For a blog that isn't going to get out of the double digits in readership any time soon, the major sports sure do seem to be competing very hard to get included in it.
It isn't as if the NFL has done anything to relinquish its hold on the questionable-ethics crown in American sport. The Richie Incognito-Jonathan Martin story continues to splay out in ugly fashion. A random drug bust or two also broke out during the week. One player got caught on video engaging in Asian stereotyping, which couldn't feel good to the NFL after the preseason outcry over video of a different player dropping n-bombs. While the deaths of two different high school players due directly to injuries sustained on the football field are not strictly NFL stories, and should not be objectified as such, you can bet the NFL was unhappy to see them happen.
However, basketball jumped into the fray, and in a way guaranteed to cause a fluster among commentators. An NBA player took to Twitter to drop some of his own n-bombs, and announced to the world that such n-bombs would continue as a part of the "culture" (shades of Incognito/Martin, or shades of hip-hop?) that made it o.k. And hockey made its bid to get included as well, with an NHL player offering up the kind of twisted logic -- in which the thuggery of the NHL with its more-or-less endemic brawls on the ice somehow makes the sport safer (one wonders what Derek Boogaard would say, were he still around to address the issue) -- that reminds you the NHL has its own head-trauma issues.
But one of the main sub-motivations of trying to develop a blog on this subject is the conviction that sports are not extraordinary in their plunges into the depths of human failure. They are, at their worst as well as at their best, reflections of our own worst and best, and sometimes projections of our worst and best. Sometimes our own failings actually bleed over into how sports are run. While college football fandom would be an easy target, and I'm sure will eventually make its way into this blog, this is the week for me to prove I won't spare my favorite sport. Thank you, Atlanta Braves, for the chance to prove that.
In case you didn't hear, the Braves managed to let loose a surprise announcement that at the end of their current lease at Turner Field in the city of Atlanta, the team would be decamping to the suburbs, in a stadium in the northwest suburbs of Cobb County.
If you're thinking "hey, wait, Turner Field isn't that old, is it?" you are correct. Formerly the principal stadium for the 1996 Olympics, Turner Field isn't as old as most of my seminary classmates. Apparently, however, the Braves look at Turner Field and see an inaccessible dump: they claim that the facility needs something like $250 million in improvements, is inaccessible to public transportation, and doesn't have enough parking. Oddly, though, the cost of a new field will be between two and three times that amount (though Cobb County is apparently going to foot the bulk of that), will be completely inaccessible to public transportation*, and will have even less parking.
*more on this later
There is not much around Turner Field; that much is true. The area has not developed. How much the city of Atlanta is to blame I will leave for others to decide. But one unavoidable element of the story involves folks who aren't going to be able to go to games out in Cobb County quite so easily, undevelopment around Turner Field or no.
Turner Field isn't quite on top of a train stop for MARTA, the city's metro system, but there is one about a mile's walk away. There are fans, evidently, for whom that walk isn't a big deal, high crime potential or not. However, those fans won't have that option with the new location, because the MARTA system doesn't reach to Cobb County.
This is by design. Cobb County's design, not MARTA's.
Indeed, one of the apparent conditions for Cobb County to pursue this stadium deal (at least in the eyes of a certain party chairman in Cobb County) was that the move wouldn't be accompanied by a MARTA expansion.
This is Atlanta we're talking about, or particularly the city/suburbs divide. The race issue was going to come up.
Anyway, to the point of this blog:
1) The Braves are a business. They apparently believe that they will better serve their fan base by moving to this suburban location to the north, calculating that they'll gain enough to offset any loss of fans from, frankly, any other part of the Atlanta area -- not just the city proper. No sane person is going to drive from, say, Jonesboro to a game in Cobb County. If they want to make that calculation, that's their prerogative, and moral/ethical judgments don't necessarily apply.
2) What Cobb County is thinking, I'm not sure. The last linked article notes that the same pol is adamant that Cobb County citizens won't pay higher taxes to fund this new stadium.
Hmm. So, where is that $400+ million going to come from? Just how does Cobb County plan to pay for this? Oh, so they're pledging tax revenues after all, you say? Should be fun to see how this plays out.
As always this is going to raise the question of just what is going to get de-funded to pay that amount? Or how much are Cobb County taxes going up? Or do they resort to the old trick of getting others to pay for it, in the form of fees on things like hotel stays or restaurants? I have no plans to stay in a hotel in Cobb County any time soon, at least.
3) Here is where I'm going to get agitated: this stadium plan and location is going to be an environmental nightmare. And that, in this world, is damned immoral.
At the juncture of two of the busiest freeways around one of the highest-traffic cities there is, this is going to introduce a heck of a lot more traffic. Just what the world needs, more emissions. Is the memo not getting through? POLLUTION IS BAD. I don't care whether you believe in human-influenced climate change or not (which at this point is about like saying you don't believe in gravity or basic physics), POLLUTION IS BAD. So Cobb County, already a traffic nightmare (and believe me, they aren't all driving Priuses or electric cars), is going to add even more traffic to the mix eighty-one times a year. Any way we can just build a dome over the county so they can keep all that extra pollution to themselves?
As if the American addiction to cars (and frequently large and inefficient ones at that) weren't bad enough in emission terms, now we're just going to add to it. What kind of psycho handles traffic planning in Cobb County? The 75/285 area is a nasty, congested mess under the best of circumstances; how do you possibly plan to avoid making traffic snarls (and the emission that comes with them) any less problematic?
This is thoroughly justifiable from the point of view of a faith that emphasizes the need for humans to be good and just stewards of creation. (And please don't embarrass yourself by bringing up the burn-it-up drivel of the likes of Mark Driscoll; you'll tell me nothing about a genuinely faithful few of creation stewardship, and nothing good about yourself.) Apparently the regional dysfunction between Atlanta and its suburbs (whether you chalk it up to old attitudes that never die or not) is going to lead to a fairly profane ecological cock-up. When any other sane sports franchise wants to get near rapid transit, the Braves are running away from it (and for the Cobb-and-rob crowd among you, I've taken the train to games in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, and I'm still alive, so shove it). And yes, for this, they can justifiably be held morally responsible as much as Cobb County.
(PART 1: PART 2 TO COME)
No comments:
Post a Comment