Will Sin City Strike Out?

Talk of a field of dreams within walking distance of the Las Vegas Strip is stirring the imagination of fans who hope to see baseball’s biggest stars playing in the southern Nevada desert.

But Sin City might have too many strikes against it to land the Montreal Expos -- or any other major league team.

Questions about gambling tainting the integrity of the game, the financing for a $450 million stadium, and whether people would bypass slot machines for stadium turnstiles might keep Las Vegas on the bench.

“It would be wonderful to have a major league team here,” said June Munson, a 39-year-old mother of three in suburban Henderson who does the Chicken Dance in her club box during the seventh inning stretch at minor league Las Vegas 51s games.

“I would go,” she said. “But I don’t know if they have the numbers yet.”

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig said Thursday he expects team owners will pick a new home for the Expos by mid-July. The Expos, one of the worst-drawing clubs for more than a decade, were bought by the other 29 teams before the 2002 season and are expected to move by next year.

Don’t tell Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman that the smart money has the owners choosing Washington, D.C., or a spot near Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia. Other offers are from Monterrey, Mexico; Norfolk, Va.; Portland, Ore.; and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

“If they’re smart they’ll pick Las Vegas,” said Goodman, who’s been credited with the pitch that attracted out-of-town investors to the idea of making Las Vegas a big league town.

“I think that when they do a size analysis, people forget we bring in about 35 million visitors a year, many from areas that have major-league baseball,” Goodman said of the hotel-rich Las Vegas area. “They would definitely fill the ballpark.”

That ballpark would be a 40,000-seat retractable-roof stadium about a block off the Strip, said Michael Shapiro, a consultant whose Larkspur, Calif.-based firm is fielding the proposal.

Shapiro, a lawyer and former executive with the San Francisco Giants and Turner Sports, said he and Centerfield Management Group partner Eric Blatt represent a New York developer.

A group led by Lou Weisbach, an entrepreneur from Niles, Ill., and Chicago Cubs broadcaster and former pitcher Steve Stone, is looking for a possible owner.

“They’re out seeking an ownership group,” Shapiro said. “We’re out putting a stadium deal together.”

Property for the stadium would be leased from Caesars Entertainment Inc. The site is a parking lot behind the Bally’s and Paris-Las Vegas hotel-casinos, at the heart of a tourist town with 1.6 million residents and 130,000 hotel rooms. Shapiro said Caesars would have no ownership or management role in the stadium or the team.

Selig called it premature to address whether Las Vegas’ position as gambling capital of the nation, with legalized sports betting, would hurt the proposal.

Shapiro downplayed the issue, saying problems arise with illegal sports betting, not regulated and taxed gambling.

“To characterize the community, that it only has gambling, ignores so much diversity and an appeal that gets minimized,” Shapiro said.

Don Logan, president and general manager of the Las Vegas 51s, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ top farm team, said Las Vegas would be the smallest media market in major league baseball.

Logan noted Las Vegas ranks 51st in on the Nielson Media Research market size list, well below Kansas City (31), Cincinnati (32) and Milwaukee (33).

“This is pretty much a monodimensional market, and it all revolves around gambling,” said Logan, an executive with Mandalay Baseball Properties. “And look at all the entertainment options. There’s no place in the world with more and better entertainment options.”

The 51s, named for their proximity to the once-secret Area 51 Air Force research base, have drawn an average of 3,800 spectators per game this year at 9,334-seat Cashman Field, a 21-year-old city-owned stadium north of downtown.

Logan, who hopes this year to extend a four-year affiliation with the Dodgers, said the proposal for a Las Vegas major league team has stalled talks about a new 10,000-seat stadium for his team in suburban Henderson or renovations at Cashman.

“It hinges on when they say they’re not going to come to Las Vegas,” Logan said.

He said a major league team might find it hard to draw 40,000 fans from a 24-hour town where neon-lit casinos and headline shows compete for attention, and many residents work swing or overnight shifts.

But Shapiro called Las Vegas unique because of the estimated 200,000 tourists in town every day, and said he foresaw a Las Vegas team in the National League West playing Colorado, Los Angeles, Arizona, San Francisco and San Diego.

“Look at where people who come to Las Vegas come from,” he said. “Most come from cities where there is baseball. We think they will come to see their teams.”

Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn supports the idea of a major league team in Las Vegas, but he said there was no appetite in cash-strapped Nevada for raising taxes to pay for a stadium.

“There absolutely would be no state financing,” the governor said. “If it involves any other tax dollars, it would have to be approved by local elected officials and then by the Legislature.”

Shapiro said his group was not seeking public financing. But he said it might ask the Legislature later to let Clark County, which encompasses the Las Vegas Strip, redirect tax revenues from the stadium to the team. The Legislature next meets in 2005.

“Assuming baseball gives us the green light and awards us the franchise, it’s going to be largely funded by private sources,” Shapiro said.

Mark Klimek, a physical therapist, goes to 51s games and makes baseball trips to Phoenix, San Diego and Los Angeles. He’s seen minor league basketball and hockey and indoor soccer come and go in the 36 years he has lived here, and figures he’ll see a major league baseball team in his hometown sometime in his lifetime.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think we are big enough yet,” he said.