Doug Pappas, RIP

You might not have heard of him, but Pappas was one of the best baseball economists out there, and as responsible as any one human for beginning to turn public opinion away from taxpayer financing of baseball stadiums, and toward the pervasiveness of Bud Selig's lies. Read the comments at this site to get a sense of his influence.

Comments

[T]

Not to nitpick or anything- but are you sure that "turn[ed] public opinion ... toward the pervasiveness of Bud Selig's lies" is what you mean? (It's actually more confusing without the ellipses).

Anyway, bye Doug.

[Dave Straub]

Holy crap... this is terrible. A few dozen posts into the Primer thread, someone says Pappas was 43 years old.

My condolences to his friends and family. He was a rare and importnat voice in favor of free markets in pro sports.

[dead_elvis]

I'd never heard of him, but I just read some of those articles and enjoyed them very much. That's very sad that he died so young.

Unfortunately his wisdom has not spread to other sports. Few things get me more disgusted than taxpayer financed stadiums. Here in Memphis we just got screwed to the tune of more than $250 million for a basketball arena, and we're saddled with restrictions on re-using the old arena which still has $30 million of debt. The people here were never given an opportunity to vote on it. Feh.

[Joe Blow]

definitely very sad. i read his "business of baseball" weblog every day, and i enjoyed not only his take and insights on baseball, but his interest in the quirky, strange, and beautiful sites that can be found while traveling across the U.S. there's a big hole in my daily reading now.

king kauffman at salon.com wrote a nice piece about doug today for his column. it can be found at:
http://www.salon.com/news/sports/col/kaufman/2004/05/24/monday/

[Call me snake]

A giant. This man will be sorely missed.

Pappas's VORP is difficult to calculate because it will be so hard to replace him.

[Will]

It was only after we closed on our house that we learned that we would have to pay "Stadium Tax" -- but not if we lived one more block down the street.

My hard earned dollars are being stolen to support other peoples hobbies.

Bye bye Doug! I will miss you almost as much as I miss my money!

[Farley]

I am/was Doug's first cousin, and the kind words about him by so many has eased the pain of this a little bit. To set the rocord straight -- because Doug would have done so -- he was 42 when he died. He would have turned 43 this August.

Again, many thanks for everyone's kind words and thoughts.

[aba]

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