Post by mikecubs on Jan 28, 2015 21:19:32 GMT -6
New ballpark for Jays would be a tough sell
The night SkyDome opened was a real humdinger.
Our front page guy nearly had a stroke.
The world kept throwing him loops, on a night when the opening of Toronto’s big, concrete cathedral of sport should have been a slam-dunk for top billing.
In Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini inconveniently died. In Beijing, Chinese soldiers slaughtered student protesters in Tiananmen Square.
Reba McEntire even got married.
All on June 3, 1989.
SkyDome’s opening ceremony was its own melodrama. I was up in the press box with Christie Blatchford as all hell broke out below. I remember turning to Blatch and hollering, “Oh, the humanity!” It got real grisly.
They opened the roof, to show off, but as they did the heavens opened, too, and the bare concrete floor turned slick.
Thousands of folks dancers, from Albania to New Zealand, slipped, flipped and flopped all over. Most of the 55,000 spectators scrambled for exits or grabbed umbrellas.
Then we looked up and, son of a bitch, there were skydivers zipping through the open roof, braving wind and rain. Were they nuts?
They hit the wet concrete like skipping stones.
It’s lucky no one died that night.
Which is by way of reminding you SkyDome (no one over 30 calls it Rogers Centre) is 25, which is 110 in people years.
It is the seventh oldest ballpark in the majors, surpassed by ancient jewels like Fenway Park and Wrigley Field.
So, this being egotistical Toronto, you can bet pressure will grow for a cooler home for the Jays.
The topic came up on Jeff Blair’s first-rate show on 590 The Fan on Wednesday. Blair had Mayor John Tory on the line.
How, Jeff asked, would a new baseball stadium “fit into your vision for the city?”
“The way sports facilities are going these days,” replied Tory, “they become obsolete faster than you think.”
But don’t expect City Hall to ante up, Supermayor warned.
“Taxpayers have sort of indicated they don’t think it’s the right way of spending their money.”
Yes, we sort of have.
“Look, if you can’t pay for proper transit and proper housing,” said Tory, “you shouldn’t be rushing around paying for stadiums.”
Not to mention, Tory has enough woes, including his leaky first budget and a drop in his approval rating from 74% to 67%, according to a Forum Research poll Wednesday.
I’m with Tory on stadiums, though City Hall pays way too much on lots of other things.
Lest we forget, SkyDome was built ridiculously over-budget ($150 million turned into $590 million), was bailed out by the province (AKA you and me), then went bankrupt, and finally was snapped up by Rogers for about the price of two decent pitchers and a sack of TV remotes.
Not exactly the kind of project you want to jump into with your sweat-stained tax dollars.
Besides, I sort of like that big hunk of cement at the foot of the CN Tower.
True, it has sunk to or near the bottom of all lists of favourite major league parks. Yelp’s ranking puts Rogers Centre dead last, behind even Tampa’s Mickey Mouse Tropicana Field.
Washington Nats blogger Mark Zuckerman toured MLB’s 30 sites and panned ours last summer: “This place once felt futuristic but now feels like a bad example of what we thought the future would look like back in the ’80s.”
Well, you can’t go back to the future. The last rivet had barely been driven into SkyDome’s roof before baseball trends shifted to retro, homey, easier to fill parks like Baltimore’s Camden Yards.
And they’re fun, like Wrigley (built in 1912) is fun. So expect calls for something similar here to grow as Rogers Centre gets creakier and more out of step with the rest of baseball. Even Rogers, which owns both the team and park, can’t resist forever.
But, for me, a building’s memories are as important as its mortar. And the place still works fine, especially since they widened the concourses.
If the Jays put in real grass as expected by 2018, you’ll think you’re at a Wrigley on human growth hormones.
The empty seats will still stick out, though, if the Jays keep stumbling.
A-ha. There’s a cost-saving measure Supermayor might appreciate:
Keep the ballpark. Get a new team.
www.torontosun.com/2015/01/28/new-ballpark-for-jays-would-be-a-tough-sell
The night SkyDome opened was a real humdinger.
Our front page guy nearly had a stroke.
The world kept throwing him loops, on a night when the opening of Toronto’s big, concrete cathedral of sport should have been a slam-dunk for top billing.
In Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini inconveniently died. In Beijing, Chinese soldiers slaughtered student protesters in Tiananmen Square.
Reba McEntire even got married.
All on June 3, 1989.
SkyDome’s opening ceremony was its own melodrama. I was up in the press box with Christie Blatchford as all hell broke out below. I remember turning to Blatch and hollering, “Oh, the humanity!” It got real grisly.
They opened the roof, to show off, but as they did the heavens opened, too, and the bare concrete floor turned slick.
Thousands of folks dancers, from Albania to New Zealand, slipped, flipped and flopped all over. Most of the 55,000 spectators scrambled for exits or grabbed umbrellas.
Then we looked up and, son of a bitch, there were skydivers zipping through the open roof, braving wind and rain. Were they nuts?
They hit the wet concrete like skipping stones.
It’s lucky no one died that night.
Which is by way of reminding you SkyDome (no one over 30 calls it Rogers Centre) is 25, which is 110 in people years.
It is the seventh oldest ballpark in the majors, surpassed by ancient jewels like Fenway Park and Wrigley Field.
So, this being egotistical Toronto, you can bet pressure will grow for a cooler home for the Jays.
The topic came up on Jeff Blair’s first-rate show on 590 The Fan on Wednesday. Blair had Mayor John Tory on the line.
How, Jeff asked, would a new baseball stadium “fit into your vision for the city?”
“The way sports facilities are going these days,” replied Tory, “they become obsolete faster than you think.”
But don’t expect City Hall to ante up, Supermayor warned.
“Taxpayers have sort of indicated they don’t think it’s the right way of spending their money.”
Yes, we sort of have.
“Look, if you can’t pay for proper transit and proper housing,” said Tory, “you shouldn’t be rushing around paying for stadiums.”
Not to mention, Tory has enough woes, including his leaky first budget and a drop in his approval rating from 74% to 67%, according to a Forum Research poll Wednesday.
I’m with Tory on stadiums, though City Hall pays way too much on lots of other things.
Lest we forget, SkyDome was built ridiculously over-budget ($150 million turned into $590 million), was bailed out by the province (AKA you and me), then went bankrupt, and finally was snapped up by Rogers for about the price of two decent pitchers and a sack of TV remotes.
Not exactly the kind of project you want to jump into with your sweat-stained tax dollars.
Besides, I sort of like that big hunk of cement at the foot of the CN Tower.
True, it has sunk to or near the bottom of all lists of favourite major league parks. Yelp’s ranking puts Rogers Centre dead last, behind even Tampa’s Mickey Mouse Tropicana Field.
Washington Nats blogger Mark Zuckerman toured MLB’s 30 sites and panned ours last summer: “This place once felt futuristic but now feels like a bad example of what we thought the future would look like back in the ’80s.”
Well, you can’t go back to the future. The last rivet had barely been driven into SkyDome’s roof before baseball trends shifted to retro, homey, easier to fill parks like Baltimore’s Camden Yards.
And they’re fun, like Wrigley (built in 1912) is fun. So expect calls for something similar here to grow as Rogers Centre gets creakier and more out of step with the rest of baseball. Even Rogers, which owns both the team and park, can’t resist forever.
But, for me, a building’s memories are as important as its mortar. And the place still works fine, especially since they widened the concourses.
If the Jays put in real grass as expected by 2018, you’ll think you’re at a Wrigley on human growth hormones.
The empty seats will still stick out, though, if the Jays keep stumbling.
A-ha. There’s a cost-saving measure Supermayor might appreciate:
Keep the ballpark. Get a new team.
www.torontosun.com/2015/01/28/new-ballpark-for-jays-would-be-a-tough-sell
