Can We Please Play Ball?
Being realists with a conservative-leaning fiscal approach, we can certainly appreciate the fact that Mayor Bill Purcell and his administration have wanted to be methodical and measured about their role in getting a new downtown ballpark for our beloved Nashville Sounds. But...what's it been? About two years now, is what. It's time to take this arm off ice and get in the game.
Frankly, it's starting to seem like maybe Purcell doesn't want to do a deal, any deal, after all. As the Scene noted last week, ballpark boosters say the original goal was to have a new stadium ready for the 2006 season. Now, because of lengthy negotiations with the city, they say there's some danger that the 2007 season could be missed. We would like to urge all parties to swing—or miss. But just do something.
Over the last few years, the news coverage of the Sounds' efforts to get a stadium financed, with the ultimate backing (but not cash) of Metro Government, has been a bit like coverage of Mindy McCready's life and career: up and down and all around—rosy one day, downright dark the next.
Every time the Sounds and their development team have tried to answer the demands of city officials, they've been told it's not enough. In simple terms, our city leaders want to make sure that if the revenue mechanism to pay off city-backed bonds doesn't ultimately measure up, we won't be stuck with the bill. This cautionary approach is noble enough, but let's move down the trail one way or another.
Besides, unlike big-time hockey or football in this town, whose enormous civic homes/monuments were financed and continue to be maintained by taxpayers, a new Sounds ballpark would be essentially independently financed; local taxpayers would be sort of like the sweet great-uncle co-signing on the loan. Not a totally risk-free proposition, but pretty damn close, especially relative to the sweet deals the NHL Predators and NFL Titans have gotten in Nashville.
Beyond all that, baseball is—right up there with NASCAR—the most populist game in America. The Sounds are a minor league club, and the games are affordable, family-friendly and accessible to the masses in ways that football (PSLs, expensive tickets), for example, is not. Baseball also tends to invoke a traditional American experience, something altogether clean-cut and optimistic. How many Sounds ball players have been charged with violent crimes compared to the increasingly thuggish population of Titans?
We want to see a valuable Nashville institution rewarded with our support, because it's given us so much pleasure over the years. As we've said in this space before, Greer Stadium, where the team currently plays, is old and worn and underwhelming, like the brown plaid couch gathering dust in the garage. A new stadium downtown would highlight the core city's attributes and attract excitement and development—without giving away the store.
We anxiously await the day when we can sip a cold beer along the Cumberland River, watching our favorite pitcher warm up, moderating our excited children's pleas for ice cream in a plastic hat, listening to the comforting sound of the announcer's voice.
If we have to, let's go ahead and take a modest risk for all of this. As Bryant Gumbel once said, "The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love."
—Liz Garrigan
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