Baseball Building Boom Over?

Matt Welch | November 20, 2003

From Neil deMause, over at Baseball Prospectus:

Next spring, the San Diego Padres and Philadelphia Phillies will take up residence in new stadiums, Petco Park and Citizens Bank Park respectively. [�] [I]t will mark the first time since ground was broken for Toronto's SkyDome in October 1985 that not a single new big-league ballpark will be under construction on planet Earth.

Before you bust out the champagne, here's a sobering sentence:

It's been quite an 18-year run: 19 new stadiums, 18 new corporate monikers (including such double-dippers as Enron Field/Minute Maid Park and Pac Bell/SBC Park) and around $5 billion in taxpayer money sunk into the cause.

Plenty of chunky stadium-swindle information in the article, and it turns out deMause has a useful website on the topic entitled Field of Schemes.