When the Carolina Hurricanes bounced the New York Rangers from the Stanley Cup bubble with a 4-1 win on August 4th, it seemed like a mere footnote in a sports season turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic. The Rangers … Continue reading
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s latest proposal to expand Penn Station is an overflowing grab bag of promises to commuters and city residents to improve what the governor called in his budget speech yesterday the station’s “seven levels of hell”. Cuomo is … Continue reading
Last week, baseball’s winter meetings in San Diego—normally a hotbed of trade activity—were also abuzz with talk of an even higher-stakes deal: Major League Baseball’s proposal, first revealed in October, to eliminate 42 minor league affiliates once the current operating … Continue reading
Major League Baseball saw attendance decline for the fifth straight year, falling to a mere 28,198 fans per game, the lowest mark since 2003. It’s a trend that has already prompted much public hand-wringing from baseball barons and the sportswriters … Continue reading
Nobody goes to baseball games anymore. That’s the common alarmist wisdom that has become one of the overarching themes of the 2019 season, which had barely gotten underway before USA Today was declaring that MLB’s attendance slide of recent years … Continue reading
The New York Islanders owners’ plans for a new billion-dollar-plus arena complex alongside Belmont Park in Nassau County took a major lurch forward on Monday, as Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his intent to build the Long Island Rail Road station … Continue reading
Any self-respecting student of insane Machiavellian gambits should be familiar with the Madman Theory, Richard Nixon’s self-invented strategy for winning the war in Vietnam. The theory, as recounted by Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman after he got out of … Continue reading
The Mets swept the so-hapless-even-their-owner-is-mad-at-whoever-made-them-this-hapless Marlins this weekend to crawl back within a game of a .500 record, but first they unveiled a Friday surprise: an email announcing that starting next Monday, fans will no longer be allowed to bring … Continue reading
Sometime in the next few days, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb—aka the guy who took Mike Pence’s job when Pence ascended to the Old Executive Office Building—is expected to sign a bill extending the Indiana Pacers’ lease in Indianapolis through 2044. … Continue reading
For sports team owners seeking new stadiums or arenas—which is to say, for sports team owners—there are certain tools of the trade at their disposal for convincing fans and politicians to support (and pay for) a new building. They have … Continue reading