Neil deMause

My first biweekly (semiweekly? I can never remember which is which) column for Baseball Prospectus is up. The column is titled “Payoff Pitch,” and will cover all things baseball and economic; today’s is about the never-ending saga of the Oakland A’s attempts to move to San Jose, and why it may never end:

It has been almost a year since I last checked in here on the Oakland A’s long-running game of footsie with San Jose, where owner Lew Wolff has been dreaming of moving the franchise seemingly ever since he bought it in 2005. At the time, a three-man task force appointed by Bud Selig to decide the team’s future was entering its 12th month of deliberations. Selig promised that their report “will be coming in the near future.”

A’s fans will be forgiven for wondering if Selig meant a near future in geologic time… [read more]

If you can’t be bothered to read Atlantic Yards Report’s crazy-long FAQ on its even crazier-long series on Bruce Ratner’s still crazier green-cards-for-financing schemes, you can now read my Cliff Notes version instead. (Not nearly so crazy, but with more Jackie Chan jokes.)

The ever-epic Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards Report today closes out his epic series on Bruce Ratner’s bizarre green-cards-for-financing scheme with a (wait for it) epic FAQ on exactly how the New Jersey Nets Brooklyn New Yorkers co-owner plans to take advantage of an obscure federal job-promotion program to save himself a jabillion dollars… [read more]

More on George Steinbrenner, the Great Philanthropist:

Poor dead George Steinbrenner doesn’t even have a grave to spin in yet, and already he’s being raked over the coals for his past sins.

First came Jim Dwyer’s recounting of The Boss’s legacy of egotism and abuse in today’s Times, which recalls how Steinbrenner shook hands with Ed Koch on a lease extension at the old Yankee Stadium, only to back out when he decided he’d rather keep all his cable boodle for himself.

Then at noon today, a group of South Bronx residents held a press conference at the new Yankee Stadium that Steinbrenner and his kids got $1.2 billion in taxpayer money for, demanding that the Yankees cough up proof that they’ve lived up to the community benefits agreement that team execs announced with great fanfare just before the city council vote on the new stadium plan in 2006… [read more]

In which I debunk the latest from my new favorite punching bag, the New York Times’ Ken Belson:

Following the Mets’ improbable come-from-way-behind win over the Marlins yesterday, the Shea Stadium Citi Field scoreboard blared the slogan “We Believe in Home Field Advantage,” along with the news that the Amazin’s now boast a sparkling 22-9 record in Flushing.

Now, given that the Mets continue to hover around the .500 mark, you can probably guess that they’ve been abysmal on the road (8-18 currently). When teams sport crazy home-road splits like this, you can look at it as half-full — they’re unbeatable at home! — or half-empty — they forget to pack their bats! Or you can speculate about the reasons why: familiarity with the ballpark’s quirks, jet lag, or blowing garbage.

Or, if you’re the Times’ Ken Belson, you can skip right over all that and claim that the Mets’ futility on the road is to blame for the team’s declining attendance at home. In a post Saturday on the paper’s Bats blog (named, presumably, because the alternative violated their style guidelines), Belson asserted, well, you really need to read it for yourself… [read more]

By association, anyway: The terrific two-man team known as the Internets Celebrities have released their latest web video, an 18-minute film titled “Stadium Status” that looks at the machinations behind New York’s new sports stadiums and arenas. And I have a featured role helping to explain how the deal went down, though I’m happily upstaged by scenes of the actual IC crew playing catch (replete with dramatic Ken Burns-esque music) on the site of Shea Stadium, now the Citi Field parking lot.

The New York Times has already plugged the filmmakers, saying they “conjure up a world in which Michael Moore might meet Dave Chappelle.” You know, a world like 2004.

Madison Square Garden is closing for renovations — but only if you’re a girl athlete:

Proving the old line that the best way to find real news in the Times is to read the stories end-to-beginning, the Paper of Record offers up a classic buried lede in its article today about the upcoming renovations to Madison Square Garden. Round about the sixth paragraph, sportswriter Richard Sandomir reveals:

One of [Madison Square Garden's] properties, the Liberty of the W.N.B.A., will have to play home games elsewhere beginning in 2011. A possibility is the Prudential Center in Newark, where the Nets will play for two seasons before moving to their new home in Brooklyn.

That’s home games for three years, as that’s how long the $775 million-or-so plan to gut the World’s Most Famous Arena and build a new one inside its shell is scheduled take, in order to limit construction to summers and thus avoid inconveniencing the boy teams that play there in the wintertime… [read more]

I’ll be on 1010 AM CBS Sports Radio in Tampa Bay today at 4:05 pm, discussing the Rays’ campaign for a new baseball stadium. Tune in online if you’re not in the Tampa-St. Pete area; if you need a refresher course on the Tampa Bay stadium debates, you can start here and here.

A newspaper report claims the Tampa Bay Rays could reap $40 million a year in added revenue from a new stadium. Does it pass the smell test?

For those of you who read the Tampa Tribune religiously — and who doesn’t? — you no doubt saw the long piece yesterday running down everything that’s wrong with Tropicana Field. Among the complaints: The luxury boxes have obstructed views of flyballs, the catwalks get in the way (whether of flyballs or of watching them, the author doesn’t seem clear), and the food concessionnaire is crappy — which may be the first suggestion that a team should build a new stadium just to get out of a concessions contract since Tim Naehring declared Fenway Park to be obsolete for its lack of chef’s salads.

But the more interesting tidbit is one that’s almost brushed over in the article: Citing unnamed “experts,” the Trib claims that “without the amenities and attractions found at modern ballparks, the Tampa Bay Rays are missing out on a potential $40 million in additional revenue… [read more]

Can Mikhail Prokhorov’s business dealings with Zimbabwe derail his plan to buy the New Jersey Nets and move them to Brooklyn? Well, maybe:

It’s Day Three of the Great Zimbabwe Flap, and the rhetoric over a New Jersey Congressman’s challenge to Russian bazillionaire Mikhail Prokhorov’s purchase of the Nets is heating up. Prokhorov fired back at Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-My-Constituents-Don’t-Want-to-Drive-Through-Two-Tunnels-to-Watch-the-Nets-Lose) yesterday, calling the charges that he’d violated economic sanctions against Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe “erroneous,” and saying that “we have no dealings whatsoever with companies or individuals on the sanctions list.”[read more]

I went to a soccer game! Soccer match? Whatever, I went, and wrote about the experience and the New York Red Bulls’ new stadium (which is not, astute readers will notice, in New York):

The metro area’s soccer team named after an energy drink (the franchise is Red Bull New York, the team is the New York Red Bulls — if you think this is confusing, don’t even try to wrap your brain around the two competing Manchester Uniteds) held their first official league game at their brand-new stadium in Harrison, New Jersey, drawing a capacity crowd to the souffle by the Passaic. Your intrepid Voice reporter was on the scene, braving the frigid temperatures and a near-complete absence of familiarity with live soccer to see how the tristate’s latest new sports facility stacks up… [read more]