Camden Yards Isn't Cure For O's Woes
by Michael Gee, Boston Herald, Thursday, July 20, 2000.
BALTIMORE - The most famous new ballpark of them all isn't all that new anymore.
Oriole Park at Camden Yards is 9 years old. It's the prototype for all major league stadiums built since then. If there were no Camden Yards, there would be no talk of a new Fenway Park. Without this place and what has happened here, John Harrington would be straining with all his might to keep the Sox at the old Fenway for another century.
Since Camden Yards is nearly a decade old, it has a track record. It's a record Massachusetts citizens should examine with care.
We're being asked to loan/give the Red Sox a good deal of money in return for receiving the material and spiritual benefits of a new ballpark in the Fenway. The Orioles' home provides the best evidence of what such a park can and cannot do for a team and a city.
Camden Yards tells us a new ballpark can provide a team's paying customers with a more pleasant and convenient baseball experience. It will provide gainful employment for many construction workers for a year or two. Last but not least, it will make vast, indecent sums of money for the franchise that plays there.
But that's it. Camden Yards shows the other benefits claimed for any new stadium are either unproven or pure hooey.
There's no denying Camden Yards is pleasant. Bostonians would be amazed how stress-free a night at the game becomes when there's plenty of parking, to name but one of Oriole Park's amenities.
There's no denying Camden Yards is a cash cow. The Orioles have been hideous the past two seasons, but the Birds still average more than 40,000 fans a game. They buy the souvenirs, they eat and drink in the joints in the park's zone of economic control.
In a way, Camden Yards has become a second Fenway. When baseball fans from anywhere are in the area, they try to catch a game here. And while Boston is a popular tourist destination in the summertime, it has nothing on Washington, D.C. But by making all that dough does Camden Yards help the Baltimore franchise stay "competitive?'' That's one of the loudest arguments made in favor of a new Fenway.
You couldn't prove it by history. In nine years at OP at CY, the Orioles have never gotten past the ALCS, no better than the Red Sox in cramped, decrepit Fenway.
You sure couldn't prove it by the standings. The Orioles are 40-52, far in arrears of the Yankees in the AL East. Owner Peter Angelos has spent money lavishly, but not wisely. He's got an old team (high-priced free agents are usually older players) with no pitching for the disaster that's occurred to it.
Lack of money dooms a ballclub to failure. But extra profits don't guarantee success. The Yankees don't win because they're rich. They win because they know how to use money better than other rich clubs.
Has Camden Yards generated a massive civic windfall by turning civic blight into a boom area? It's helped. The Orioles' home, and the Ravens' home next door, bring more visitors to Baltimore than the warehouses that used to sit here.
But sports franchises are only a small piece of the rebuilt Baltimore downtown. There are tourist attractions open year-round, like the aquarium. There are new hotels and restaurants that exist because people come to the Inner Harbor area every day, not just game days.
Most of all, there are office buildings full of workers that were half-full a decade ago. The revitalization of Baltimore's downtown is due to Alan Greenspan, not Cal Ripken.
If the economy tanks, a new Fenway won't stop Boston from going down the drain with it.
And the bliss of Baltimore's new downtown doesn't extend farther than a few blocks in any direction. This is still a mostly poor city with desperate problems, including a spectacular murder rate.
A new Fenway will be a more comfortable place to watch baseball. That's all it will be. If you think that's worth $270 million of public money, call or write your representative and demand action.
If you don't, call or write to demand inaction.
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