Usually in extortion cases, the party doing the extorting doesn’t meet with the victim until after all of the damning information is assembled. They must do it differently in California: A committee formed by the commissioner of Major League Baseball to study the Oakland A’s stadium dilemma met for the first time with Oakland Mayor […]

They didn’t cut corners anywhere else on Yankee Stadium, so why start with the artwork? Art broker Tracie Speca has been working 16-hour days for the past six weeks to install 1,300 vintage photographs worth a total of at least $5 million in the stadium’s clubs, hallways and restaurants. Ms. Speca saved whimsical images for […]

Ex-baseball blogger, noted presidential historian, world class librarian, vehement Cleveland-hater, and longtime ShysterBall reader Bob Timmerman left a comment in ATH this morning about Orlando Hudson hitting for the cycle: You forget that Dodgers fans had almost been like the Jews in the desert traveling to the Promised Land with the cycle. It had been […]

I don’t think anyone buys the “if you build it they will come” business anymore, but just in case there were any ballparks=development deadenders out there: Baseball stadium backers promised a lively entertainment district when the D.C. government poured nearly $700 million into building Nationals Park: a hub of bustling shops, restaurants, hotels, condos and […]

Earlier this week I took shots at ballclubs and architects for manufacturing history and nostaliga in the service of their new ballparks. I’ll probably never be a fan of that. Real history, however? That’s another story altogether: Mazeroski Way now leads to Bill Mazeroski’s wall at PNC Park. The Pittsburgh Pirates have restored the section […]

Given how the John Moores was able to sell a huge stake in the Padres to Jeff Moorad almost overnight, one wonders why it has taken Sam Zell so long to sell the Cubs. Well, besides the fact that unlike the Padres’ deal, the Cubs sale wasn’t an exercise in Kabuki theater designed to help […]

For all I know, Missouri legislator Jason Crowell is a member of the Whig party, is opposed to women’s suffrage, and thinks we should declare war on Imperial Spain, but from what I do know of him, I like the cut of his jib: A Missouri lawmaker is threatening to put an end to plans […]

I’ve made a couple of recent comments about how I wish that, after nearly 20 years of nostalgia-based ballpark design, the architects in charge of the few remaining big league projects would be a bit more adventurous. I don’t need the Wexner Center or Beijing National Stadium, but a little something to stir the imagination […]

Headline: “AutoZone Park is ‘Taj Mahal’ of the minors” With all due respect to roses by any other name, would we think of the Taj Mahal the same way if it were named something as awful as “AutoZone Park”?

Petco Park opened five years ago, and today the Union-Tribune takes stock: Five years after the first Padres curveball was thrown at Petco Park, San Diego’s investment in the $474 million ballpark has delivered mixed results. On a recent afternoon, the good and the marginal returns were on display. Along J Street, where the ballpark […]