Weapons of Mass Instruction

An essay about sports teams, voters and the miracles performed by Control Z...

So it turns out Jackson County Voters weren’t all the excited about Question 1 and it not only lost, it lost by a lot (58 to 42%) which surprised me because I kinda thought if Patrick Mahomes asked us to put our kids up for adoption and donate the proceeds to the Retired Chiefs Cheerleader Fund, our kids should start packing immediately.

I’m still digging through the election rubble, but so far think the Kansas City Star’s sports columnist Sam McDowell got it right: the Chiefs and Royals should blame themselves, not the voters. In Sam’s opinion – which I share – the taxpayers rejected the proposal, not the teams.

So it’s like your boy-and-or-girlfriend – who you love a lot – suggested a camping trip in the Gaza Strip and while you don’t want to break up, you think that’s a really bad idea and maybe your boy-and-or-girlfriend needs to start paying more attention to the news.

Jackson County taxpayers have supported both teams for decades and I’m guessing very few of them want the teams to go elsewhere, they just want a proposal that doesn’t look like a fourth-grade science project put together with Elmer’s Glue, paper clips and rubber bands by an inebriated parent at 3 AM the day it was due.

Anyway…

As you might recall (and if you don’t, I’m about to remind you) the original reason the Royals said they needed to move was Kauffman Stadium had Stage 4 “cancer of the concrete” and the thing was falling down around their ears, but when people asked where’s the proof, the Royals said pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

(And yes, we just changed metaphors in the middle of my stream of consciousness.)

The Royals – and pretty much everybody else – quit talking about “cancer of the concrete” when people started asking too many questions and instead started offering other reasons for building a downtown ballpark like it would create 26,000 jobs and our teeth would be whiter (claims rejected by economists who weren’t being paid by the Royals and three-out-of-four dentists) and when I explained all this to my son, who’s so far to the Left he thinks I’m a Republican, he said:

“It’s just like Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

He went on to say it was an excuse to get the ball rolling and when it turned out there was no WMD they started offering other reasons for doing what the people in power wanted us to do. (I think there was also some “Workers of the World, Unite!” shit in there, but when he quit talking about baseball I stopped paying attention.)

OK, so voters did not like the current proposal, what’s next?

A Brief History Lesson

As former Star colleague and generally all-around good guy, Blair Kerkhoff, wrote on the Star’s website:

In 2004 voters turned down a quarter-cent sales tax that would have raised $1.2 billion for improvements at both stadiums. As Blair explained, the proposal back then was different; it also gave money to the arts and was bi-state (not that there’s anything wrong with that, and yes, that was a Seinfeld reference) and needed to pass in four counties, but failed in three.

Here’s a link to Blair’s story:

https://www.kansascity.com/sports/article287276065.html

Just in case you didn’t read it: after losing the election the Royals and Chiefs didn’t threaten to move the teams – David Glass, the Royals owner at the time, said, “We’re not going anywhere” – and they came back with a simpler proposal (the arts got thrown overboard and this time it was 3/8ths-cent sales tax just in Jackson County) and that simpler proposal passed in 2006.

As Blair reminded me…

In that same election, a proposal to build a rolling roof between the two stadiums was turned down and after watching local politics for four decades I’m under the general impression that you could suggest paving over the Missouri River to build the World’s Biggest Skateboard Park and people who make money building stuff and tearing stuff down would support the idea because there’s no project too ridiculous if it makes the right people money.

I mean, how else do you explain the Sphinx?

I feel fairly confident that some 2500 BC Egyptian contractor claimed it would be bring 26,000 jobs into the area and then they’d open a Giza Entertainment District where they could charge you way too much for chips and hummus and apparently the Pharaoh Khafre bought that argument because he also built a pyramid.

Little known historical fact: Khafre financed both projects with funds raised by a half-cent sales tax levied at slave auctions.

(See? This is just the kind of important historical information that the “lamestream media” refuses to give you and why you have to turn to social media to find these all-important “hand-crafted facts.”)

“Hand-crafted facts” aside, the fact (and this one is actually real) that Kansas City built a streetcar system, then tore it out and is now building it again supports my contention that if it makes the right people money, they’ll support building or tearing down pretty much anything.

And Now a Totally Unrelated Blair Kerkhoff Story

(Man, if he’s reading this, I bet Blair’s sweating bullets right now.)

So Blair and I are sitting next to each other in the “auxiliary press box” – conveniently located on the outskirts of Newark, New Jersey – at New York’s Citi Field and we just watched the Royals beat the Mets and win the 2015 World Series.

Everybody is typing furiously because we have to beat newspaper deadlines which these days requires a time machine and Blair utters a curse word (I forget which one, but since I think he’s a good guy, let’s go with “DRAT!”) and says:

“My story just disappeared.”

Being no stranger to screwing up badly I’ve encountered this phenomena before and say: “DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING.”

Then tell Blair to hit “Control Z” which undoes whatever you just did previously and let’s face it, we could all use a lot more “Control Z” in our lives. Blair does it and his story reappears and then he announces like Charlton Heston coming down off a mountain while carrying stone tablets:

“THERE SHOULD NOT BE ANY COMBINATION OF KEYS THAT YOU CAN ACCIDENTALLY HIT AND DELETE YOUR WORK.”

Which I couldn’t agree with more and as long as we’re inscribing stone tablets, Moses made a good start with the first 10, but they could add Blair’s statement as the 11^th Commandment and I’m pretty sure you could get at least 58% of Jackson County voters to agree with that.

And now back to our previously-scheduled diatribe.

The All-Powerful Media

Former Kansas City Star publisher Jim Hale used to start speeches by talking about how powerful and influential the Kansas City Star was and claimed we elected presidents, senators, governors, mayors and dog catchers and would then add:

“We do this by endorsing their opponents.”

Which is a good reminder that we may not be nearly as influential as we’d like to believe and our endorsement of a candidate or a proposal might encourage people who think we’re a collection of horse’s asses (in my case, a growing demographic) to support whatever we oppose or oppose whatever we support.

Which I bring up now because somebody sent me an email this morning suggesting maybe I helped sway the Question 1 vote. I told them I figured whatever I do is just a grain of sand on the Scales of Public Opinion. (Instead of a monthly subscription, I’m thinking of charging by the metaphor.)

But just in case I do have any influence:

I hope the Royals and Chiefs don’t see the Question 1 vote as a rejection of them and start planning on a trial separation in which they take up with a crack-addicted 19-year-old Las Vegas stripper because the Oakland Raiders and Athletics beat them to that.  

The following KC Star story indicates that the implied threat to leave the area was suggested by political strategists and while I have no proof (unlike the rock solid evidence I provided on the Sphinx) it wouldn’t surprise me if these were the same political strategists who told John McCain that Sarah Palin would make a good running mate.   

https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/election/article287287535.html#campaignName=kansascity_morning_newsletter

Now here’s a quote from former Royals second baseman and current Jackson County Executive Frank White:

“I’m just hoping that the teams will take a deep breath, and come back to the table. And we can sit down and work out a good deal that’s beneficial for the entire community.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself so I won’t try.

One more time: the voters rejected the proposal, not the teams and like a lot of other Royals and Chiefs fans, I hope the teams learn a lesson from a Weapon of Mass Instruction and see it what way.

P.S.

Even though the Star fired me (twice, which ought to be a record, but surprisingly isn’t) and a publisher assured me I wasn’t fired, I was just “laid off” to which I responded, “When they take all your money and tell you to go home and not come back, it really feels like you’re fired” and newspapers in general have had a hard time and now offer less for more, when it comes to important issues like downtown ballparks and the Pharaohs who want one, the Star was still the best source of information.

That’s why I continue to subscribe and hope you will too, because without someone watching the people in charge, the people in charge will get up to even more bullshit than they currently do.

A newspaper subscription is still a good investment in your community and one I hope more people make.

Talk to you soon.