This is not about baseball -- it involves a football stadium -- but if there is anyone out there who still thinks that public financing of professional sports facilities is a good idea, read this article in the Wall Street Journal about the Cincinnati Bengals’ stadium and then check your position again.
The lesson here isn’t about sports teams extorting a municipality. As is pointed out in the article, it’s about how it takes two to tango, both a sports team trying to get whatever it can (e.g. “holographic instant replay machines”) and a government with absolutely no will and/or ability to drive anything approaching a hard bargain, let alone simply saying no.
As the people in Cincinnati, Miami and a host of other places now know, all sense and accountability is thrown out the window when sports are involved.
