NPR this morning was reporting on the recent problems the District of Columbia has been having in regards to bringing a major league baseball team to the city. Now, if you do a search on this log for sports content, you’ll come up pretty dry—and there will be almost no mention of baseball (except, maybe, the mention of free Orioles tickets.) I like the football, although I don’t arrange my Sundays around it; I like the baseball as long as the tickets are cheap, my beer is full, and I’m actually sitting in the stadium. Hockey is fun, but there’s none of that this year. I don’t write much about sports, but this story gets at the heart of something I’ve thought about for years.

Apparently, the mayor of D.C. promised MLB all kinds of concessions in the standard “We [the city] will roll over and pay both MLB and the team owners for the privilege of hosting this team in our city, as well as hiking taxes on our citizens to generate the money to build them a stadium” plan. Usually this deal forfeits parking concessions and other revenue-generating enterprises, involves knocking down a large amount of existing buildings, and leasing the city-owned land back to the team for $1. (See: Ravens Stadium.) The common wisdom is that the team’s games will bring revenue into the city via tourism, merchandise sales, and taxes. What it usually boils down to, in my opinion, is trickle-down economics—the team, owners, and MLB pocket the lion’s share, while the city is forced to sell bonds and further tax its citizens to pay for the whole thing, just so that it can claim a team (for a limited time. Just wait ’till those attendance records start dropping.) The city gets a pittance of revenue through stuff like payroll taxes on minimum-wage earning concessioneers.

In a rare, well-intentioned move, the D.C. City Council decided that it would sign a contract with an added provision that half the money to build a stadium would have to come from private financing, not the taxpayers. And, predictably, MLB lost it’s frickin’ mind. “WHAT?!?! We deign to offer you a baseball team (after having taken two away from you already) and you expect us to pay for some of it?!? HOW DARE YOU!”

I say: Fuck Major League Baseball. Go watch a triple-A team and save yourself some money. (Chances are, they’re not taking steroids yet.)

To a certain someone: You got so very, very lucky yesterday. You’d better show some contrition and respect for that, or I’m going to go absolutely mental on you.

I used to work here. Still do, kinda.