Magnifisyncopathological

Washington Post: Cropped Out of the Picture

Late Tuesday night, in the 11th hour of a marathon D.C. Council meeting, chairman Linda W. Cropp blew to smithereens the deal that MLB thought it had in place with Washington to build a ballpark on the Anacostia waterfront. With that single blow, which leaves baseball no alternatives, the return of major league baseball to the nation's capital is now dead.

The bits of charred ash and shattered fragments that you see falling from the sky are the remnants of the destruction that Cropp wrought. With one amendment to a stadium-funding bill, she demolished the most basic pillar on which the District's agreement with baseball was built. By a 10-3 vote, the council demanded that at least half of the cost of any new stadium be built with private financing, which does not exist, rather than public funding, as stipulated in D.C.'s deal with baseball.

A stadium in search of hypothetical funding, funding that may never be found, is not a stadium at all. It is just a convenient political lie. The entire purpose of baseball's long search for a new home for the Expos was so the sport could sell the team. Who is going to buy a team to play in a stadium that isn't funded and may never be? Nobody. Nobody on earth.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

He wants millions of people (this being D.C., you know federal dollars will eventually be involved) to be forced to contribute to building, maintaining, and supporting a sports franchise. He thinks it's beyond reproach that such a business should be kept afloat by anything other than the voluntary economic transactions done by its customers. He thinks the reality of the situation - that not enough people will invest in the deal to keep it viable - is something that can be overcome by raw, outright coercion in the form of taxes.

Fuck him. If it's so damn important to have a national-level sports team in your city, pay for it out of your own gawddamn pocket.

Via Jim Henley.