Allow me to set cynicism aside for a moment and lapse into nostalgia. It’s hard not to get sentimental when the subject is baseball.

I was raised with the game, a Dodger fan in the Koufax era. Glued to the AM radio, Grandma Curtis and I spent long Henderson summers in her Victory Village apartment listening to the sainted Vin Scully rhapsodize and report about the men who seemed at once very human and so much larger than life.

I played the game with the tenacity the enthusiastically under-skilled can appreciate. When my life turned toward journalism, I spent hundreds of nights as a sportswriter and columnist at Cashman Field covering the Las Vegas Stars. I eventually moved to a different section of the newspaper, and the Stars eventually morphed into the 51s, changing owners along the way but maintaining a home at Cashman Field.

Come to think of it, I became more than a little sentimental about Cashman, too, as it aged into one of the oldest ballparks in the Pacific Coast League. The 51s management, led by the extremely capable Don Logan, lobbied unsuccessfully for many years for a new place to play ball.

And in 2019 the team is scheduled to have one in Summerlin, miles from its current home on the edge of downtown. Its new owners, The Howard Hughes Corporation, purchased the ballclub franchise for $20 million in 2013, and the stadium in Summerlin is being constructed at an estimated cost of $150 million.

Those aren’t the numbers that should give baseball fans pause. It’s the recent approval by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to approve an $80 million expenditure (over 20 years) for the “naming rights” to the stadium that ought to have even the most dedicated baseball Annie heading for the exits.

How shameless is the naming rights hustle? The agreement calls for the stadium to be called “Las Vegas Ballpark.” How creative. Is that all the LVCVA gets for its $80 million? These are the kind of people who trade the family cow for magic beans.

Just a few years ago, the ham-handed gift to Hughes, which will develop and construct the stadium on eight acres in Downtown Summerlin, would have been loudly ridiculed in the local press and called the audacious stickup that it is. But after watching the jaw-dropping journalistic cheerleading that took place prior to the approval of $750 million in public financing to build a new stadium home for the NFL’s Oakland Raiders, the Hughes heist seems like barely a handout at all.

The room-tax-dollar spigot is wide open -- as long as you have the political juice.

Some in the grandstands of Southern Nevada politics and business may ask themselves, “Why does Hughes, a hugely successful company, need such an obvious giveaway?”

The answer is simple. Because it can.

If there’s one lesson watching the $750 million stadium deal teaches even the densest government student is that it’s much, much cheaper to spend money on lobbyists, politicians, and even Nevada’s largest newspaper than it is to pay the full bill.

But if $750 million is doable with the right political juice, and an $80 million outlay causes barely a blip on the radar screen, what sport is next? If you’re willing to bring out the checkbook, fast-talking promoters and unabashed fans can make plausible arguments for any number of activities.

Professional lacrosse looks entertaining, and the amateur version is increasingly popular among Southern Nevada youth. How about a professional lacrosse stadium? Come on, lacrosse fanatics, grab your crosses and raise your voices.

Or a state-of the-art volleyball complex. Or a cycling velodrome. Or something that would have made sense three decades ago: a rodeo stadium designed as a permanent home for the National Finals Rodeo and other major equestrian events.

When corporate America goes looking for a location for a new factory or headquarters, CEOs invariably want a location with a welcoming business environment, the right infrastructure and -- perhaps most importantly -- an educated workforce. It’s not exactly breaking news.

Neither is the fact that our public education system continues to struggle as it strives to  pull itself up from the bottom of most national performance rankings. It would be nice if those stadium handouts were met with half the skepticism heaped on our education structure.

The LVCVA’s $80 million ballpark giveaway sends the faith of even the most nostalgic baseball fan well into foul territory, but after the audacious $750 million football stadium robbery, it’s strictly minor league.

 

John L. Smith is a longtime Las Vegas journalist and author. Contact him at [email protected]. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith.