Neil deMause

Why the Islanders’ exhibition game in Brooklyn probably doesn’t mean they’re moving there, and why it wouldn’t do much for Brooklyn if they did:

​Things have been mostly quiet on the New York Islanders arena front since their public vote for a new home in the 516 crashed and burned spectacularly last summer. That all changed yesterday afternoon, however, with the announcement that the team has scheduled an exhibition game against the Devils at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center for October 2, just four days after the new home of the Brooklyn Nets (keep saying it, you’ll get used to it) gets its official inauguration by way of a concert by the team’s co-owner… [read more]

Now that the Yankees have built a new stadium and three new parking garages at tremendous expense (not all of it theirs), what do they need? Fewer parking garages!

With the new ballfields intended to replace those bulldozed five years ago to make way for Yankee Stadium: The Next Generation finally nearing completion — look, you can even see them now on Google Maps! — it’s time to finally turn the page on the ugly battle over the park-stealing, $2.3 billion stadium project, right? Or it would be, if not for the fact that the convoluted financing of the stadium looks like it’s going to have repercussions into the second Baldwin administration.

In the latest twist, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., who’s largely stayed out of the Yankees fray — it was his predecessor, Adolfo Carrion, who lobbied heavily for the stadium and fired community board members who opposed him — yesterday released a “request for expressions of interest” for any developers who might want to build a conference center and hotel near the stadium site… [read more]

My Nation article on why cities keep pursuing sports stadiums and arenas against all economic good sense is now out from under the paywall, so go and read it now! Especially if you’re, say, a member of the Los Angeles city council.

Answer: Or what.

​So Nassau County held its vote on the $400 million New York Islanders arena plan yesterday, and for team owner Charles Wang things went about as well as … it’s tempting to say “as well as a typical Islanders game,” but that’d be cruel. In any case, the final vote was 57-43% against funding a new arena (plus a new minor-league baseball stadium for an as-yet nonexistent Atlantic League team) with a 4% property tax hike, one that just might have been illegal… [read more]

My article on, well, why mayors love sports stadiums is out in the new special sports issue of The Nation, guest-edited by the inimitable Dave Zirin — unfortunately, it’s behind the web paywall, so unless you’re a subscriber you’ll need to buy an actual copy to read it.

Much of the rest of the issue is online for all, though; check it out, if only to admire me sharing a table of contents with Noam Chomsky, John Sayles, and Mark Cuban.

With just one week to go before the New York Islanders arena referendum, New Yorkers are beginning to take notice that there’s a team called the Islanders, and they’re having some kind of arena referendum:

Today’s Daily News features an editorial on next Monday’s New York Islanders arena vote, which is notable for a couple of reasons: One, it’s a rare acknowledgment by the New York media that there is, indeed, a sport known as hockey; and two, it’s an even rarer admission that there’s another hockey team in the area in addition to the Rangers and that one in New Jersey that wins Stanley Cups every so often, a team that otherwise survives in New York sports lingo only in the archaic expression “Potvin sucks!”… [read more]

Wow, it’s been ages since I last posted here. Most of that remains (as I hinted before) due to the vagaries of the dead-tree publication production cycle: Right now I have at least four articles in the can that should be popping up into public view over the next month. Add in that my Baseball Prospectus column is on hiatus thanks to a lack of funding, and it’s made for a bit of a dry spell around these parts.

In the meantime, you’re welcome to tide yourself over with my short review of Nationals Park in Washington (at Field of Schemes), only three years after it opened. Okay, dead trees aren’t the only thing causing lag around here…

If you’ve been wondering where my non-baseball writing has gone to recently, I have a bunch of stuff in the pipeline that’s going to start showing up in print (and in pixels) in coming weeks. And the first of these is now out, a profile of Brooklyn developer Bruce Ratner for the Jewish Daily Forward, on the occasion of his firm’s reported ties to a state senator accused of bribe-taking:

When federal prosecutors charged New York State Senator Carl Kruger with taking more than $1 million in bribes in March, few were surprised to see seven others indicted with him. The colorful Kruger, who represents the heavily Jewish Brooklyn neighborhoods of Brighton Beach, Gravesend and Sheepshead Bay, has long attracted media attention for high-profile deal-making among a wide network of politicians and lobbyists… [read more]

Ten years after the idea of “contracting” baseball teams died a merciful death, it’s back in the news. Who’s trying to get what out of whom this time?

This time, it seems, it started with Ken Rosenthal. Two days after Hank Steinbrenner let fly with an attack on baseball’s revenue-sharing plan that concluded, “if you don’t want to worry about teams in minor markets, don’t put teams in minor markets, or don’t leave teams in minor markets if they’re truly minor,” Rosenthal penned a Fox Sports Exclusive that significantly upped the ante: “Don’t be surprised if the “C” word—contraction—returns to the baseball lexicon soon,” he wrote, noting that he’d been “hearing rumblings” that “certain big-market teams” wanted to whack the Rays and A’s. In one scenario, wrote Rosenthal, Rays owner Stuart Sternberg would end up buying the Mets from the troubled Wilpons, while A’s owner Lew Wolff did the same with the McCourt-wracked Dodgers, before watching their old teams go poof… [read more]

Trying to make sense of what the Mets owners’ money woes could mean for the finances behind their new stadium:

If the last ten days in the life of Mets owners Fred and Jeff Wilpon were a baseball game, they would have been shut out, made 17 errors, and hit into a game-ending unassisted triple play. (That last feeling, admittedly, is one that they’re already familiar with.)

First, Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee for Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme victims, announced he was suing the Wilpons for as much as $1 billion in ill-gotten gains. Since then, it seemed like not a day has passed without a Wilpon-related bombshell… [read more]