Public welfare for billionaires

Now, some sports commentators in Minnesota are claiming that fans have the upper hand, and before a new lease on the Hubert H. Humphrey Metro-Dome is approved, the Twins and Vikings should make concessions of their own, such as guaranteed limits to ticket prices and charitable contributions to the community.

Still, other cities are pondering the same questions. Detroit's venerable Tiger Stadium likely either will be abandoned or torn down, despite the energetic efforts of a fan group called Friends of Tiger Stadium. In Chicago, the legendary Comiskey Park was demolished, despite that the site of the old park -- on top of a 19th-century dump -- was a veritable treasure-house of Victorian- and Edwardian-era artifacts.

And there's a possibility that already-alienated fans may find the destruction of traditions and memories one more reason to feel alienated from their favorite teams. Tiger Stadium, says deMause, is "hands down the best place in the world to see a baseball game, even ahead of [Boston's] Fenway [Park]." (And many speculate that the historic Boston park will be gone within a decade.) Now the end is in sight for "this perfectly good [Tiger] stadium --just to play in yet another clone of [expletive] Jacobs Field," he says, referring to the Cleveland Indians' cigarette-tax funded home. "How many Jacobs Fields does the world need?"

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