Neil deMause: The Website

Just got word that Field of Schemes: The Next Generation (ed. note: not the actual title) is now shipping from Bison Books’ website, notwithstanding the official release date being a month away. This edition has all the stadium-swindley goodness of the original FoS, plus four new chapters and annotations to the original chapters that make the whole thing clock in at a hefty 400-plus pages.

For more on this, visit fieldofschemes.com. And if you’re a potential book reviewer, radio producer, or bookstore that might want to host a speaking/signing, drop me an e-mail. (Bookstores, you might want to get one of your staffers to send the e-mail; I know how hard it is for brick and mortar to type.)

It’s been a while since I’ve had an excuse to do a new tally of the public costs of the Yankees and Mets deals, so I was pleased to see New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg put his foot in his mouth about the stadiums last week:

On his weekly radio show Friday, Mayor Bloomberg was asked why the city was subsidizing stadiums for the Mets and Yankees. His response: “The city and the state, to my recollection, each put in $75 million” for each new stadium — a mere fraction of the total cost. “It was a really good deal,” he added.

For a data-crazed mayor, Bloomberg can be awfully loose with his numbers… [read more]

I’ve also put up a new spreadsheet of the public/private cost calculations underlying this article, for those interested.

The New York city council debate over whether to continue Madison Square Garden’s $11-million-a-year exemption from property taxes - which was supposed to end in 1992, but somebody forgot to write that into the legislation - has not exactly covered either side in glory:

t was a strange scene even by City Council standards: representatives of Madison Square Garden testifying last week that they should get to keep their perpetual tax exemption because the city is throwing so much money at its other sports teams — more than $1.3 billion, by their count — that the Knicks and Rangers might as well share in the boodle.

Arguing that “all the other kids are getting one” isn’t exactly new for sports teams in search of public subsidies; Rudy Giuliani, after all, once asserted the Yankees needed a new, city-built stadium to let them compete with the (no guffawing) Baltimore Orioles… [read more]

My latest Metro New York op-ed (at 400 words apiece, they’re really more op-aphorisms) takes a shot at digging beneath the surface of baseball’s steroid scandal, or at least coming up with some new topics of conversation aside from whether the Yankees’ World Series titles are “tainted” now that Chuck Knoblauch may have been air-mailing throws into the seats with a juiced right arm:

A few items that were largely missed amid the acres of newsprint devoted to baseball’s latest steroid mess:

Did anyone really expect that the big names in baseball’s drug report would be a couple of aging pitchers? The steroid-abuser stereotype has always been that of an over-muscled batter, but the Mitchell report’s drift net snagged a lot of Ryan Franklins and Kent Merckers along with the Bondses and Cansecos… [read more]

The media frenzy over those Yankees hotel-room aliases continues, as I make two radio appearances tomorrow to discuss the pressing question of why Jorge Posada goes by “Ricky Ricardo”:

• Peter Greenberg Worldwide, syndicated/XM, 10:50 am Eastern
• The Roy Green Show, on Canada’s Corus Radio Network, 2:20 pm Eastern

And because apparently nobody can get enough of those Yankees hotel room aliases, here’s more on those Yankees hotel room aliases, this time in quiz form.

The first villagevoice.com reader to successfully identify all four mystery Yankees—heck, the first to even get three right, given that there’s very little rhyme or reason to these—in the comments section wins a prize.

The prize? A copy of the expanded edition of my book Field of Schemes, due out next spring, which includes an all-new chapter on New York’s recent stadium/arena battles… [read more]

More goodies from the Yankees’ document dump, though this time they’re more amusing than outrageous. Among the paperwork the team sent over to the city as part of its “stadium planning” claims is a crib sheet listing players’ hotel-room aliases:

Among the more notable monikers:

Pseudonym: Simon Phoenix
Real name: Mike Mussina
Interpretation: Either the bookish hurler is a big Demolition Man fan, or he just identifies with characters who unexpectedly find themselves out of place in the 21st century. There is no truth to the rumor that when Wesley Snipes blew a line reading, he snorted, “Who are they going replace me with?”… [read more]

If you thought last year’s news that the New York Yankees had billed taxpayers for their own stadium lobbyists was outrageous, then … well, that was outrageous, but this is pretty nuts, too: New documents show the team subsequently billed the city for all kinds of stuff and called it “stadium planning costs”:

Billing the city for the lobbyists he hired to push his new stadium (now taking shape across the street from the soon-to-be-demolished House That Ruth Built) was, it turns out, the least of George Steinbrenner’s chutzpah. According to documents obtained from the parks department’s archives via the Freedom of Information Law, the Yanks submitted to the city for reimbursement such “stadium planning” costs as a dozen crystal baseballs presented as a gift by the team, and bar tabs for Yankees execs—plus a whopping $9 million in expenses incurred the year after the team’s sweetheart-lease clause expired. And it’s become increasingly clear that city officials diligently looked the other way while this was taking place… [read more]

When the Yankees got permission to build their $1.3 billion stadium complex in a Bronx park, the city promised to provide interim park space for local residents to use until new permanent parks are ready. How’s that working out? About as well as the stadium deal itself:

At the new park, the old parking-lot gates turn out to be padlocked shut; those on foot can walk around them, but anyone in a wheelchair will be out of luck. Inside, a track skirts the edges of a single field shared by soccer players and a softball game. Where Macombs Dam Park was grass (often threadbare from the pounding of soccer cleats), here the turf is an artificial substance called tufted nylon that is a slick, plasticky green—”like dead Christmas trees,” remarks former Community Board 4 member Anita Antonetty… [read more]

The Mets mull selling bricks outside their new city-owned stadium. Guess who won’t be getting a share of the cash?

The Mets may be locked in a three-way battle for first place in the N.L. East, but don’t let it be said that they’re not looking to the future. Last week, the ball club sent out an online survey to “loyal Mets fans” (actually, anyone who had purchased seats via the Mets’ website) asking what they thought of a “new way to involve fans”: Engraved bricks with personalized messages that would be installed outside Citi Field when it opens in 2009. “As a Mets fan,” asked the single survey question, “would you consider purchasing a brick?”…[read more]