The ownership really has nowhere to move at the moment.
Someone in Milwaukee has issued a threat that the Major League Baseball Brewers franchise may leave town if politicians don’t come up with about $400 million to renovate the team’s home field very soon. Brewers’ ownership could relocate the franchise to Nashville or Charlotte where there is no major league baseball stadium ready for use until at least 2026. The Brewers’ ownership lease with Milwaukee officials ends in 2030. In May, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred let Milwaukee and Wisconsin politicians know who the boss is. It’s him. Manfred wants elected officials to get money together and fix up the Milwaukee Brewers’ home field or else. His blank assessment of the 22-year-old stadium is that the ballpark is not being maintained properly and will become a problem like Oakland. Manfred did not threaten that the business would move but by bringing up John Fisher’s impending business move from Oakland to Las Vegas it is an implied threat. But the implied threat has morphed into an outright threat of leaving or at least it was a story in the local Milwaukee newspaper.
In May, Manfred told reporters it’s important that a ballpark funding plan be promptly approved by government officials. Manfred underscored the point and went after local politicians who he claimed “made some unfortunate decisions not to maintain the ballpark in the way that it needed to be maintained. It resulted in a decline in the attendance which had an impact on the quality of the product that the team could afford to put on the field.” Milwaukee elected officials in 1950 decided to fund a stadium. Lou Perini, who owned the Boston Braves, took the offer and moved his team in the middle of spring training in 1953 to Milwaukee. Now Wisconsin lawmakers have to decide if they will give into Manfred’s hostile position.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
