New Lease on Life

Oh, the gnashing of teeth. The sky-is-falling predictions of hell-on-earth to come. The tears, the whining, the prostrate grief.

Yeah, you know what the Strip is talking about. No one bawled harder after last week’s election than Joe Posnanski.

The Kansas City Star sports columnist sounded like a stuck pig after Bistate II went down, losing in four of the five counties where it was on the ballot.

Before the election, the Strip warned that Jackson County’s deal with the Chiefs and the Royals was a turkey dressed up by half a billion dollars of unbegged-for spending on the arts. Turns out the Strip wasn’t the only one who figured Bistate II was smelly.

Sounding like a toddler who’s lost his chewie, Posnanski whined that Bistate II’s failure leaves Kansas City taxpayers with a stark choice: build a couple of $500 million megastadiums with hellacious tax increases — or lose our pro ball teams entirely.

Waaaaa.

Is it really all that bad? Only if we think and act like a bunch of small-town dumbasses.

Look, here’s why Jackson County is in such a bind: Back in 1990, it signed crappy leases with the Chiefs and Royals guaranteeing that the stadiums at the Truman Sports Complex would remain “state of the art.”

The “art” that teams owners talk about isn’t the pursuit of lovely places to watch dramatic sporting events unfold. If that were the case, both stadiums would still be considered masterpieces — both were masterfully built and remain terrific places to watch games. No, they’re talking about another type of art entirely: the pursuit of money.

We built them cathedrals dedicated to sport. They want temples to the dollar.

OK, so the Strip isn’t naïve. It knows that in order to remain competitive, teams today need to make tons of money through luxury boxes and seat licenses and other methods for soaking the rich fan. But when you’re asking the average fan (and folks who don’t even go to games) to pony up for those niceties, you’d better have some decent incentives for Jane Six Pack. And Bistate II had almost none.

So back to square one. Unlike Posnanski, we shouldn’t panic. Instead, this meat patty suggests we get smart and start seeing the Royals and Chiefs for what they are: two separate businesses with two different destinies.

Look, it does make sense to upgrade Arrowhead — simply because it makes no sense to build a new facility for a team that’s going to use it only ten days out of the year (maybe twelve if playoffs go well).

What’s the best way to make that happen?

Put Lamar in charge. Level Kauffman Stadium and give Arrowhead and the rest of the complex to Lamar Hunt.

This porterhouse can already hear it: “Hey, flank steak, are you nuts? The Chiefs and the Royals pay us rent, you know, and we’d be losing out on all that money.”

Well, let this contrary cutlet fill you in on what a brilliant landlord Jackson County is. Sure, the Chiefs and the Royals together in 2004 will pay a total of $2,785,000. Sounds like a nice chunk of change, don’t it? But wait a minute — the county turns around and pays the teams “management fees” for running the facilities, and those total more than $5.6 million. Yeah, that’s right. We’d actually save money if we turned over Arrowhead to Hunt.

Hunt has already proven that he’s willing to pump considerable money into Arrowhead — he pledged to put in at least $50 million for stadium upgrades, and that was when he was only a renter. Give him the damn place and he’ll work a deal to transform it in no time.

As for the Royals, David Glass has already shown that he’s a skinflint, offering to pay only 8 percent of the $195 million Kauffman improvement budget. Mr. Wal-Mart has shown his colors; it’s time we got tough with him.

Unfortunately, Jackson County Chief Executive Katheryn Shields has already proven herself incompetent when it comes to negotiating a decent deal for the county. It’s time someone saved her bacon. Someone who has already proven she knows how to work with the big boys.

Yeah, we may have singed her hide in the past, but the Strip is willing to swallow its barbecue-sauce-coated pride and give Mayor Kay Barnes her due. But only if Queen Kay will stick her patrician nose where it ought to be — in the middle of a plan to bring the Royals downtown.

Kay’s right-hand man, City Manager Wayne Cauthen, has already explained why we need to bring the baseball team inside the loop. “There’s a reason that 16 of the last 17 ballparks have been downtown — because it works,” Cauthen said recently.

However, before Jack Holland and other naysayers start polluting the Star and the airwaves with jackass pronouncements about the cost of a downtown stadium, the Strip will say what it’s said before: Moving the Royals downtown doesn’t mean building them a godawful $450 million megastadium.

The Strip was once again perusing local architect Brad Schrock‘s amazing plans for a cozy, 25,000-seat ballpark in the Fenway and Wrigley style that would cost only a little more than the planned $195 million upgrade of Kauffman but would instead sit just south of the freeway loop downtown.

Then this tenderloin realized where Schrock had placed his hypothetical ballpark — right on top of the Pitch offices at 17th Street and Main.

The building where the pontificating porterhouse writes this column would be wiped out to make room for third-base side seats. Centerfield would be out by the corner of 17th Street and Grand — Posnanski’s office at the Star would just be a stroll across the street. The columnist would hardly get moist hustling over to the game.

Here’s how generous the Strip is feeling toward its favorite Star sportswriter. This sizzler would happily jump off the grill at its present building to make way for a new Royals stadium so that Joe could have an easy walk to the game.

But only if he quits his sniffling.

Tony Ortega talks about this week’s Pitch with KRBZ 96.5’s Lazlo after 4 p.m. Wednesday.