Let's Play

The Strip hopes the rest of the city finds it as fun and fascinating to see The Kansas City Star propaganda machine operating at full tilt.

This meat patty was pretty entertained, for example, when sports columnist Jeffrey Flanagan sounded outraged when he argued a couple of weeks ago that sports stadiums' promised economic benefits are grossly exaggerated. He did his best to make it sound like people would be naïve to think building a downtown ballpark would help revive the city center.

That's great coming from a newspaper that only just got done crusading for a downtown arena. Last spring, the Star pushed like mad to convince citizens to spend $250 million to build an arena that doesn't even have a tenant. Why? For economic development, of course.

But the Star topped Flanagan's recent boneheaded rant just a week later, when it sent the same Flanagan to ask Royals owner David Glass -- in all sincerity, of course -- if he even wanted a damned stadium closer to where more people actually, you know, live and work.

Did it surprise anyone that Flanagan found Glass unexcited about the downtown project?

The Star's unsigned editorial writers, who have already trashed the notion of a downtown stadium -- at one point, they actually called it offensive to even discuss such a thing -- pounced on Flanagan's story, telling readers this past weekend that Glass thinks a downtown park is a waste of effort. Cartoonist Lee Judge then piled on to make it a trifecta.

Holy self-fulfilling prophecy, Batman!

What the hell is going on over there? Are Starlets afraid that home runs hit out of the new park are gonna break the windows on their new space-age-ski-lift press building?

Well, the Strip can fill you in a little. See, the Star is the sort of lazy, bloated publication that suffers from having no daily competition. With no one disabusing it of the very paternalistic view of the city it, um, serves, the paper has begun to think of itself as a sort of avuncular city planner. And it has developed a blindness to its own blatant biases against projects it hasn't adopted as its own.

The Strip, meanwhile, has been talking to the same people and has come away with a very different impression. Jon Copaken, chairman of the Downtown Council and one of the businesspeople working to put together a downtown ballpark plan, made it clear that he wouldn't be spending so much time on the project if he didn't think the Royals were interested. More important, he says he has been getting indications that Glass would spend more than the 8 percent he was willing to commit to Kauffman Stadium improvements under the stupid Bistate II plan. That's because a new stadium would be built with lots of profit-making amenities, such as corporate luxury boxes.

"We remain hopeful that they would be willing to significantly invest in a solution that provided them greater revenue opportunities," Copaken told this T-bone in typical business-speak.

Royals business operations honcho Mark Gorris, meanwhile, also gave us the feeling that the team is giving Copaken the steal sign. Sure, he gave us the usual tap dance about how the team was sitting back to wait while the city and county made up their minds about what to do -- build a new park downtown for something like $400 million, transform Kauffman for about $200 million, or pay about $80 million for upgrades at Kauffman and Arrowheadstadiums to maintain the status quo.

It was obvious that Gorris wanted to make it sound as though the team was staying above the fray. But we pressed him about the team's willingness to chip in its share.

"I cannot at this point commit to specific dollar amounts," Gorris said. "But certainly, if you're talking about an option that would generate more profit, there would be some higher investment that would provide more benefit to the team."

Glass himself was also cautious when we heard from him later. But by now it was clear to us that the Royals were waving home Copaken like he was scoring from first on a double.

"We are intrigued by the recent discussions regarding a possible new downtown ballpark," Glass told us in his own careful way. "We want to both improve our ability to compete within Major League Baseball and provide lasting benefits to this great metropolitan area."

Well, duh.

If we build it -- and build it with lots of moneymaking amenities -- they will come.

But let this lambasting brisket make itself very clear -- it doesn't want a downtown ballpark because it thinks such a venue would help the Royals win more games or allow the team to buy the contracts of flashier players. In fact, this issue has nothing to do with sports.

No, it's about the 1.8 million of us who live in this area who aren't at a Royals game on any given night. Those of us, that is, who still pay the taxes that will be spent to help the team no matter where it plays.

If it's our money, we oughta at least get something out of it. Namely, a livelier downtown.