Baseball Owners Didn't Need Field of Dreams to Fleece Taxpayers
Contra Matt Welch on Field of Dreams
Matt Welch has an interesting post with a different critique of Field of Dreams than mine.
Matt Welch considers Field of Dreams to be one of many artifacts of what he sees as an empty Boomer culture, that attempts to make peace between the radicalization of the 60s with their parents without doing any real work of repentance. Maybe, but the part with teeth is that he says it was used to justify to boom in taxpayer-funded “retro” ballparks that were build in the decade or so afterward.
Now, at this point, it is probably worth noting that Welch is a fan of the Los Angeles Angels, perhaps the single franchise least wedded to tradition and anchored to the suburbs rather than a city. California is one state that has, in general, refused to yield to owners’ demands for new stadiums. The Angels are the one team that remains in a (one time) multipurpose stadium in the suburbs. Their history has been categorized by signing aging stars in an attempt to win a championship.
I think it is important to note that, the prudence of taxpayer funding aside, the generation of stadiums from the 1990s on did represent a significant improvement over the previous state. I grew up with Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, an astroturf multipurpose stadium. It was awful, and was usually more than half empty, even when the Phillies were winning. Some classic old stadiums (Comiskey Park, Tigers Stadium, the previous Yankee Stadium) were replace in this period, but for the most part, the replaced stadiums had to go. Perhaps the new “retro” ballparks were also cookie-cutter, but they were for a better cookie.
Owners can get taxpayers to pay for stadiums because they have leverage, particularly in marginal MLB cities where the threat to move is live. They can make this go down smoother with just-so stories of beautiful stadiums and economic development, but the harsh reality is that cities that aren’t New York or Boston have to pay up or lose their beloved team. Which they don’t want to do. Maybe Field of Dreams gave us a story to tell ourselves so it wouldn’t seem quite so crass, but if it didn’t exist, the fleecing would have happened anyway, and we’d just be telling a different story.
This reminds me of an odd thought I’ve had about the Ken Burns Baseball miniseries.
As a good liberal, Burns devotes significant screen time to racial and labor advances. Famously, the 1940s episode spent about half its time on Jackie Robinsons and didn’t mention Stan Musial until his retirement in the 1960s. Marvin Miller, Curt Flood, and Andy Messersmith all got significant time.
This is a contrast from the earlier episodes, which mainly focussed on the game on the field, and the great ballplayers like Babe Ruth and Cy Young.
An unsophisticated viewer could come away with the conclusion that the game was a pastoral paradise until those troublemakers showed up calling for fairness to labor and racial equality.
Obviously this was not Burns’ intent, or historically accurate. But it is an interesting effect.