Neil deMause: The Website

It’s Wednesday, so it must be time for the annual speculation about moving a third MLB team to the New York area:

Normally, the Tampa Bay Rays complaining that their home stadium is a dump wouldn’t be news here in New York, given that 1) people have been complaining about Tropicana Field since before the Rays even debuted there in 1998 and 2) the Rays only enter New Yorkers’ radar in the odd seasons when they threaten to break through the Yanks-Sox oligarchy in the A.L. East.

All that changed this week, however, when Peter Gammons, former star of ESPN and the $20 bill, mentioned in his MLB.com column that “there are smart people in the Major League Baseball offices wondering if there’s hope of even discussing a potential move of the Rays to New Jersey or Southern Connecticut over certain protests from the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox and Phillies.”… [read more]

More than you ever wanted to know about the fate of Brooklyn’s last surviving big-league ballpark wall:

The saga of the last surviving Brooklyn ballpark wall just keeps getting murkier and murkier. The latest news: Con Ed, which since the 1920s has owned the Gowanus property that once was a series of ballparks named Washington Park, tells the Voice that it is going to tear down part of the brick wall that runs along Third Avenue — but debate still rages over whether that section is a historic baseball artifact or just, you know, a wall… [read more]

Thoughts on tonight’s Game 1 of the World Series:

With the World Series starting tonight — if this rain ever stops, and if Jay-Z’s opening act finishes in time for the game to start before midnight — the media is scrambling to fill air time and column inches, especially since the Phillies tripped up that promising return of the prodigal Joe storyline. One tried-and-true angle: Tell people how to take the subway to the game… [read more]

Yesterday was the third anniversary of the demolition of Macombs Dam Park to make way for the Yankees’ new stadium, and work on replacement parks is still far off in the distance:

As anyone who’s been to a game at Fake Yankee Stadium lately can attest, the old home of the Bronx Bombers across the street remains relatively intact, nearly a year after its final game. The last of the seats were sliced out in early June (taking care to preserve them for sale to any collectors willing to cough up $750 apiece), and demolition scaffolding went up later that month. Since then, though, all has been mostly quiet: Despite reports that the centerfield “black” seats would be carted off to Reggie Jackson’s estate by now, they were still intact as of Friday, as were the foul poles; even the bat-shaped weathervane atop the flagpole is still in operation… [read more]

What we’re losing in Detroit:

After a crazy Friday afternoon that featured a preservationist running onto the field at Tiger Stadium to serve a restraining order against the stadium’s demolition — too late to stop a backhoe from taking several bites out of the upper deck — Wayne County Circuit Judge Prentice Edwards is expected today to rule on whether the stadium will stand or fall. If Edwards issues a permanent stay of execution, the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy, which includes SABR stalwarts Gary Gillette and Rod Nelson, gets to keep plugging away at its plan to save the remaining “Navin Field” section of the grandstand, roughly corresponding to the stadium’s original 1912 dimensions, and convert it into a community ballfield with some of the interior converted to office space and a museum. If not, expect the seat-munching to resume immediately.

The loss to baseball history and potential tourism aside (can you imagine what people would pay now to visit even a sliver of Ebbets Field or the Polo Grounds?) there’s something else at risk here: Tiger Stadium is now the last surviving example of an old-style upper deck overhang.”… [read more]

Note that the judge was not impressed by my reasoning.

And still more on empty seats at New York’s new ballparks:

Apparently not even the prospect of starring in baseball’s new umpire replay videos is enough to induce New Yorkers to shell out $300 for tickets to the new Yankee Stadium.

After River Avenue Blues ran photos of entire empty sections during Friday’s matinee, things got even worse yesterday, when a mere 43,068 paying customers crossed the turnstiles.

Noting the “gaping sections of expensive seats from dugout to dugout,” the Times’ George Vescey observed: “Either the Yankees have not actually sold those seats, or the bankers and brokers with the corporate seats are taking weekend jobs to make ends meet in this rotten economy they helped create.”… [read more]

More on what those empty seats at Mets and Yankees games mean:

I went to a Mets game last week, and speaking as a Yankee fan, I have to admit that in the battle of the ballparks, the Mets won. Citi Field is far from perfect, but at least it feels like you’re at a baseball park — unlike the new Yankee Stadium, which bears an uncanny resemblance to a new Marriott with a really garish big-screen TV in the lobby.

What I noticed most, though, was something I’d never seen at a baseball game: The upper deck was packed to the gills, while the acres of hyper-pricey seats down below were half-empty… [read more]

It strikes me as a bit odd that I’m posting my Baseball Prospectus blog item on the Marlins’ stadium deal and not my much more in-depth Field of Schemes item, but I don’t make the rules here — oh wait, yes I do. Well, anyway, one links to the other, so you’re welcome to read ‘em both:

It’s official: After more government hearings than you can shake a fungo bat at, the Miami-Dade County Commission gave final approval yesterday to the Marlins‘ plan for a $634 million stadium on the former site of the Orange Bowl. Assuming bonds can be sold by July — never a sure thing in our new economic reality — construction will begin this summer, with the team’s big bagel slicer opening in 2012, at which point the team, as part of the deal, will become transmogrified into the Miami Marlins… [read more]

Don’t assume the San Jose A’s are a foregone conclusion by any means, but moving the team there is more likely than it seemed last week:

During my chat a couple of weeks back, I wrote of the Oakland A’s future now that their Fremont stadium plans are dead:

I still say the most likely scenario is [owner Lew] Wolff stays put in Oakland for the next few years, and hopes either the housing market recovers or a couple of million people unexpectedly move to Fresno in the interim.

That’s certainly the scenario that made the most sense, but apparently Wolff had other ideas… [read more]

So I went to buy Mets tickets today, and got a hard lesson in cognitive dissonant post-crash economics:

Mets tickets for April and May went on “presale” today to the lucky few — that is, anyone on the Mets email list — allowing the great unwashed to get their first look at what it’ll be like to get into the team’s new, downsized home. Let’s roll the dice and play Mets ticket roulette:

Citi Field’s 42,000 seats have been divided into a daunting 28 price categories, which when combined with the Mets’ five different game levels (from “Platinum” for the Subway Series to “Value” for Tuesday nights against the Marlins) create an incredible 140 different ticket prices… [read more]