It’s no secret. There’s no place for them to play next season. They have to go somewhere else next summer — for at least one summer. I would guess that it would be Tucson.
Now that could be one summer or forever. Most likely forever. My guess would be that if the team isn’t for sale now it soon will be. And not a day goes by that some old-time baseball fan doesn’t send me an email or call me, begging me to help keep the team here. And to complain about “Merritt Paulson moving the team out of town.”
Sorry, I’m not going to go there. For one thing, all Paulson has tried to do is get this community to build a long-overdue ballpark. And he’s offered to put $10 million of his own money to help do it — way more than most minor-league team owners would do.
The place the Beavers have been playing since the mid-1950s was never a ballpark. It’s a stadium, always best fit for football rather than baseball — from that first day in 1956, when as a little kid I watched the team try to shoehorn itself into a configuration that for fans and players, never did make much sense.
There have been a couple of tries to make it a better facility for baseball but the wrong plan was always chosen and always failed. I have no nostalgic feelings about PGE Park, Civic Stadium or Multnomah Stadium — whatever you want to call it — and I have spent more time in that facility than just about anyone in this area. I worked there for years, from the time I was 13 years old picking up bats, all the way through college as a front-office employee and then as a writer covering teams.
It’s a cold, uncomfortable venue that in and of itself has done more to turn people off to baseball than any promoter or team that has ever played there. I wish those attempting to convert it into yet another type of stadium the best of luck. I hope it works. But it was never going to work as a ballpark.
And this city’s continued failure to recognize the need for even a medium-sized home for a professional baseball team no longer bothers me, either. I mean, at a certain point you just accept the fact that this is what we are as a city — a place unlike just about any other major city in the world.
Believe it or not, other cities everywhere recognize the value of pro sports to a community and what they bring. Not just monetarily but culturally. I don’t think we ever will get that here — we think, as a city, we’re too smart for that. We ask the Paulsons of the world to build their own arenas and stadiums. And they don’t. We got lucky when Paul Allen did it and we aren’t going to get that lucky again. Nobody else is that rich or that stupid.
There are too many other places who will build arenas or stadiums for these owners. Is that the right thing for a city? Who is to say. It’s just the way it’s done, folks. You want to be in the game, you spend the money. All other cities do it and don’t look back.
The price, really, is so inconsequential compared to the money thrown away on other stuff that you don’t even notice it. Or maybe you do. Fact is, at a certain point of living here all your life, you just lose patience with the whole concept.
I’ve pretty much given up on Portland ever realizing its potential as a city. Not just as a sports town but as a major city. The lack of understanding about what it takes to keep a city healthy and vibrant business-wise is appalling. The misplaced faith in our politicians has betrayed us over and over. There’s been a leadership vacuum here for decades.
And what’s always bothered me is not that we’re lost, it’s that most people here don’t even realize how lacking in direction we are. We have no leaders and no plan.
Bike paths are not a destination, folks. They’re a distraction on the way to one. Trolleys are an expensive and very slow ride to nowhere. But in this city, it’s always seemed that the journey matters more than the destination. That’s the way it works when you have no idea where you’re going.
Welcome to Portland, the city that doesn’t work. And hasn’t for years.
Tweet This Post
