Lately baseball writers have been looking far and wide to figure out what is keeping fans away from ballparks this year. Poor weather is the most often blamed culprit, thanks to 30-and-counting rainouts this season, 9 more than the entire total in 2010. Frank McCourt is also shouldering much of the blame, since the malaise [...]

The Houston Astros and current owner Drayton McLane have announced that the team is being sold to Houston businessman Jim Crane for $680 million. Approval should take 30-60 days. Among the hangups were discussions over the Astros’ share of a new regional sports network to be shared with the Houston Rockets. The Maloofs have agreed [...]

As part of an effort to control upwardly spiraling pensions, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed has called for the City to declare a state of fiscal emergency. This comes after months of ongoing negotiations with several public employee unions, which have yielded mixed results. Should this action pass with the City Council, in November voters [...]

If you didn’t get a chance to listen to Lew Wolff on The Monty Show at 8, the good people at Sports Radio 95.7 got the MP3 version out in a hurry. Download it and give it a listen. Then come back here and comment away. My thoughts: I think we actually got some new [...]

Merc columnist Scott Herhold recaps various political and economic happenings of the past few months and describes how they could impact San Jose’s and Lew Wolff’s ballpark plans. I won’t rehash all of them since we’ve covered them in great detail here. The thrust of Herhold’s piece is relevant: how long does this opportunity last? [...]

Two weeks ago the City of Sacramento got a one-year reprieve. Today it’s Glendale, AZ, as the lucky city to get one year to fix its problems. Glendale’s City Council approved a $25 million subsidy to keep the Phoenix Coyotes at Jobing.com Arena. This follows another $25 million spent last year in hopes of keeping [...]

The competing stadium proposals by the City of Minneapolis and the Vikings/Ramsey County can be summed up this way: Two football teams are tied 0-0 late in the fourth quarter. Despite the fact that neither team is behind, both offenses decide the best way to score is to repeatedly throw hail mary passes until they [...]

As part of Bud Selig’s in-plane tweaking of baseball, he’s drawn up several realignment concepts. A month ago we discussed two concepts and the motivations behind them. This time, we’re focusing on one seemingly simple plan that will assuredly draw both proponents and detractors. Conveniently, he’ll get to throw a few things against the wall [...]

After the rush of last week, this week is fairly light on news. The Dodgers and Frank McCourt continue to make headlines off the field, managing to overshadow Andre Ethier’s 2930-game hitting streak. It’s been widely reported that the team will not be able to make payroll on May 31, which will force MLB to [...]

In 2005, AEG started construction of an arena in Downtown Kansas City. The arena already had a naming rights sponsor, hometown telecom Sprint, a year earlier. Thanks to that deal and Kansas City’s need for a new arena to replace the aging Kemper Arena, the Sprint Center was built on spec, without a real major [...]