What with the tendency these days to assume that everyone’s judgments reflect his or her prejudices, today’s post must start with a personal note, if not a personal confession.

The information and analysis found below might lead the casual observer to suppose that the News Guy is hostile – or at least indifferent – to the game of baseball.

True, precisely as true as that Popeye dislikes spinach and Bugs Bunny abhors carrots.

In fact, the News Guy has now and then reflected that had he taken but one tenth of the time he has spent over the decades going to, watching, reading about, or talking about baseball games (and, even earlier, playing in them, not all that impressively), and used that time in productive effort, he might today be a very rich man indeed (or confined to a penitentiary, depending on which path of productive effort he had chosen).

Having established that, let’s turn to the subject of the Vermont Lake Monsters of the Class A New York-Penn League They want us to build them a ball park. If we don’t, they’ll go away.

OK, neither team owner Ray Pecor nor General manager C.J. Knudsen has made that threat in so many words. In fact, both have said they might be satisfied with substantial renovation of their present home grounds, Centennial Field, the 101-year-old stadium owned by the University of Vermont.

But Pecor told the Burlington Free Press that bringing the old ball park up to new standards might cost as much as $20 million, and “if you are going to spend that much, you might a well build a new park with all the amenities, without cement seats and (with) the ability to park near the park and not take a shuttle.”

Most Lake Monsters fans now have to park near UVM’s Gutterson Field House and be shuttled to Centennial Field.

Pecor’s cost estimate for Centennial Field renovation could be high. Both Tom Torti, the president of the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce, and C.J. Knudsen, the team’s general manager, said the old ball park might be spruced up for more like $10 million to $12 million.

“Technically I think it could, and could be functional,” Knudsen said. “We need to undergo some renovations. When we first came here in 1994, Centennial was functional. Since then, other teams (in the league) have had major renovations or brand new ball parks funded by a city, county, state or sports commission. These facilities are beautiful ball parks, great for fans and great for players. They have plenty of parking, comfortable seats, facilities for the disabled. ”

It’s easy to see why the Lake Monsters want better facilities. Centennial Field is the oldest ball park in the minor leagues. A report by Major League Baseball found that the lighting was inadequate for professional baseball. Upgrading the lighting system probably wouldn’t be all that expensive, but Knudsen also said, “we do not have enough lockers in our locker room. We don’t have press facilities or anything like that.”

There’s where the multi-million dollar price tag comes in.

It’s also easy to understand why business leaders like Torti think a new ball park would be good for Burlington’s economy. If nothing else, it would make their jobs easier.

“Having a minor league baseball team gives Burlington one more of those little things that helps us look like we play big for a small player,” Torti said. “When people are thinking of relocating here we can show them that for seven dollars you can go see baseball.”

It may only be Class A (unlike the picture above, Wrigley Field, in the big time), but it’s professional baseball, and some of the players will make it to the major leagues. Ken Griffey, Jr. once played in Burlington. Besides, the games are fun, even on concrete bleacher seats (stadium cushions are inexpensive and easy to carry).

No wonder, then, that according to that Free Press story, almost everyone is for doing something to keep the Lake Monsters in Burlington – the business leaders, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Mayor Bob Kiss. Who would be against it?

How about the taxpayers. And maybe owners of businesses other than baseball clubs.

Go back and carefully parse what General Manager Knudsen said. All those other new and/or improved stadiums were “funded by a city, county state or sports commission.” That’s you, folks, if you pay taxes, and among economists who have studied the matter, using public money to build stadiums for privately owned sports teams is, at the very least, a debatable use of scarce public resources.

“If your objective is to create jobs there are better ways to spend money,” said Raymond Sauer, an economics professor at Clemson University in South Carolina,, and the founder of the “Sports Economics” web site. “Invest in infrastructure that brings in people who want to open up businesses that employ people year-round. A stadium sits empty most of the time, and when it’s filled, it mostly employs ushers and hamburger flippers.”

Nor is it at all certain, economists say, that having a sports team in town boosts the economy.

“Despite what many people believe, professional sports venues typically do not spur large-scale economic activity,” wrote Dennis Coates, an economics professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in an article for the American Enterprise Institute magazine..

Instead, economists argue, public financing of sports arenas and stadiums redistributes economic activity, often to the detriment of the very people whose taxes go up to subsidize the stadium.

“It really is fundamental that people only have so much money to spend on entertainment,” Sauer said. So if a fancy new ball park brings more people to Burlington to watch the Lake Monsters, the ball club’s gain is likely to be another business’s loss.

That would be especially true if the state put up some of the money. It could only do that by raising taxes or cutting services statewide. But if a new Burlington ball park attracts fans from, say, Montpelier or Stowe, that’s money they won’t spend in restaurants or movie theatres in Montpelier or Stowe (or at the Montpelier games of the Vermont Mountaineers of the New England Collegiate Baseball League). Business owners in those cities are not likely to be happy about being taxed to subsidize their competitors.

It might be possible to finance a new or upgraded stadium from the Burlington area alone. But the same problem might arise. One idea, according to both Torti and Knudsen, is for a multi-purpose facility for sports, concerts, business meetings, perhaps conventions, right on the waterfront.

The usual financing scheme for such a facility would include raising the rooms taxes for local hotels that presumably benefit from the presence of the ball club.  But there’s already a conference center nearby – the Sheraton, right near the University and just across the city line in South Burlington. It won’t want to charge its customers an extra tax to pay off the bonds that built a new facility designed to compete with it.

More problems. UVM has dropped varsity baseball, meaning there is one less potential user of a new stadium. Centennial Field is right next to a residential area where homeowners probably don’t want to deal with regular crowds of concert-goers whose ticket purchases would help pay for renovations. Many, if not most people in Burlington probably don’t want a big new structure right along the lake, especially if it’s surrounded by a big parking lot.

This doesn’t mean that some way can’t be found to keep the Lake Monsters in Burlington without asking state or city taxpayers to foot the bill. Some variant of that local rooms and meals tax plan might prove politically sellable and economically defensible.

Dennis Coates has his doubts.

“Consider the common practice of funding stadium and arena subsidies with new taxes on hotel occupancy and rental cars,” he wrote. “One argument for such taxes at the local level is that they are paid by outside visitors, many of whom may be in town to see the sporting events. But the taxes would also be paid by traveling businessmen and conventioneers. When comparing cities to host an upcoming meeting, businesses and professional associations may select between otherwise comparable cities based on which one has the lower hotel and rental car taxes. In other words, the new taxes used to subsidize the stadium construction may ultimately reduce visits to the city by non-sports-related travelers.”

The Lake Monsters, six-and-six before last night’s game against the Hudson Valley Renegades, and tied with the Lowell Spinners for second place in their division, host the Renegades tomorrow on the Fourth of July (and a Grand and Glorious one to you all).

Go on out to the game. Let’s root-root-root for the Home Team, and if they should leave it’s a shame. That doesn’t mean it’s the taxpayer’s job to keep them here.

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