Washington Baseball Economics

Upon Rick Reilly's exodus from Sports Illustrated, the magazine had no other choice but to change format. The last page featured in SI is aptly titled Point After, moderated by a committee of journalists that change from week-to-week. One particular submission by writer S.L. White commented on the buzz surrounding the construction of new ballparks.

An establishment like Yankee Stadium is fully being funded by Steinbrenner and Co., so Yankee fans can expect extravagance and aura at the stadium's inception in 2009. Nationals Park, on the other hand, was predominantly funded by the District of Columbia, as per Mayor Adrian Fenty. According to S.L. Price, 'the civic burden for stadium construction [is] usually between 60% and 70%.' D.C., contrarily, opted to foot 97% of the total bill for the Washington Nationals' new stadium. Do the math: 0.97 X 647,000,000 = 627,590,00, as in dollars---in a city that bleeds for educational reform. Logistically, should a legislation (a) care more about getting fans out to the ballgame or (b) care more about diminishing violence and aiding the sorry state of education across the D.C. landscape?

Have a look at the other statistics that S.L. White compiled: the nation's capital has a 37% adult illiteracy rate and a high school graduation rate of 59%; of those that graduate, only 9% go on to graduate college within five years. That is a sad state of affairs.

Understand this: the vast majority of the nearly $630 million pumped into Nationals Park may never be seen by the city again, seeing as the Nationals' revenue, for the most part, goes back into funding the team's operations, NOT the city's operations. Sure, ballparks do plenty to beautify an urban landscape and offer entertainment value for city denizens (white-collar citizens, that is)....but will Nationals Park ever boost the city's economy, as Mayor Fenty desperately hopes for? Chances are, no. The spend-more, get-more mentality will do nothing for the betterment of D.C.'s illiteracy issue. Furthermore, the stadium will provide another tourist attraction amongst the many in Washington already, but that's about it. As the new ballpark opens, three branch libraries in the city have closed down and some will not receive necessary renovations until 2010 at the very least. And let's not even discuss the traffic the new ballpark will produce, not to mention the spike in ticket prices the working class, metro-Washington's majority, will never even be able to afford. (And that's a bigger problem pro sports needs to tackle: the most passionate fans looking to go to the ballpark ARE the working class, the ones who comprise the 4 million fan figure the Yankee organization has seen several years running. What happens when this fan dynamic vanishes?).

Here's a novel idea: ballpark revenue going back to the city. The city deserves a large(r) cut of the money a team makes for Fenty's 97% payoff to make sense. And the cut should come with a stipulation: the money absolutely must go back to civic services like law enforcement, education, and cost-effective, environmentally sound public transportation. Beautifying a landscape with an amenities-laden ballpark without any hope of financial return is nothing but smoke and mirrors.