Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 03, 2006
Deep in the Heart of Texas

San Antonio appears to have it's act together in attempting to lure the Marlins:

Wolff's proposal follows the same plan used to build the AT&T Center for the San Antonio Spurs, which opened in 2002 at a cost of $189 million.

Voters in 1999 approved increases in the hotel-occupancy and car-rental taxes to finance the county's $146.5 million share. The Spurs provided the rest of the funding, including $41 million from the arena's naming rights.

Wolff said voter approval would be needed to refinance the bonds, pay off the AT&T Center debt early and use new bonds to pay for a baseball stadium. The plan would not incorporate sales or property tax, he said.

The Marlins would choose the site for a stadium.

If California can support five teams, Texas can certainly support three. Wolff speaks as if this would be an easy issue to get by the voters. Can anyone from San Antonio comment on that issue? Usually, when a team picks a site for a stadium, the neighbors try to move it somewhere else.

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Posted by David Pinto at 10:45 AM | Team Movements | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Would there need to be a realignment of the NL divisions? Put the S.A. Marlins in the Central, and push the Pirates to the East.

Posted by: rbj at March 3, 2006 03:45 PM

or u could just put san antonio in the AL West with the rangers

Posted by: Ryan at March 3, 2006 04:32 PM

you need an even amount of teams in each league

Posted by: Eric F at March 3, 2006 05:03 PM

No you don't need even number of teams in each league. It's optimal from a marketing perspective so that all the interleague games happen within the same 2 windows, but from a scheduling standpoint alone there is no reason why you couldn't always just have one interleague series happening all the time.

Posted by: The new no. 2 at March 3, 2006 06:13 PM

Based on on SA's reaction to the possibility of getting the New Orleans Saints, voters would love having another pro sports team, no matter the cost.

There's some interesting social psychology at play, San Antonio often feeling overlooked because even though it's the 2d-biggest city in Texas (yes, bigger than Dallas) and in the Top 10 nationwide, Dallas, Houston and even Austin still get more attention than it.

Posted by: Paul at March 3, 2006 06:36 PM

No doubt SA residents will relish the chance to have an MLB team.

But I would like to quibble with Paul's comment re SA's size. When you're talking "metro region," San Antonio simply isn't in the same ballpark as Dallas/Ft Worth which is ranked 9th in the nation according to the 2000 Census, with Houston/Galveston just behind it at 10th.

San Antonio, on the other hand, comes in at 29th behind places like Portland/Salem, Milwaukee, Orlando, Indianapolis...

Posted by: Edw. at March 4, 2006 08:29 AM
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