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Portland Expos: It's been all about bonds, not Bonds

By MIKE WILSON
Monday, September 13, 2004

You realize how close you were to seeing major league baseball history being made in Portland, don't you?

You realize how close Barry Bonds came to chasing his 700th home run against the Portland Expos, and not some other National League West team, right?

You realize you were on the verge of having to boo the home team, the one you and the rest of the city have pined for for so, so long, when it (sigh) pitched around Bonds again? Right?

If you didn't realize this, it's not your fault. Yes, you've been hearing for more than two years how tantalizingly close a major league baseball team has come to relocating in Portland. You have heard about earmarking state income taxes to help pay for the ballpark, about stadium district business taxes and about some entity needing to hand up some sort of a guarantee for some ungodly amount of bonds. But you have not heard about baseball.

And that tells you why, even if the Sistine Chapel of stadiums were built in Portland, major league baseball would never survive. Not enough of the thousands of baseball fans in Portland are sold on being fans of a baseball team in Portland.

Every leading argument for a major league franchise in Portland has relied on the gospel that a stadium and a team would be creatine for Portland's economy. Proponents make the stadium financing package appear no different than a proposal to expand infrastructure to lure business and jobs to an industrial park.

They ignore a monumental difference: A chip wafer manufacturing plant, once constructed and served by its new water and sewer lines, doesn't rely on attracting spectators for its survival.

That's ironic, because a chip wafer manufacturing plant in Portland probably could draw more paying customers than a baseball team. Consider that 2,743 fans came to see the Portland Beavers on Saturday night. Yes, 2,743 -- for a possible playoff-series clinching game, featuring the team with Triple A baseball's best regular season record, on a day only one of Oregon's three Division I football teams played. No doubt -- a chip wafer manufacturing plant could outdraw baseball.

Granted, the Beavers aren't major league. Consider, however, that eight players on the Beavers' roster Saturday night (and another two on the Sacramento River Cats') have played in the majors this season, and few fans without the scouting DNA of Branch Rickey can distinguish the difference between Triple A and the majors.

Attendance for the Beavers is important to keep in mind. The people pushing a major league stadium on us operate under the assumption that the $350 million toy box will draw more than 2,743 fans -- a lot more. They anticipate an average of 28,000 fans for 81 home games.

"If we can't draw 28,000, we shouldn't do this," Oregon Stadium Campaign leader David Kahn told The Oregonian's Ted Sickinger for an article published in June.

Evaluating the likelihood of 28,000 fans showing up once the stadium is built, moreover, is putting the closer before the starter. The stadium finance plan also assumes that nearly 5,000 people will pay $5,000 each for seat licenses.

Quick poll: How many of your friends and neighbors have $5,000 in disposable income they're ready to use to buy the right to spend more of their disposable income on tickets and concessions?

Another way of looking at the seat license assumption (a $24 million component in the financing plan) is that more than 1,000 companies would have to buy four seat licenses each, totaling $20,000 a company. As Sickinger wrote, the 1,000 companies nearly equals the entire population of companies with more than 100 employees in the area.

Baseball proponents have portrayed their quest as if it will be successful and complete once the stadium is funded and built and a team moves in. It's as if what goes on at the stadium is immaterial.

Nothing like a barren, cavernous steel structure to spice up a city. Selling the stadium plan strictly as an economic pick-me-up reveals that even baseball proponents lack faith in Portland's desire for baseball.

They could have mentioned the possibility of seeing Bonds pursue Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron. They could have enticed us with the possibility of watching Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux. They could have speculated how realignment in the National League would affect a team's postseason prospects.

And that would have impressed people -- the 2,743 at the Beavers' game Saturday, at least. When Portland received the all-but-official snub on the Expos' relocation last month, the response from the stadium people was predictable. "It's not just about now," Kahn told The Oregonian's John Hunt. "It's about later, too."

In other words, it has not been about just the Expos. No need to be specific. Just say it: It's never been about baseball.

Mike Wilson: 503-412-7065; mlwilson@news.oregonian.com.