The Chris Moeller Archives

Miami gets the latest "Bailout Park"

Despite operating during the nation's worst economic crisis in 70 years, a Miami/Dade County Commission signed off yesterday, by a vote of 9-4, on a $515 million taxpayer-funded ballpark for the baseball Marlins in the Little Havana neighborhood of their city. The facility is expected to be completed by 2012. At which time, the Florida Marlins will officially become the Miami Marlins, according to team owner Jeffrey Loria. During the funding debate, MLB COO Bob DuPay warned the commission that Miami would put itself in danger of becoming "the only major city in America without major league baseball" if it didn't approve the gift.

Jeffrey Loria, if you don't know, is one of the real slimeballs in or out of the game. He made his name in baseball by piloting the once-prosperous Montreal Expos straight into the ground. He purchased the franchise in 1999, immediately demanding a new taxpayer-funded ballpark, even though the current house of the Expos, Olympic Stadium, had still not been paid off. After being refused by that community, Loria set out to fold the team. The roster was dismantled, the payroll was slashed to the lowest level in the league, the English-language radio broadcasts were ended, and a local television agreement was reached with, I think, the old DuMont network.

Loria and Commissioner Selig then cooked up what may have been the most unscrupulous deal in sports history-- an agreement that allowed Loria to sell the Expos to a business partnership that was, in effect, the commissioner's office, with the purpose of contracting the team. Only a lawsuit filed against another forcibly-contracted team, the Minnesota Twins, kept both teams in business, and Loria's former business partners filed racketeering charges against him.

In 2002, the owner of the Marlins, John Henry (not the mythical working hero of the 19th century) sold his team to Loria, with the understanding that Major League Baseball would allow him to purchase the Boston Red Sox (Henry wound up with the "winning" bid for the Red Sox, but not the "highest"). Both men moved up one chair in the franchise fraternity, the Expos became the Nationals of Washington D.C., and Olympic Stadium was taken over by feral cats.

Settling in South Florida in 2003, Loria took another run at that sweet, sweet taxpayer coin-- but this time in a riper, less-enlightened political climate. By 2008, as the local citizenry continued to hold out on Loria's demands, the Marlins had a total team payroll ($21,836,500) less than half the size of the second-lowest MLB team total (Tampa Bay at $43,820,598), and less than the total amount Yankees thirdbaseman Alex Rodriguez makes annually ($27,000,000).

With his hand firmly out last week, Loria promised the people of Miami and Dade County that stadium construction would create 2,000 jobs for the area, albeit temporary. "The timing for the stadium could not be better," Loria slithered, "People need jobs, people need paychecks. The time to get it done is now." Of course, those 2,000 jobs would also be created if Loria, a prominent Manhattan-based art dealer, paid for his own stadium.

County negotiators put a provision in the agreement that cuts Loria's profits if he attempts to sell the team within the next seven years (a cleverly-devised "flip tax"), but buried in the fine print of the agreement was a "death clause" stipulation that if Loria died during those seven years, Miami taxpayers would lose out on their equity as a Loria heir would be allowed to sell the team and claim 100% of the sale's proceeds. Discovery of this stipulation set up the bizarre scene last month when the Marlins team president, David Samson, Loria's son-in-law, made a public promise that Loria would remain alive for those seven years.

Taxpayer-funded ("bailout") ballparks are bonanzas for Major League Baseball. A Minnesota State University researcher found that the financial value of a franchise rises an average of $50 million in the first year alone after a new stadium is completed. Approval for this particular stadium was even easier than most, in that it didn't require a voter referendum. It's not immediately apparent where Loria could have even relocated his team if his money grab had failed, making the commission's decision thoroughly and finally inexplicable.

What we're left with is a collection of nine dimwits on a commission who have just blown hundreds of millions in taxpayer money on a team that South Floridians have already chosen to ignore with their pocketbooks. League-low attendance figures and alienated fans have been Loria's calling card for better than a decade now, in two vastly-different North American environs, but he's just been given a gift he's always wanted and never deserved-- the 37,000-seat ballpark of his dreams. It's going to wind up being wasteful in more ways than one-- 15,000 seats would probably be enough.

posted by CM @ 9:44 AM