Some Oriole souvenirs thru the years.
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Slightly expanded version of an email I sent today to the fabulous Sports Junkies, the dominant sports radio program in Washington, D.C., about the Orioles leaving Fort Lauderdale and the Red Sox making even more money my moving their spring training circus to a mini-Fenway Park in Fort Myers. I listened to them from their humble beginnings years ago to their days of dominance.
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The past few weeks I've taken notice of all the folks on Florida's West Coast who've been ripping the general idea of the Orioles moving there, here- http://search.news-press.com/sp?aff=1172&keywords=Orioles&skin=100 and at other places, saying that the O's are clearly a second-tier team who'll draw less (enthusiastic) fans who'll spend less money in the area during spring training than their accent-heavy NE cousins from Massachusetts.
As if simply being a loyal Orioles fan was not enough of a burden itself!
But now, it looks like the Red Sox will be getting new digs in Fort Myers, especially one modeled on Fenway Park -ka-ching!!
It's a case of the rich getting richer, a veritable license to print $$$$ Meanwhile, the Orioles...
All of these months later, to my mind, there has yet to be a definitive story in local South Florida media about how Broward County, the City of Ft. Lauderdale and local Congressional representatives were all asleep at the wheel, and completely botched the Ft. Lauderdale Stadium situation with the Orioles, thru excessive procrastination and lack of attention to detail.
La plus ca change...
As someone who has followed this from the beginning, the Broward County Commission has yet to demand public answers from their own employees involved in the deal, much less from Greater Ft. Lauderdale CVB head Nicki Grossman, a former Broward County Commissioner, who was the local person who spearheaded (bulldozed?) the agreement which has collapsed.
The only good part of it collapsing is that tax dollars that will NOT be going to help subsidize Peter Angelos, pere et fils & Company's future profits/inheritance.
And if you read the details below, you'll see that the Red Sox reportedly will pay a half-million dollars a year in rent at the new facility, while based on past published reports locally, the O's have been paying a paltry $120,000 a year.
As you guys will recall me mentioning in past emails over the years while up in Arlington County and then down here, I'm a lifetime Oriole fan who grew-up in South Florida going to at least 6-8 O's spring training games every year at Miami Stadium in the early-mid '70's as a kid with my friends and family during the team's glory days.
I listened to their ballgames on WGBS AM-710 (pre-Radio Mambi) while Chuck Thompson provided the play-by-play accounts of those great players and teams, whose roster I knew backwards and forwards.
I'd even catch a bus after school from the 163rd Street Shopping Center to go out to the then-Biscayne College to watch the O's minor leagers that John Steadman might've mention in a newspaper column. Then I went to about 20-25 games a year at Camden Yards when I lived in the D.C. area for 15 years.
Since moving back to South Florida, I've watched their games on MASN via DirecTV when I can, loved their spring training programming on weekends, even while the Marlins were, typically, so clueless in their marketing that not ONE single Marlin spring training game was televised into South Florida, while I could catch a couple of games of other teams every March weekend on the various regional Fox Sports Network channels.
Thus, if I were to see the Marlins at all, it'd be on the Cardinal's TV network.
So, all that said, I've long lamented the fact that once the Yankees, Braves and Expos fled the South Florida area, the Orioles were at a decided competitive dis-advantage because of being so far away from other teams' spring training bases and stadiums, and NOT having their minor leaguers actually on-site, they spend more time traveling around the state on buses than any other MLB team in FL during spring training.
Though its clearly lack of talent not sluggishness that accounts for the O's woes once the season actually starts!
Though I've personally liked the proximity of seeing them play every spring since I moved back to the area in late 2003, I was against the 2006 Orioles deal IF it meant destroying the City of Fort Lauderdale's Lockhart Stadium, to my mind, the single best amateur sports facility down here, where I grew-up going to Ft. Lauderdale Strikers NASL games when those were always fun and exciting, esp. against the Tampa Bay Rowdies, which were legendary fun among my circle of friends.
The record is pretty clear the city, county and Congressman Ron Klein didn't exactly do their proper due diligence and keep their attention properly focused on the FAA's legitimate concerns about the true valuation of the land, so it wasn't a sweetheart deal that short-changed taxpayers.
It seems to me based on what I already do know that there's still quite a lot of information that has never seen the light of day on this matter, which gets to -shocker!- how generally poor the local news coverage on this subject has been here, other than Sarah Talalay's work at the Sun-Sentinel http://blogs.trb.com/sports/custom/business/blog/ local news coverage being the central point of my letter (and subsequent blog post) yesterday to the Herald's ombudsman.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/decreasing-value-of-miami-herald.htmlAnd Talalay can't do everyone else's job PLUS her own, you know?
I still have all the docs, drawing and renderings of the proposed Orioles facility in FTL that the Orioles gave Broward County, stored-up on my computer.
At some point after the World Series and Election Day is over, I'll finally post them all on my blogs for everyone to see, and comment on some of the other factors at play here that I believe have led to this coming spring training down here being a real disaster.
While up at the stadium this past spring, where I'd have the proposed stadium drawings and specs handy, I spoke to lots of Oriole fans who made the trip south -some of whom were regular listeners of yours!- who said almost without exception, that they would NOT come down here again, even if the Orioles did play at FTL in March to finish out their contract, which is what they're currently planning on doing.
And that was seven months ago...
Part of me actually wishes the city and county would send the Orioles a letter saying don't bother coming down, there's a mysterious structural defect at the stadium that threatens public safety that can't possibly be fixed in time, so why don't they just plan on headin' out to the Cactus League in Arizona somewhere and play at some junior college facility while Vero Beach fixes up Dodgertown to their oh-so exacting specs.
I'd really, really love that.
Trust me, like all the other many botched things in South Florida involving local government, there are plenty of (ir)responsible parties at fault here, many of whom have thus far escaped their deserved proper scrutiny.
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SARASOTA - Balking at the $70 million price of building a new spring training stadium for the Boston Red Sox, some city and county commissioners say the Baltimore Orioles are a much cheaper alternative.
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South Florida Sun-Sentinel
VERO'S BASEBALL TALKS MAY WRAP UP SOON
Ed Bierschenk, Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers
September 21, 2008
Negotiations with the team to replace the Los Angeles Dodgers may be nearing a conclusion - possibly this week.
But officials are still skittish about naming the team, which sources said is the Baltimore Orioles , in fear of upsetting them, so they won't verify they are dealing with the Orioles for the former spring training home of the Dodgers.
The Orioles have held spring training at Fort Lauderdale Stadium for 13 years.
But the team's future in Fort Lauderdale was put in doubt after the Federal Aviation Administration denied the city's request to be exempt from a $1.3 million annual payment for the upkeep of Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport in order to keep hosting spring training at the adjacent stadium.
Vero Beach City Councilman Bill Fish, other City Council members and Indian River County commissioners all signed confidentiality deals that have prevented them from relating details of the negotiations, which involve both the stadium and the adjacent land once occupied by Dodgertown Golf Course.
Indian River County Administrator Joe Baird said he hopes something can be finalized next week, but City Manager Jim Gabbard wasn't willing to go that far.
"Hopefully, we will have some good news in the not-too-distant future. We are working hard to get a deal as quickly as possible," said Gabbard, who declined to comment on a report that the city sent its latest proposal to the team.
The Orioles declined to comment.
City and county officials held a lengthy meeting with team officials in late July.
Earlier that month, Baird said he and the team had gone through three draft agreements outlining plans for Dodgertown.
Sources said the plans for the complex could include a youth baseball academy for the former golf course site.
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In case anyone is curious, as may be noticeable up at the top in my letter, though I'm a very big sports fan, here and at parent blog South Beach Hoosier I've often lamented the fact that
despite the amount of tax money involved, how often financial numbers offered up by folks like Nicki Grossman of the Greater Ft. Lauderdale CVB as proof of the financial impact on the area of hosting events, like the Super Bowl, BCS Championship or the Orioles staying in Ft. Lauderdale for spring training were/are never put up to anything even resembling basic fact-checking scrutiny, much less, oh, forensic accounting. The local media just reports them as facts.
South Florida sports legend Hank Goldberg often spoke about this subject on his much-missed WQAM show as well, but the numbers proferred by the Orioles in relation to their 2006 deal, and passed off as legit estimates, were especially curious and over-the-top to my way of thinking.
Previous blog posts of mine mentioning the Orioles in some manner include:
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