Taxpayers Aren’t Going for the Pitch

No more extortion? No more subsidizing stadiums for billionaire owners? It may not be a taxpayers revolt, but the voters continue to speak.

It happened in November in Pittsburgh, where voters in an 11-county area rejected a half-cent sales-tax increase to fund a new ballpark for the Pirates.

It happened again Tuesday in the Triad area of North Carolina, where voters in Guilford and Forsyth counties rejected a restaurant- and stadium-ticket tax designed to finance construction of a ballpark that might have become a new home for the Minnesota Twins. Don Beaver, a North Carolina nursing-home mogul who has been trying to buy the Twins but needed to know that they would have a place to play, said the Triad effort is now dead.

The Twins, who have failed to generate legislative support for a new ballpark in Minnesota, are uncertain about their next step.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” owner Carl Pohlad said. “We’ll have to regroup. We know Charlotte wants the team, and we’ll go from there.”

Charlotte has a professional football and basketball team, but with a metropolitan population of 1.2 million may not be ready for baseball and an 81-game home schedule.

Business leaders there told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that voters in Charlotte weren’t interested in increased taxes either and would certainly not approve a stadium on speculation. Charlotte civic and business leaders are scheduled to meet May 18 to discuss their baseball options.

The Triad rejection actually gives the Twins some breathing room in the hope of mounting a new bid for political and public stadium support in the Twin Cities.

A pitchman named Bud Selig continues to insist the Twins can’t survive in the current environment of the Metrodome. A local group headed by Clark Griffith, son of former owner Calvin Griffith, has a standing offer of $86 million and could reenter the picture. In the meantime, the Twins seem committed to the Metrodome through 1999, and the city has indicated it is willing to work out a lease extension featuring more favorable terms.

A favorable lease at the Metrodome?

“That’s one of those oxymorons,” club President Jerry Bell said.

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The New York Yankees will always have a Bronx Bomber mystique, but their remarkable start is more the result of patience and diversity than power.

According to Stats Inc., Yankee hitters make the opposition deliver 18.57 pitches an inning, most in the American League and more than the league average of 16.58.

They average more walks than any other team in the league, have hit into the fewest double plays and have stolen more bases, doing it with the most successful ratio.

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It’s probably only a temporary demotion, but Roberto Hernandez, who received a $22.5-million contract from the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, has been moved out of the closer role after blowing three of five recent save chances. The Devil Rays will try to get Hernandez into a non-pressure situation to work out his problems.

“Ideally, with us leading, 25-0,” Manager Larry Rothschild said.