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Although we like to pretend that we're rational creatures, our decisions are most often based on emotions, not reason. This applies even to major decisions. When you shop for a house or a car, eventually one strikes you on a visceral level as just what you want. After that emotional decision is made, you employ logic to justify the decision: the house has a good location or a convenient floor plan; the car gets good mileage or the model has low repair costs. It's obvious that the same process is in effect concerning a ball park in Denver. Nobody carefully weighs alternatives and options. You either want major-league baseball, or you don't want your taxes to go up -- however slightly -- to finance a private enterprise.
Consider the three major logical
arguments in
favor of the stadium tax:
1. A baseball team would give a fragmented population something in common. The Broncos already do that in the fall. So we're talking about summer, when if you're a good Coloradan, every free minute is spent away from the city and in the mountains. If baseball draws well, it means fewer mountain tourists, and that's going to be hard on a lot of rural economies.
2. Baseball is good family entertainment, which Denver
needs more of. Maybe it does; I don't live there. But when
we visit, our family finds ample entertainment at the zoo,
the Botanical Gardens, the Gates Planetarium, the Natural
History Museum, the Forney Transportation Museum and the
Art Museum, not to mention the diverse display of humanity
on the Sixteenth Street Mall. And sometimes we catch a
Zephyrs game; why would a major-league game provide better
family entertainment?
3. Baseball will enhance the economy, because people will drive in from Hugo and Hartsel to watch games, with the collateral that they will buy lodging and meals, and will do some shopping while in the city. That means they're taking money out of small towns and spending it in Denver, which is no net change in the regional economy, and bad for the small towns. Further, money from people making $18,000 a year will go to athletes making $600,000 a year; who besides George Bush wants to encourage that sort of income redistribution?
There isn't a single logical reason to support a baseball stadium tax. There is also the excellent chance that Major League Baseball will again string Denver along, and find some last-minute excuse not to put a team in Denver.
But there is the prospect of sitting above the third-base dugout on a lazy afternoon, hot dog in one hand and score card in the other, to watch the best in the world go about their game. That would be good. Any other justification is mere sophistry.
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