.
The comments on that AJC article are disgusting.
tybee
guess we need to back the old bumper stickers: Go Braves! and take the Falcons with you.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks for listening to me last night. I’m generally a positive person, but this week has been crap. I did eventually sleep last night, but don’t feel much better this morning. I can’t find any positivity at the moment. Doesn’t even seem within grasp.
Cervantes
@Darkrose: Stupid, hateful, evil people.
Cervantes
Also, why do “seat replacement, upgrades to the lighting, etc.” not significantly enhance the fan experience?
Violet
@Cervantes: Because “the fan experience” is code for fancy box seats for rich corporate pigs. It’s harder to retrofit an older stadium with the types of exclusivity, special entrances, etc. that the modern 1%er requires.