TL;DR: The Atlanta Braves seek $20 million dollar grant from Florida to build their future Spring Training facility out in Sarasota
Whaaaat? The Braves want someone else to shoulder the financial load for something that they want? Never heard of such lunacy in my entire life.
A long time ago, I was in Las Vegas with a large group of friends. Like most large groups of friends tend to do in Las Vegas, we ended up going to a strip club. The Girls of Glitter Gulch, specifically. (RIP) At the GGG, there was this one stripper that periodically showed up to our table, and with the vitriol that only a mad black woman can conjure up, looked at one person at the table each time and demanded, “WHERE U BEEN? GIMME A DOLLAR!” and like five times out of five times she pulled the stunt, whomever she targeted would promptly fork over a dollar, and then she’d vanish before doing the whole thing again later.
That’s kind of what the Braves are, as it pertains to this situation in Sarasota. Naturally, they whispered sweet nothings into Sarasota’s ear to get them all wet and excited about the prospect of housing a Spring Training facility, but when it came time to settle the check, the Braves went all Extreme Cheapskates on the city, and at first, agreed to pay for their share of the tab, but as the months went on, the willingness to contribute their share diminished, and the Braves began turning every single stone and rock over, looking for ways to minimize how much they had to contribute, and how much the city of Sarasota or the state of Florida would pay instead.
Every time the story of the Braves’ future Spring Training home emerges, it’s WHERE U BEEN? GIMME A DOLLAR all over again, with the Braves acting like they’ve never seen Sarasota in their entire lives, and then promptly and aggressively asking for money.
I love how much of a no-brainer terrible idea all of this was, and I guess it shouldn’t surprise me at all to just how dumb and gullible the people involved in the fleecing of their city were. I mean seriously, $1.7 billion dollars of projected impact over 30 years? Not accounting for inflation? Sure, $1.7 billion over 30 years is roughly $57 million, which in itself is no chump change, but that’s for an entire fucking city, and not an individual. The surplus that comes from $57 million certainly doesn’t seem worth it compared to the sheer magnitude of money put up front, to the Braves in the first place.
The estimated cost of the entire facility was listed at $75 million. $21.3 million of which are coming from the city of Sarasota itself, meaning the developer and the Braves would be responsible for the remaining nearly $50 million; that is, until the Braves decided to do their favorite activity and cry poor, and now the state of Florida might be on the hook for $20 million themselves. Which means it’s only a matter of time before the Braves pull their vanishing act before bursting back in asking WHERE U BEEN GIMME A DOLLAR in regards to the remaining $30 million they owe.
And that’s before the sports dollars run out, and the actual cost of the facility which will undoubtedly hit the $100 million mark will need more funding, to which it will inevitably be the responsibility of Sarasota taxpayers.
Honestly, the Braves are running out of organizational tiers to build shit to fuck over taxpayers of varying parts of the United States. They’ve screwed Rome, Jackson, Lawrenceville and Marietta already, so I guess there’s still a little bit of room for them to try and screw Danville, and perhaps resume trying to screw Wilmington, when they’re done screwing over Sarasota.
When they ultimately run out, I don’t know what I’m going to brog about anymore, aside from racial hypocrisy, wrestling, commercials, semi-trucks tipping over, and the stupid shit that happens all around Atlanta.
