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Vegas' Big League pitch: With NBA not in cards yet, city tries to lure baseball
By Paul Gutierrez
LAS VEGAS - Through the clogged and congested concourse, he emerged.
Oscar Goodman, Las Vegas' colorful mayor and perhaps the city's No. 1 booster, makes a splashy entrance with a showgirl on each arm before throwing out the first pitch for an exhibition game March 31 between the Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres at Cashman Field in Las Vegas. Goodman said Las Vegas' door is open to pro franchises looking for a new home, but the gambling mecca has been stymied in its effort to lure a major league baseball or pro basketball team.
It was nearing seventh-inning stretch time of an exhibition game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Seattle Mariners, and the crowd parted for him as it got a look at his homemade sign.
The standing-room-only gathering at antiquated Cashman Field acknowledged him with claps and whistles and the occasional, "Hell yeah," and while the sign-toting fan would decline to give his name, his placard said it all: "LA is fine. But where's LV's team? Vegas is ready."
Sell It Yourself
Sin City, that den of Dionysian excess, is making another play to land a Major League Baseball team.
Las Vegas is gambling on it, its mayor all but going all in with his chips, and hoping, unlike so many hard-luck tourists that keep this desert mirage glowing, it does not crap out again.
Since 1991, Las Vegas has played host to Big League Weekend, a smorgasbord of Major League Baseball exhibition games held the weekend before the start of the regular season. This year, the Dodgers and Mariners met on March 30, and the Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres played March 31 and April 1.
Overflow crowds of 10,271, 11,327 and 11,427 crammed into the 9,334-seat Cashman Field, emboldening proponents of Las Vegas landing a pro club.
The biggest crowd came for pitcher Greg Maddux's start for the Cubs. After all, it was Maddux's first game at Cashman since the Nevada high school state playoffs in 1984.
Maddux still lives in Las Vegas during the offseason and is a fan of a major league team setting up shop in his hometown.
"I'd like to see it," he said. "I'd like to have a place to take my kid to see some games instead of getting on a plane. Hopefully they make it happen."
While Las Vegas has been pounding its chest for years proclaiming itself as a major league city ready for a major league franchise, the momentum appears to be reaching a crescendo in southern Nevada.
Riding that wave is Mayor Oscar Goodman, a former mob lawyer who represented Meyer Lansky and Anthony "The Ant" Spilotro. This may be his toughest case yet, convincing the executives that run professional sports that his town is indeed trustworthy and can support a major-league franchise.
The perceived stigma of legalized gambling, Goodman has said, should not be an issue, not with it so heavily regulated.
"We're absolutely ready," said Goodman, who threw out the ceremonial first pitch of the first Cubs-Padres game while accompanied by two showgirls. His throw, like his pitch to the pro sports commissioners of baseball, basketball, football and hockey, was straight-on, though it bounced about five feet in front of the plate.
"Look, we have a 1.8 million permanent population here, fastest-growing city in the United States," Goodman said. "...We've got 40 million visitors a year. I've got to believe that we would become the world's team if they had Major League Baseball in Las Vegas."
Because so many people here are from someplace else?
"That's it," Goodman replied. "We're the market where everybody wants to come. We're the entertainment capital of the world. They come from all over ... so it's a natural."
The "Black Sox" scandal of 1919 still haunts baseball, and Sin City's vices are cause for concern in some corners, but MLB Commissioner Bud Selig has said it was too soon to say whether gambling could be a hindrance to Las Vegas eventually getting a team. He did say, however, he is impressed with the city itself.
"The growth in Las Vegas has been spectacular, continues to be, and is projected to be," Selig told USA Today.
If Goodman had his druthers, he'd rather have a National Basketball Association team opening up shop in Las Vegas first.
"I certainly want the NBA, and hopefully after the NBA All-Star Game here next year, the owners will just impose upon Commissioner (David Stern), and tell him that, you know, Las Vegas has to be the next franchise," Goodman said of the deal he brokered, along with the Maloof family, owners of the Sacramento Kings and Palms Casino just off the famed Strip, to bring the NBA's showcase All-Star event to town in 2007.
The caveat? Casinos must not allow any wagering on the game.
While a number of NBA franchises confronting arena issues or financial problems have been approached by Goodman, among them the New Orleans Hornets, the Grizzlies (before they moved to Memphis from Vancouver), and the Kings, to name a few, Stern has adamantly resisted any and all overtures.
That left Goodman to focus on baseball, including getting MLB to agree to hold its 2008 winter meetings in Las Vegas.
Two years ago, Las Vegas was a finalist to land the Montreal Expos, who instead went to Washington, D.C., and were rechristened the Nationals.
This winter, the Florida Marlins began flirting with Las Vegas, though their latest paramour appears to be San Antonio.
Goodman, a popular, martini-swigging mayor who won re-election in 2003 with 86 percent of the vote, has said any pro team unhappy in its current home has one waiting in Las Vegas.
In 2004, when talk of the Expos relocating to Las Vegas emerged, plans to build a $420 million, 40,000-seat glass stadium with a retractable roof just off the Strip were unveiled. Goodman said no public funds would be used, though talks never advanced far enough to detail how the stadium would be financed.
The Don of Las Vegas baseball, Don Logan, has been down this road many times before. It was Logan, president and general manager of the Triple-A Las Vegas 51s, who spearheaded the attempt to get MLB teams to move their spring training camps to town in the late 1990s and again in the early 2000s. And it was Logan who facilitated Las Vegas switching minor-league affiliations from the Padres, with whom it had been associated since its inception in 1983, to the more popular Dodgers in 2001.
So forgive Logan if he seems weary of the discussion. He just does not think Las Vegas is ready. Yet. "I'm not trying to be a naysayer, I'm being realistic," said Logan, who added he thinks Las Vegas will be ready for a major league team in seven to 10 years.
Logan's reasons? First, there's Las Vegas' relatively small media-market size of No. 48, according to Nielsen Media Research, well behind the three lowest U.S. markets currently with teams, No. 31 Kansas City, No. 33 Milwaukee and No. 34 Cincinnati. (The Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto market is No. 19.)
Being the smallest market would have an adverse effect on TV revenues, perhaps a difference in millions of dollars a year.
Plus, even with its population boom, Las Vegas is still an island in the middle of desert wilderness, slot machines and keno games notwithstanding.
"There are no suburbs; there's nothing," Logan said. "You take Milwaukee, which is marginal major league at best, a beautiful new stadium and all that. But you go 50 miles up the road, you got Madison, which is another media market. A hundred miles up the road the other way is Appleton, which is another media market. It's just one city, basically, from Chicago all the way up.
"We don't have suburbs and we still don't have ... the depth of our market size."
And finally, there's the unique way in which Las Vegas and its 24-hour lifestyle operates and the daily habits of its locals.
"The nature of the town ... is three shifts; probably at any point in the day there's a quarter of a million people working and a quarter of a million people sleeping," Logan said. "So that makes it challenging, and then still, there's the sheer competition for the entertainment dollar. The Strip caters to tourists."
Locals would have to drive the attendance, Logan said. Consider: While 10 years ago may be a lifetime in terms of Las Vegas time frames, the Oakland A's, who are again considered one of a fistful of teams looking to move, did not exactly set the town on fire in 1996 when they were forced from the Coliseum because of renovations for the National Football League's Raiders. The "Las Vegas Athletics" opened their season with six games at Cashman Field vs. the Toronto Blue Jays and Detroit Tigers, selling out twice while drawing an average of 9,154 fans.
The 51s, named after the nearby top-secret military base Area 51 that some claim houses aliens and their rides, averaged 4,645 fans over 72 dates a year ago.
As fickle as the Las Vegas market is, the novelty, no doubt, would wear off for a big league club over 81 home games. Imagine the lowly Tampa Bay Devil Rays coming in for a midweek series in the stifling 111-degree heat. Baseball and the desert heat, domed stadium or not, would be going up against air-conditioning and the likes of Celine Dion and Elton John.
"There's competition for the local entertainment dollar, unlike anywhere else, plus the regular, traditional other options that people have in any other cities," Logan said. "That means you have to have more depth in the population here, I think, than you would somewhere else."
Because Las Vegas is an "event" city, meaning fans show up in droves for big events such as world title fights, National Finals Rodeo and NASCAR races, longtime Sin City observers are convinced that the only league that could step in tomorrow and not only succeed but thrive is the NFL, what with only eight regular-season home games and each taking on a larger-than-life guise.
But with gambling such a hot-button issue with the league - the NFL still won't allow commercials for Las Vegas to appear during broadcasts of its games - Goodman has not broached that topic for a while.
So is Goodman blinded by his town's own neon lights when it comes to landing a pro sports team?
Logan doesn't think so.
"There's no reason to believe that they're (a pro team) not going to play here (someday); the weather's great, the economy's great, there's no state tax," Logan said. "Cost of living is up a little but not like what (people) are experiencing (in California)." |
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