Neil deMause

If you’re not interested in the question of whether Yankee Stadium will be demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass, you might want to go read something else this
month, because it’s what took up most of my February, and is likely to occupy much of my March as well.

After economist Andrew Zimbalist rebutted my rebuttal of his New York Times op-ed calling a new Yankee Stadium the best thing
since Roy White knishes, I rebutted him back, and … but if you’re a Baseball Prospectus subscriber you’ve read all this already, and if you’re not, you can’t read it anyway, so enough about that. (You can get some of the high points at fieldofschemes.com, though.) This month looks to be packed with hearings on the Yanks and Mets projects, with a city council vote possible as early as March 22; I’ll try to have something either in the Village Voice dead-tree edition or on its Power Plays blog by then, so stay tuned to those sites (as well as, of course, Field of Schemes).

In other news, America’s bookshelves are groaning in anticipation of the arrival of “Baseball Between the Numbers” from Baseball Prospectus and Basic Books, which includes my chapters “Do High Salaries Lead to High
Ticket Prices?” “Are New Stadiums a Good Deal?” and “Does Baseball Need a Salary Cap?” Official release date in March 6, but I’ve heard tell of it arriving in some lucky mailboxes already, so order it now from Amazon.com or Powells.com or via your local bookstore. Bring it to a BP event in your area and you can even have it signed by the authors! (I’ll likely be at the Coliseum event, but getting there late, so be sure to hang around till the end if you want to meet me for some reason.)

I also have another BP
chat scheduled for Friday, March 17 at 1 pm Eastern (you can submit questions early if you like). And for all my homies in San Antonio, I’ll be on Ron Wiglesworth’s radio show at 2 pm Central time, on KAHL 1310 AM –
I’m sure we’ll have lots to say about this Marlins to Texas rumor…

And that’s it. Next month it’s baseball season, so maybe I’ll even have some non-baseball writing to tell you about. Seeya then.

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Whoops, looks like I skipped January entirely, and the first day of February as well. Actually, given what January was like, that might not have been a bad idea … but I digress.

The big news around these parts is that New York City’s plans for $1.8 billion worth of baseball stadiums (public cost: about $800 million) is lurching forward toward a city council vote in the spring, and I’ve been scribbling madly on the topic. First up was a report for the Village Voice on how the city’s own economic impact study shows that the HREF="http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0603,demause,71747,5.html">Yankees stadium would be a money loser; immediately following on the heels of that were reports for both the Voice (freebie) and HREF="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=4719">Baseball Prospectus (subscribers only) on how various tax breaks and bookkeeping shenanigans would leave the Mets paying almost nothing for
their new building; which in turn begat a BP mailbag (again subscribers-only) answering reader questions about the
previous article. Meanwhile, an offhand remark about a cracktastic New York Times op-ed by economist Andy Zimbalist prompted a rebuttal by Zimbalist, which is going to require a further rebuttal from me … Jane, stop this crazy thing!

The previous big news around these parts was the transit strike, which led to three days of massive traffic snarls and throngs of New Yorkers trudging to and from work across the Brooklyn Bridge. (Good thing the bridge was there, or they would have had to wait for a passing ice floe.) It also, according to city officials, cost the city more than a billion dollars in lost economic impact – though as I reported on the Voice website, the city comptroller’s office admitted these were “numbers we sort of made up.” Not that that stopped people from griping about those damn greedy unionized workers.

Rounding out the last two months were another pair of BP articles – I seem to be writing for them a lot these days, despite a pay rate in the high two figures – one on baseball’s likely revival of the “contraction” threat in 2006, the other about the ongoing stadium mess in Washington, D.C., which is just as entertaining as the
New York one, only with fewer angry economists. And more angry mayors.

Finally – and I hate to stick this last, since it’s by far the most exciting news of the bimonthly period – I’m very pleased to announce that the Baseball Prospectus book “Baseball Between the Numbers” will be out the first week in March, with my chapters “Do High Salaries Lead to High Ticket Prices?” “Are New Stadiums a Good Deal?” and “Does Baseball Need a Salary Cap?” (Others of my favorite chapters include essays on when
managers should bunt, whether clutch hitting really exists, and “Is Alex Rodriguez Overpaid?”, a stunning piece by Nate Silver that actually concocts a formula for determining a player’s monetary value to his team, to the dollar.) Think “Freakonomics” for baseball, only with more statistical rigor.

You can pre-order it now from Amazon.com or Powells.com or via your local bookstore; members of the press or potential reviewers can HREF="mailto:neild@fieldofschemes.com">e-mail me and I’ll get you on the freebie list.

This month’s bonus material (courtesy of the WFMU blog): HREF="http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/LG/Boney_M_-_Rasputin.mpg">Rasputin!