Taxpayer Subsidized Baseball – A Swing and a Miss!

September is here and the dog days of summer have disappeared, which means baseball’s pennant races are heating up. Nothing is more synonymous with September in America than baseball and, unfortunately, nothing is more synonymous with baseball these days than hefty taxpayer-funded handouts to subsidize ballparks.   Minneapolis residents recently learned this the hard way when the Minnesota Twins unveiled their new stadium, Target Field.

By the time Target Field opened in 2010, Hennepin County taxpayers paid $350 million of the $555 million price tag of the new Twins ballpark, which translates to $303 for every man, woman and child in the county. Minnesota taxpayers, many of whom will never see the Twins play a game at their fancy new digs, were also forced to chip in $5.5 million towards the ballpark’s bottom line.

Minnesotans aren’t the only taxpayers plagued by economically unsound stadium subsidy schemes. New Yorkers shelled out a staggering $1.8 billion to underwrite the cost of new ballparks for the Yankees and the Mets. In Houston, city leaders levied $180 million in hotel and rental car taxes to fund the Astros’ stadium Minute Maid Park. When the ballpark opened in 2000, Houston residents still owed more than $32 million on the team’s former stadium, the Astrodome.

The major leagues don’t have a monopoly on budget busting ballpark subsidies. Over the past decade, billions of tax dollars have gone to construct or refurbish minor league baseball parks, as well.

Jacksonville, Florida taxpayers picked up the entire $34 million tab for the Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville, home to a AA-level ball club.  In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, taxpayers coughed up $27.7 million for a new ballpark for their class A-level team, the Dash. A minor league stadium in Sugar Land, Texas, will open in 2012 at a cost to taxpayers of $27.9 million. Even Great Falls, Montana residents recently forked over $600,000 to renovate their rookie league field.

Unfortunately, taxpayers across the United States, from the biggest cities to tiny towns, are being burned by big ticket stadium subsidies for local baseball teams.  And now it looks like the old catch phrase of ‘that’s as American as apple pie and baseball’ will now have to include taxpayer subsidized baseball.