Home Team

 So, not for the first time, it occurs to me that my appreciation for professional sports may be misplaced. 

I was just reading how the repairs to Tropicana Field, those made necessary by Hurricane Milton, will not be finished until after the 2025 baseball season. The Tampa Bay Rays who have called Tropicana Field home since 1998. Now they will have to play baseball someplace else until 2026. 

So the Rays made a deal with the New York Yankees, losers of the most recent World Series, for fifteen million dollars to play their home games in the Yankees' Spring Training stadium. The minor league Tampa Tarpons (read that one carefully) will make "other arrangements" for their home games. 

This one strikes close to home for me, since the ****Athletics fled Oakland not because their stadium was destroyed by a hurricane, but by its ownership. The stadium in Oakland is most certainly in need of a facelift and perhaps even a replacement, but just up the road in Sacramento there is a minor league baseball stadium where the ****A's can play their "home games" until such time as the folks in Las Vegas get around to building a new ballpark in which they will become known as the Las Vegas Tax Breaks. The plot of land upon which that Vegas stadium will sit is the former home of (wait for it) The Tropicana Hotel. 

Millions of dollars are being tossed around at solutions to the problems of billionaires who own sports franchises. New stadiums spring up because the public and those billionaires demand their sacrifice. Meanwhile, the Oakland Unified School District languishes in yet another budget deficit. Talks about how to eliminate the shortfalls once again center on the "need" to close schools in order to save money. The money and movements made available to professional sports franchises do not exist for public education. That kind of money is reserved for the really important things. 

Like baseball stadiums. 

Maybe we could open up a few satellite campuses in Tampa or Sacramento and teach the kids how to fill out a scorecard.