Go Legislature, Go!

The Minnesota Legislature passed a bill late last night that will finally build a new, outdoor baseball stadium for the Twins. This is huge, since the Twins have been trying to get this built for the past decade with not-even-close success.

I love the Metrodome's quirks: the massive noise, the 3 inch strips around the dirt areas that make a ground ball do things that induce aneurysms in opposing managers, and, of course, the roof that colored like a baseball and then has round holes cut in the inside layer which helpfully reminds opposing players to keep their eye on the ball, lest it hit them in the head. I also love its history: the Minnesota Twins have never lost a World Series game in the Metrodome, and the last two games of the 1991 Series are indelibly etched in the memories of everyone in Minnesota who cared even a little bit about what was going on.

But the Metrodome is a football stadium, not a baseball stadium. All it takes to realise that is to sit along either the third or first base lines. Your choice is to either look into the outfield, where your seat is pointing, or to end up with a massive twist in your neck after looking toward home plate for 3 hours.

There have been a lot of protests over the new stadium, which is going to cost $522 million. The Twins' owner, Carl Polhad, is covering $130 million of that. The rest is coming from a .015% sales tax on Hennepin county (which covers Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs, making it the most populous county in the state). This comes to an additional 3 cents on every $20 spent. The Legislature's involvement came in because the tax could not be put in place without a voter referendum, unless the Legislature gave the county an exemption. The Twins knew that referendum would kill the possibility of a new park, for one simple reason: people never vote for taxes. Never. So people who didn't want their tax dollars going toward a new stadium for billionaires (as they saw it) got very mad and protested, saying that if Polhad wanted a new stadium he should pay for it himself (like all sports team owners, he's very rich), and that public money shouldn't be used to support private business like this. Which is of course complete bullshit. Ignoring the obvious historical instances of the Federal government bailing out major corporations (like the airlines), cities routinely attract businesses by offering tax breaks and other incentives. This is just like that, except in this case instead of just creating jobs the city also gets a tourism boost, along with a better chance of hosting the All-Star game and (since the stadium will make the Twins more money which hopefully they will put back onto the field) hopefully the World Series. And like it or not, to be a major metropolitan area you need big league sports teams. This is the cost of keeping those teams. Build it right (unlike the dome, which was rushed and done on the cheap), and you won't have to worry about building another one for 80 years.

I'm pretty tired, so I have no idea if all that made any sort of coherent sense. I hope so. More posts tomorrow.