Boston's Alternative Source! image!
   
Feedback

[This Just In]

BALL BOY
Rudy’s off-base stadium plan

BY SETH GITELL

Rudy Giuliani is Time magazine’s 2001 Person of the Year. He’s courageous, admirable, and inspiring. All true — even with his mean-spirited parting shot directed at Boston’s murder rate last week. But Hizzoner made a colossal blunder during his last week in elective office, one worse than his anti-Beantown barrage: he proposed that the financially strapped Big Apple commit $800 million to construct new ballparks for the New York Yankees, the most profitable club in Major League Baseball, as well as for the New York Mets.

The New York papers are billing Giuliani’s move as part of the outgoing mayor’s bid for a legacy — as if what Giuliani has accomplished since September 11 is insufficient. "Trying to build on his legacy, Mayor Giuliani announced yesterday what he called a dream deal — plans for building new domed ballparks for the Yankees and Mets," reported the New York Post. "New baseball stadiums were the last and perhaps most important piece of unfinished business that Mr. Giuliani had sought to clean up as he entered his final weeks," reported the New York Times. Even conservative New York Post columnist and editorial writer Bob McManus made this weak-hearted attempt at support for Giuliani’s plan. "Why spend tax dollars on ballparks so that very rich men — both owners and players — can become even richer?" the usually cogent McManus asked. Because as long as the city’s going to spend millions of public dollars building something, it might as well be for something lasting, he wrote. (As if the construction of a new World Trade Center or memorial isn’t enough of a project for the city to take on these days.)

Giuliani’s $800 million scheme makes no more sense than John Harrington’s plan that includes $312 million of state and city subsidies for a new ballpark. But here in the Hub, Mayor Tom Menino had the good sense to take the city’s $200 million cash transfer off the table when the team's new ownership was announced. ("I don’t think it’s available right now," Menino told the Boston Herald last month. "We have a very tight budget.") These government-financed stadium plans are at best grandiose white elephants and at worse obscene examples of corporate welfare. There are a plethora of municipal concerns — such as the police and fire departments — that need New York City’s dollars far more than moneybags George Steinbrenner.

Finally, a footnote. The New York Times has yet to editorialize on Giuliani’s plan, but it has made several comments on its editorial page that indicate a position. On Sunday, the Times opined that "since [incoming mayor Michael] Bloomberg’s attitude toward baseball appears to be less emotional than Mayor Giuliani’s, he should be able to take an objective look at the deal for two baseball stadiums his predecessor came up with during his last week in office." Last April the Times editorial page invoked "city financing of new stadiums" and warned against "endorsing any grand spending plans." Let’s hope that the Times, which is part of the successful team of bidders to purchase the Boston Red Sox, holds to that same policy when it comes to Menino and Boston — not just to Giuliani and New York.

Issue Date: January 3 - 10, 2002

Back to the News and Features table of contents.