Let’s not bring major league baseball to Portland, okay?
There’s a gleeful absurdity with the Florida Marlins. This franchise has won two World Series in the past decade. After each world series victory, they’ve slashed payroll — the first time immediately, the second time a season or so afterward. Dizzying highs and numbing lows, and somehow things can’t click into economic viability for Miami.
So, if Portland were to get the Florida Marlins, could they claim two World Series victories? Sure, why not? I say they oughta keep the name “Marlins” for just that purpose! It’s not like the franchise is going to win anything in Portland. The effect of a Portland Major League baseball team would be two bad sports teams, and given the current climate of major league baseball — the baseball team doesn’t look to be terribly hopeful. (See, baseball doesn’t have a lot of parity. In the NFL if you can’t get your team to have a successful season every so often, it’s your own damned fault. In Major League baseball, there are winners and losers, and I don’t like Portland’s chances. And you become a money-generator, for the city at large, by winning.)
I scan the “Sports Talk Radio” 1080 The Fan. Oh boy do they hate Tom Potter. He ain’t no Vera Katz, who was actively working to get baseball into Portland. Actually, it almost looks like he’s actively working to drive Major League Baseball away from the city. More power to him! Despite some sophistry on his part in claiming “Education” as the issue he would rather spend time and money on. (Sorry, Tom Potter, but economic development is important. That building a MLB franchise is not the thing to go with doesn’t obscure the importance of bringing money into the local economy.) The second point, that most Portlanders could care less, has every appearance of being true, a statement that couldn’t have sat well with the Florida Marlins officials or the bringers of baseball into the city of Portland. The people who do care are calling into “Sports talk radio”, saying “We want Portland to be Major League”, which I wonder: well then, why doesn’t every city go ahead and pick up a major league franchise to become, quote-in-quote, “Major League”? Why, if Hartford, Connecticut had managed to get the New England Patriots into their city (during the late 1990s lull that the team found themselves in, where they asked Foxboro for some money for a new stadium-deal), they would three Superbowl victories! (Urm?)
Why am I supposed to consider a statement that “Portland oughta be ‘Major League'” as assuredly self-evident?
Actually, everything breaks down on the Sports Radio front. Talk of economic development ifalls away, and we get to brass tasks with the sports fan lament “The real deal is that we want to be here, during the middle of the season, talking about how the team needs an extra couple of pitchers.” And an outfielder or two. Maybe some more hitting. A better mascot.
I cannot escape the basic thought that taxpayers will be on the hook for a failed baseball franchise, despite all assurances that the revenue to build the stadium will come from the standard list you get with these things — a Hotel tax and stadium parking.