Friday, March 31, 2000
For Reds, the house never wins
BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
On Tuesday, we ran a story about the Reds' new playfield, complete with an artist's rendering (STORY). The drawing didn't evoke comparisons to the Louvre. Let's hope appearances truly are deceiving. Because this looked like Kmart with bases. Or worse, the new Comiskey Park.
The next day, we ran a story on the Bengals' nearly completed royal palace. (STORY). We noted the stadium's “signature:” a canopy in the shape of a swoosh, made of Teflon-coated fiberglass, illuminated by a bank of lights, running the length of one side of the field. Oh, my.
The canopy will protect a few thousand fans from the elements. (Not, alas, from the home team's performance.) “But mostly,” we wrote, “it just looks cool.”
Far be it from me to say our Cincinnati Bengals should not have a cool-looking, Teflon-coated, fiberglass canopy atop their new stadium. Just as a $4,500 credenza and the laser-etched conference room chairs are essential to the proper functioning of our swell little professional football team, so too is a designer roof.
No telling what the going rate for a cool, canopied roof might be. But what the hey. It's only our money. If it distracts us from the product on the field, God bless it. It's probably worth the coin.
And what, really, is a football stadium without a lighted roof that looks good from a blimp? Even if the blimp only shows up for Monday Night Football, an event that lately has featured the Bengals as much as the Pottstown Firebirds.
But here's the thing: The Reds are paying for that roof. Not directly, sure. But paying just the same. Every nickel deposited into the Bengals' stadium is a nickel removed from the Reds' place.
Triple-A, Brand X
An artist's rendering is just that. Maybe the Reds' ballyard will arrive as dressed out as the Bengals'. (Then again, probably not, unless HOK is planning another Taj Mahal.)
But the money isn't infinite. It only seems that way. From the looks of things, the baseball team is getting the skinny end of the wallet.
“No, no,” said Bob Bedinghaus. He stood in the shadow of Paul Brown Stadium on Thursday, attending a made-for-minicam press gathering billed as the “topping off ceremony.” I'm not positive, but I think it marked the final piece of steel being put into place in our cool, new, canopied football stadium. Probably, they should have declared it a legal holiday.
The Reds “are not going to end up with a TripleA ballpark,” the commissioner promised. Its $280 million cost (estimated, of course) “will build an incredibly nice baseball stadium, with all the bells and whistles other communities dream of.”
OK. But the drawing, done by the folks doing the design, makes it look like Brand X Ballpark. The field opens up to the Ohio River and a fine view of ... Kentucky. You get a glimpse of the diamond from Sycamore Street. That's nice for the few, lost souls wandering around that end of town at night.
Borrrrr-innnnggg
Where is the terrace, so symbolic of Crosley Field? Why, it's in Houston, of course. At the new Enron Field, a 10-foot chunk of dead center field rises at a 30-degree angle to the wall.
The Reds even nixed the short porch in right, apparently because baseball wanted them to combine it with a higher fence that would obstruct all those wonderful views of the dirty river.
(In San Francisco, meanwhile, the short porch is alive and well. At the new Pac-Bell Park, it's 307 feet down the right-field line. Junior should have been a Giant.)
Didn't they go to some length to seek the public's input on this? Did anyone suggest, “Let's put Crosley's terrace in Houston?”
Bedinghaus swears there is enough change left over from PB Stadium to build the Reds a playpen suited to baseball's first team. Maybe so. But early returns suggest strongly that you get what you pay for. Whether it's a cool canopy or another Comiskey Park.
Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 768-8454. Fair Game, a collection of his columns, is available at local bookstores.
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