The Pittsburgh Pirates stage their home-opener today at PNC Park against the mighty New York Yankees and the new home-run delivering “torpedo” bats.
It’s a new design, apparently perfectly legal, that is reviving the Bronx Bombers’ “Sultans of Swat” nickname in some circles. And the Pirates are said to be among a number of teams rushing to get their hands on these wooden marvels.
We’re happy to see the Bucs embracing something new. For they and their acolytes remain stuck in repeating at season’s opening the same old lies that led to taxpayers having their pockets turned out to build PNC Park, which turns 25 years old this season.
Per a Post-Gazette exercise in stenography last Wednesday, “Pirates president Travis Williams, Allegheny Conference on Community Development CEO Stefani Pashman and former Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald talked up the positive effects the ballpark has had on local business.”
“’Our fans come for baseball, but they stay in our hotels, eat in our restaurants and they shop at our stores,’ Williams said, noting that the park draws more visitors than any other sports or entertainment venue in Western Pennsylvania … .”
“Pashman noted that, from its conception, the ballpark ‘was intentionally integrated, as you see, into the city skyline, into the riverfront, ensuring it complemented existing assets and drove development. The vision then was to remake the North Shore.’
“The park created, she said, a ‘solid foundation’ and ‘model of public-private partnership.’
Well, this trio can keep repeating this quarter-century-running narrative of grand economic benefits all it wants. But it’s not true. It never has been. And it never will be. Simply put, constantly repeating such a lie does not change the underlying economics.
As Scott A. Wolla, an economics education officer at the St. Louis Federal Reserve, concluded in a 2017 white paper (and this long has been economists’ consensus):
“Building sports stadiums has an impact on local economies. For that reason, many people support the use of government subsidies to help pay for stadiums.
“However, economists generally oppose such subsidies. They often stress that estimations of the economic impact of sports stadiums are exaggerated because they fail to recognize opportunity costs.
“Consumers who spend money on sporting events would likely spend the money on other forms of entertainment, which has a similar economic impact. Rather than subsidizing sports stadiums, governments could finance other projects such as infrastructure or education that have the potential to increase productivity and promote economic growth.”
Wolla noted that in a 2017 poll, 83 percent of the economists surveyed agreed that “Providing state and local subsidies to build stadiums for professional sports teams is likely to cost the relevant taxpayers more than any local economic benefits that are generated.”
Wolla references the book “Sports, Jobs, and Taxes” by Roger Noll and Andrew Zimbalist in which they present a comprehensive review of stadium investments.
“In all cases, they find a new sports facility to have extremely small (or negative) effects on overall economic activity and employment. Furthermore, they were unable to find any facilities that had a reasonable return on investment.”
He further cites the work of sports economist Michael Leeds, which suggests that professional sports have very little economic impact, “noting that a baseball team (with 81 regular-season home games per year) ‘has about the same impact on a community as a midsize department store.’
“His research suggests that if every professional sports team in Chicago (including the Cubs, White Sox, Bears, Bulls, and Blackhawks) were to suddenly disappear, the economic impact on Chicago would be a fraction of 1 percent.”
Thus, it’s embarrassing that Greater Pittsburgh’s civic “leaders” continue to be allowed to spout their nonsense when their contentions are patent misrepresentations. And that no local media hold them to account is a tragedy.
“Batter up!” and all that. But let’s no longer allow the proverbial usual suspects to peddle their fundamental falsehoods. It’s way past time to sink their contentions. It’s time to man another kind of torpedo.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
