Actually, Monroe County taxpayers have been “saving” baseball for 20 years.
As the Rochester Red Wings have been paying nice executive salaries, and buying themselves an equity stake in the Batavia Muck Dogs, Joe and Betty taxpayer have been chipping in something north of $30 million.
It works out to between one and two million dollars a year that the waitresses and welders of Monroe County have been paying to keep baseball in town.
That’s something that should be recognized, and appreciated.
Instead, the team is making the county government out to be a bunch of cheap bastards, and the team and the commissioner of the International League are allowing themselves to be weaponized in the partisan run up to the next county executive’s election.
A year ago there started being rumblings about the lease on Frontier Field.
Held for 20 years by a shell company meant to hide the fact that taxpayers are the largest investors in the team, the lease will – going forward – be held by the county. The shell company was meant to keep things secretand out of sight, and that’s why County Executive Cheryl Dinolfo got rid of it.
Negotiating a new lease has become a game of chicken.
Last summer, the fear was that the Triple-A Red Wings would leave. That led to the framework of an agreement and a press conference with the team owner and the county executive.
All was well.
Except it wasn’t.
Turns out there were some additional gimmes that came up – primarily from the team – and here we are within sight of the new season and there’s no lease signed.
It seems the team doesn’t want to pay any more rent, but does want the county to put in millions more in improvements, while continuing its past subsidy.
Apparently the 743,204 Monroe County residents who don’t attend the average Red Wings game aren’t paying enough to subsidize the 6,396 who do.
And now the International League has decided to try extortion.
At the end of last week, the commissioner said that if there wasn’t a lease signed by opening day, the league would have the Rochester Red Wings play this year’s home games somewhere other than Rochester.
Translation: The county better pony up what the team demands or the team is going to hit the road.
The context of that is the build up to the next county executive’s election between Cheryl Dinolfo and rising challenger Adam Bello. Apparently the deciding factor in Cheryl Dinolfo’s tenure is going to be how lavishly she can equip the baseball team.
It turns out her budgetary focus on fixing Child Protective Services and fighting the opioid crisis misread community priorities.
And so she has to knuckle under, or the team will play in Buffalo or Syracuse or Timbuktu.
Which means, one would think, that the Rochester Red Wings would immediately suspend ticket sales, right?
I mean, if the team is currently facing the real prospect of not playing any games at Frontier Field, it would be an act of fraud to sell tickets to games at Frontier Field, right? Especially season tickets, right? That would seem to be a no-no.
But the situation is the league threatens no games in Rochester this year, and the implication is that there will be no games in Rochester ever again, that the oldest franchise in minor-league baseball is about to beauctioned off to the highest bidder.
All because of evil Cheryl Dinolfo.
Except that, maybe, the value and salability of a Triple-A franchise is more theoretical than real.
Yes, Rochester is in decline and is one of the nation’s most economically troubled metropolitan regions. Yes, many other cities in America would love to have a Triple-A franchise. Yes, plenty of other cities could andwould subsidize the team at even higher levels than Rochesterians have for two decades.
But are many of those cities in the International League?
With a footprint heavy on the Rust Belt, does the International League really have that many areas in its region that are doing much better than Rochester? If it tries to expand farther into the Midwest and South, is it getting into issues with other minor leagues, or with major league territorial rights?
And does loyalty mean absolutely nothing to the International League?
Is its relationship with its host communities a marriage, or a series of one-night stands?
With the taxpayers of Monroe County having promised to make 30 years worth of payments on a stadium for the Rochester Red Wings, do the team and the league really think it ethical to run out on the town with 10 yearsof payments still to make? Is that honorable and decent? And is petty brinksmanship really the negotiating technique the team and the league would use with a community which has prospered them both for almost 120 years?
Is that what this team and its league are really about?
Is that all the taxpayers and the fans of Rochester mean to them?
It looks that way.
And it looks like the Red Wings are ready to abandon the one characteristic that has defined them in the modern era – being classy.
Maybe it’s time to lay aside the threats, and make an honest deal, and stop being a tool in a political fight.
The team has to make a profit for its owners. The county has to protect its taxpayers.
It seems like both those things ought to be doable.
But if not, April will dawn with Naomi Silver and Randy Mobley taking baseball away from Rochester for the first time since baseball was invented.
And that will be on them.