I’m hearing a lot of grumbling from my baseball fan friends who are really disturbed that it appears the city will once again lose the Portland Beavers because PGE Park is going to be modified for soccer and football, with no further configuration for baseball. And of course, no obvious sites for local baseball relocation.

And I’m having to tell them that this time, I’m not on their side.

While I’m not a soccer fan, I understand this city’s romance with the sport. In many ways it is the perfect sport for Portland — all-inclusive, European, Yuppie, rowdy. It’s perfectly Portland, actually. And it’s an easy sport to garner fan support because there just aren’t many games. Perfect for a “mid-major” city like this one.

But the bottom line for me is real simple: Is PGE Park as a baseball venue worth fighting for? The easy answer is: No way. I was there as a little kid for the very first baseball game there, in 1956. It was poor then and it’s still not a good spot for baseball.

Yes, a lot of great players have played there. But if anybody ought to be nostalgic about the joint it’s me. I practically grew up in that place, as a batboy for the Beavers and later a clubhouse boy, pressbox boy, PA announcer, scoreboard operator, official scorer and even a director of group sales. Later, I covered the team for many seasons, starting when it returned to Portland in 1978. I do not think there are many people on the planet who have watched more games there than I have.

But I’m not feeling much of a connection there. It was always a very cold-feeling stadium and never a “ballpark.” Ever. It’s pretty much an inadequate place for baseball, from having too many seats to having way too many poor seats. The concourse is too small, the restrooms too scarce and the seats are difficult to get to. And when you get more than about 7,000 people in there, it’s a very uncomfortable place to be.

I long for a day when the citizens of Portland can have a real ballpark. Not a football stadium pretending to be ballpark, like PGE Park, which is still a venue better served as a greyhound race track than a ballpark.

But oh yeah, we don’t want to spend money in this town to build even a minor-league park. Mostly that’s because a great many people here don’t know how nice those cool new minor-league ballparks are — and what they would do to spark interest in the team.

And hey, we just remodeled old PGE Park a while back, didn’t we? Well, yes — but it was an overall catastrophe, for sure. And we have to admit that and move on. It was poorly designed and not well-thought-out — a project I will always believe should never have been chosen in the city’s request-for-proposal process — but that’s another topic for another day.

Yes, we did fund a poor stadium remodel. But it’s not as if this city has been investing a whole lot of coin in sports venues over the years. Sports fans, you’re living in a city that has NEVER, and I’m including old Vaughn Street Ballpark, funded the construction of a new baseball stadium. It has NEVER funded the building of a new football stadium.

EVER. I mean, is there another city in the world of at least moderate size that can say that? Yes, we funded Memorial Coliseum for peanuts, about half a century ago. That’s pretty much it for all of sports. And of course, the collective ego in this city dictates that a lot of people here think we’ve taken the right path in that regard — and the entire rest of the world is wrong. Yeah, sure.

In the last few years, Seattle has spent more than a billion bucks on football and baseball venues and while you heard a ton of grumbling about it at the time, you’re not hearing it now. People up there are ecstatic with what the Mariners and Seahawks and their venues have done for Seattle.

But that’s the difference between a big-league city and a bush-league town. And so don’t come at me asking to save PGE Park for baseball. I’m not down with that. We’ve lost the Beavers before — twice. And maybe being without them again will finally spark an interest in building a new ballpark. If it doesn’t, well, that’s fine by me.

I mean, really — this is Portland. And it’s about time we started holding out for something better than just the constant attempts to turn a cow’s ear into a silk purse.

Tweet This Post

Tags: Baseball, Dwight Jaynes, MLS, PGE Park, Portland, Vaughn Street Ballpark

KGW.com is teasing a story for the news at noon that he’s “suspending” efforts to relocate the Beavers in Beaverton. It wouldn’t be surprising. There’s simply no time to wait for them to have an election.

Beaverton residents can now go back and rest comfortably, knowing they will now continue to be totally irrelevant. Take that five bucks a month it would have cost and buy a happy meal.

UPDATE: The story is here. Paulson informed the mayor with a letter that read:

“It is with sadness that I am writing to inform you of my decision to suspend planning and negotiations with the city on a new stadium. I’ve made this decision for practical, not political reasons. … The practical consideration is that after more than three months of effort, there is no stadium location under city control and the City’s timeframe for making a firm financial commitment is months off. This makes it impossible to meet the timelines required to start groundbreaking in time to play the 2011 season at a new stadium.”

Your turn Gresham. Or Oregon City. Or West Linn. Or Lake Oswego. Or Vancouver. Or Linnton.

Tweet This Post

Tags: Beaverton, Dwight Jaynes, Merritt Paulson, Portland Beavers

Did you catch this, Blazer fans? Chris Dudley is pondering a run at the Republican nomination for governor:

Dudley acknowledged in a brief interview Sunday that he has been approached about running and is giving the idea consideration.

“It’s possible,” he said after appearing at Wordstock, the Portland book fair. “I’d just like to leave it at that for now.”

Hey, he’s a heck of a guy and he graduated from Yale. But who wants to tell him that running for just about ANY office in Oregon as a Republican is getting to be something of a waste of time?

Tweet This Post

Tags: Chris Dudley, Dwight Jaynes, governor, Oregon, Republican

Our politicians have always been well behind on this issue. The people of Portland would love to have a casino centrally located where they can go a couple of times a month to watch big-time entertainment and dump a whole lot of money onto some table, never to be seen again.

I’ve always been for it. Been for legalized gambling of all sorts, actually. Doesn’t offend me in any way and has always appealed to me as a way to let others pay my taxes for me. Legalize it, tax it and I’m cool with it.

But the big thing — let’s allow that casino but leverage it. Get something big in return. Talk about some life for the Rose Quarter, a plush casino on the waterfront on the old hotel property Paul Allen owns, with a boat dock so you could also get there by water. And for the right to put it there, whoever is the owner of that casino must do the rest of the Rose Quarter up real nice. Level Memorial Coliseum, build that ballpark, put in a few other nice restaurants and clubs.

Oh, never mind. Makes too much sense for Portland to ever even think about.

Tweet This Post

Tags: ballpark, Casino, Dwight Jaynes, gambling, Portland, Rose Quarter

First off, it started about 20 minutes late, which isn’t nice on a day when everyone is seated in an unshaded area of metal grandstands. But anyway, I digress.

Point one — I was told just prior to the news conference that there’s a real chance Beaverton mayor Denny Doyle doesn’t quite have enough clout with his city council to pull this whole thing off. At least that’s what opponents were saying after a Monday night council meeting. That’s a little bit ridiculous, if you ask me — since the group hasn’t even heard a proposal yet from Beaver owner Merritt Paulson.

To me, if I was on that council, I’d at least wait to hear what Paulson’s asking the city for. Obviously, because he’s in a rush and doesn’t exactly have a whole lot of other options, he’s probably willing to make a pretty sweet deal. And trust me, that city could probably use the Beavers more than just about any other in the state — for a multitude of reasons that are partially economic and partially just community identity.

Second, I didn’t realize how important it seems to people out that way that this be described as a “multi-purpose” stadium. I lost track of how many times the mayor mentioned it in his brief speech. Well, I guess… I mean, if that’s what you need to say.

Folks, it’s a ballpark. It’s not something that can be used all year round, unless you want to put a dome on it — which you really can’t afford. Relax with that.

Yes, when the Beavers are out of town, when the weather cooperates and assuming the joint has (sigh) artificial turf, you can hold community events, use it for youth baseball, stage college baseball tournaments — whatever you want. But get the idea out of your head that you need to use it every day of the year. NOBODY in any town owns that stadium, unless it’s domed, OK?

Look, build a nice ballpark and build it big enough to seat 8,000 with an outfield berm that can accomodate another four or five thousand and the place will pay you back many times over. Beaverton would have a community gathering place built by a public/private partnership that it couldn’t get any other way. And some needed identity for the city, too.

That’s plenty beneficial enough to at least listen to a proposal, isn’t it? Man, politicians around here can just about drive you batty.

Tweet This Post

Tags: Beaverton, Denny Doyle, Dwight Jaynes, Merritt Paulson, Portland Beavers

The Oregonian had a story today wrapping up all the things our legislature did to us this last session. And I’m not going to whine about them throwing a tax on my kayak, either — which seems to me very stupid.

Now I know it’s not popular to fight this whole cell-phone ban thing in cars, but when is somebody going to say how ridiculous it is? You’re going to ban hand-held cell phones? OK, but let’s be fair.

Let’s ban people eating their dinner at 55 miles per hour in cars. Drinking scalding hot coffee in cars. Reaching over into the back seat and slapping their two kids and their dog in cars. Applying makeup in their cars. Picking their nose in their car. Seriously — why is it I can do anything I want to do with my hands in the driver’s seat of my car except hold my cell phone?

Now don’t tell me it isn’t just the act of holding the phone, it’s the distraction of the conversation. Bull. Then why allow hands-free conversations — either on the phone or with others? Why not just put a cone of silence around all drivers? Yank all those radios out, too.

You can tell me all you want about all the accidents cell phones have caused. I’ll counter by telling you that people distracted by cell phone use will still crash into your cars because they’ll be distracted by something else.

And now, talking on their hands-free phone, they’ll have room in their hands for a cup of hot java, the morning paper, a couple of toothpicks and a jelly doughnut. Oh, and they’ll be reaching into the back seat to slap that screaming three-year-old silly. That would all be perfectly legal.

Great. Now all this means is I’ve got to go out and find some expensive earpiece/microphone/bluetooth gadget for my phone that affects the quality of the call and distracts me even more than the original conversation did.

Fools.

Tweet This Post

Tags: bad drivers, bluetooth, cell phones, Dwight Jaynes, hands-free, kayaks, Oregon legislature

The Oregonian has made a big fuss over the story of this bill from the start. And yes, it’s a chance for a whole bunch of white people to feel like they’re doing something for minorities.

I’m not in favor of ANY legislation that forces a company, a school or an individual to hire anybody but the best applicant and don’t like government interference, either. At least until I can see some tiny shred of evidence that the government knows what it’s doing.

But that really has no bearing on the bill that forces colleges to interview minority candidates for a coaching job. Because, you see, it doesn’t force them to do ANYTHING. It’s got no teeth whatsoever. In fact, it appears this whole thing was nothing but a total waste of time and money.

I’m also not sure why the media has not spent any time talking about what was the single money sentence of this morning’s story — which was buried deep into the jump of The Oregonian’s story:

 The so-called Rooney Rule, named for Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney, requires teams to interview a minority candidate when hiring a head coach, or face fines from the league. The Oregon bill carries no penalties for noncompliance and carries an exemption for schools that tried but failed to find an interested minority candidate for a job. But supporters hope it will succeed as well as the Rooney Rule did.

The bold-face is mine, to better explain the guts of this whole thing. There is NO penalty for noncompliance. Well, thanks so much for making this law — since it is basically useless. You know, “We TRIED to find a candidate but couldn’t.” That works. But so does — “We chose not to comply with this law at this time.”

I’d like us to change the freeway speed limits in Oregon the same way — the speed limit will be 65 but there will be no penalty for not obeying it. But then the folks in Salem couldn’t sit around and get sore arms patting themselves on the back for that one.

Tweet This Post

Tags: Do-gooders, Dwight Jaynes, Oregon colleges, Oregon State Legislature, Rooney Rule

I don’t think so. Not from the metro area, at least. Yes, soccer and baseball have been disconnected in the latest effort to ensure a conversion of PGE Park to a soccer/football only stadium.

Either the Beavers will end up in Lents Park or somewhere in the suburbs, is my guess. Merritt Paulson isn’t going to let go of the one sure thing in his portfolio. People in Portland refuse to come to grips with the fact that minor-league baseball is successful, financially, just about everywhere and is here, too. Paulson’s made more money off the Beavers than he’s ever made off soccer.

His move to bring the MLS to Portland is a big financial crapshoot, too. It SHOULD be successful, but who knows? Meanwhile, the Beavers will continue to throw off a tidy profit every season, whether they’re in Hillsboro, Vancouver or Troutdale. And a new ballpark, nicely done in a pastoral setting, will be a bigger draw around here than people realize.

Tweet This Post

Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Lents Park, PGE Park, Portland Beavers, Portland Timbers

You can find the podcast here, when yesterday, as guest hosts on the Bald-Faced Truth, Chad Doing, John Strong and I had the opportunity to interview city commissioner Randy Leonard.

Among other things, the commissioner said he expects Commissioner Dan Saltzman (the swing vote on the City Council) to make up his mind this week. And it sounded as if Leonard expects Saltzman to vote for the proposal to put the new Triple-A ballpark at Lents Park.

Leonard was also critical of the Trail Blazers’ role in steering the ballpark away from the Rose Quarter. I think you’ll want to listen.

Tweet This Post

Tags: 95.5 The Game, Bald-Faced Truth, Chad Doing, City Council, Dan Saltzman, Dwight Jaynes, Randy Leonard

It was in 1964 that the Delta Dome ballot measure failed in Portland by just a few thousand votes. It would have, for $25 million, created the first domed stadium in the world — beating the Astrodome to the punch.

Just a few thousand votes, with Al Davis waiting in Oakland to move the Raiders to Portland if the stadium was built.

Looking back at that project, I remember what my father told me prior to the election. A very smart man, he had it all figured out and I’ve remembered what he said for all these decades later.

“It’s going to fail,” my dad said months prior to the election. “And it’s not going to fail because people don’t want to build a domed stadium. It’s that they’ve told people where they’re going to put it. You have to somehow get the commitment to build the stadium first, make sure it’s locked in, then start the argument about where to build it.

“You just alienate too many people with where you want to put it. No matter where you put it.”

He was so right. In the case of the Delta Dome, to be located in then-nearly-empty Delta Park, we mostly heard, “It’s closer to Vancouver residents than it is to Portlanders and they’re not helping pay for it” and, with a faint memory of the Vanport floods, “It’s not safe to put a stadium out there — it’s going to flood again.”

There were other arguments but those were the biggest — enough, certainly, to cost the few thousand votes the project needed. Some of it was just the old “not in my backyard” deal.

You just have to remember that reliable real estate cliche about the three most important factors: location, location, location.

Do I want the ballpark in Lents Park? Hell, no. It’s ridiculous that it isn’t still being planned for the Rose Quarter (a mistake of historic proportions). But I want the ballpark. So I’m willing to settle.

And I do think some of opposition to putting it out there is based on old-fashioned westside snobbery. There are people living west of the Willamette who believe it’s a solid ghetto from the river to the east end of Gresham – and never cross those Willamette bridges unless they’re en route to their vacation home near Bend.

A lot of people aren’t willing to settle for a ballpark just anywhere — they want it in one spot or nowhere. Or they don’t want to spend the money, period – at least on anything but bike paths and light rail. The point is, there’s always enough opposition to building stadiums and arenas around here, it’s why public money has built only one — beat-up old Memorial Coliseum —  in the long history of the city.

And to create more opposition because of the location makes it doubly difficult to get anything done.

Tweet This Post

Tags: Delta Dome, Dwight Jaynes, Lents Park, Memorial Coliseum