MLB Replay and Atlanta's New Stadium

Today Major League Baseball joined the 21^st Century and approved an expanded replay system beginning next season. Out of all the professional sports, baseball has consistently resisted attempts to change anything about the game. The NFL, NHL, NBA, professional tennis, and even the Little League World Series all had replay systems in place before Major League Baseball. MLB commissioner Bud Selig has previously rejected any attempts to change the rules of baseball in order to speed up the length of games or make improvements to the quality of play and umpiring. He merely complains about it in the hopes that it will all go away. Instead Selig has focused on expanding the playoffs, insisting that the All-Star Game, an exhibition game designed to showcase the sport, should count for home-field advantage in the World Series, and quietly condoning and then condemning a PED epidemic that has sent many an aged sportswriter into a fainting spell. But now that baseball has made the great leap forward into the world of instant replay we should all rejoice, right?

Wrong. MLB’s plan for replay misses the entire point of using technology to aid in the umpiring of the game. Officiating in every sport should to try and get every call right, every time. Will it happen? No, it won’t. People and the rules they create are imperfect and always will be. But the efforts of umpires, managers, and league executives should all point in that direction. A quick examination of MLB’s replay plan reveals a fatal flaw. MLB’s plan places control of the challenges in the hands of managers by awarding them two challenges a game. A centralized replay system based in New York City will review all challenged calls. By placing the responsibility for instituting replay on managers, MLB has shifted the responsibility for getting the calls right off of umpires and onto managers. Managers, already wedded to antiquated in-game strategies (3 pitching changes an inning!), will have to deal with another strategic decision that should not be their responsibility. The officials in charge of enforcing the rules on the field should be in charge of reviewing plays. It is their responsibility to get these decisions right, not the managers. MLB would have been wise to look at the recent changes in the NFL challenge system that made the most important plays of the game, turnovers, touchdowns, and other crucial plays, automatically reviewable—shifting the review burden from coaches to officials. If MLB has any sense, which they don’t, they will fix this system before some key call in a game goes the wrong way because the manager ran out of challenges.

            This past week, the Atlanta Braves announced that they will leave Turner Field and move into a new stadium in nearby Cobb County beginning in 2017. The city of Atlanta will tear down Turner Field, built as part of the 1996 Olympics and afterwards refurbished for baseball, after only twenty years of use. Today, the Braves and Cobb County officials offered the first details of the financing for the new stadium. The Braves will pay for 55% of the construction costs with Cobb County picking up the remaining 45%. Cobb County will contribute three hundred million dollars to the stadium. The County will provide $14 million dollars up front for transportation upgrades and $10 million from the Cumberland Community Improvement District. The remaining 276 million dollars will come from thirty year revenue bonds issued by the county. This the breakdown per year according to Deadspin http://deadspin.com/heres-how-cobb-county-will-pay-for-the-braves-ballpar-1464404976

$400,000 a year from a new rental car tax

$940,000 a year from an existing hotel/motel tax

$2,740,000 a year from a new hotel/motel fee in that special business district

$5,150,000 a year from a property tax increase in the special business district

$8,670,000 a year from reallocating Cobb County property taxes

The deal will place a terrible burden on Cobb County taxpayers, in order to attract a sports team that will not funnel any profits back into the community. First, the deal diverts nearly eight and a half million dollars of property taxes away from underfunded schools, fire, police, and other county services in favor of a sports stadium (http://www.cbsatlanta.com/story/22280252/cobb-county-school-board-approves-budget-cuts). The deal also does not make clear what will happen if the projected revenues from rental cars, hotels, and property tax increases fail to materialize. It is highly unlikely the Braves will cover any shortfalls from Cobb County, increasing the burden on Cobb County taxpayers. Finally, the taxpayers of Cobb County will not have a chance to vote on the stadium because the county will fund its share of the stadium without instituting new taxes apart from the special business district. The decision lies entirely with the Cobb County Commission.

            Neil deMause’s Field of Schemes has highlighted how publicly financed stadium deals rarely benefit taxpayers who foot the bill. Despite the claims of team owners and their political supporters, publicly financed stadiums do not improve the local economy through job creation or increased infrastructure. Sports stadiums create small numbers of seasonal, low-wage jobs—hardly the engines of economic growth. Hot dog and beer vendors do not grow the economy, investments in white collar industry do. The impact of sporting events on surrounding businesses is also overblown and negligible. Any surrounding businesses, restaurants, retail stores etc., would only benefit from increased customers in on a small number of game days—for a baseball stadium, 81 days a year, for the NBA, 41, for the NFL, 8—and within limited hours bracketing the event. Additionally any profits from the stadium go back to the team and not taxpayers. In the meantime, the taxpayers of Cobb County and elsewhere will continue to shill out millions of public dollars that place the profits right into the pockets of billionaire owners.