Jim Fossel: Call the Sea Dogs to heel

There it is, folks.

We knew something would change with our beloved Portland Sea Dogs when the team was sold by the Burke family to Diamond Baseball Holdings, a national firm that’s snapping up minor league teams all over the country. Even if they kept the local management in place and didn’t change operations at all, there’s a difference between a local owner who cares about the community and a gigantic corporation that cares about profit margins. We were assured otherwise, of course, and at first the buyers seemed to keep that promise: the experience for fans remained largely the same – if not improving slightly in some ways.

But the other shoe has definitely dropped. The team is being forced by Major League Baseball to upgrade Hadlock Field, the city-owned ballpark where it plays, and the Sea Dogs want us taxpayers to foot the bill for part of it.

The Sea Dogs aren’t asking the state to pay for all of it, and they’re not asking for a direct payment – they want tax credits to help pay for it. This isn’t an entirely uncommon practice; the state and municipalities often assist businesses with tax credits. The most common form of that assistance is tax increment financing, when municipalities defer future property tax payments in a certain area to help finance a development of some kind. The theory goes that, since the development helps bring in new tax revenue, it’s a win-win arrangement; the revenue financing the TIF wouldn’t exist without the project.

This proposal would be different, though, because it’s unclear how the state would benefit from it. This is a project that, while it would certainly improve Hadlock Field, wouldn’t bring much (if any) new revenue to the state or the city; it would simply maintain an existing business. Moreover, it would help maintain an existing business owned by a national company that should have the wherewithal to afford the upgrade itself. When Diamond Baseball Holdings, the Sea Dogs’ owner, was sold in 2022, it was for $280 million. That sale took place shortly before it acquired the Sea Dogs for an unknown sum in a private transaction.

One would think that a national corporation worth hundreds of millions of dollars would be able to afford a $5 million clubhouse upgrade in Portland. If it didn’t have the spare change lying around in its accounts, that’s understandable – but it’s a major corporation (and there are these things out there called banks). Indeed, even if it had the cash to afford the upgrade itself, it’d probably get a loan for it anyway; wealthy individuals and big corporations like to avoid investing their own cash wherever possible.

If the Sea Dogs’ parent corporation couldn’t afford the upgrade, and for some reason didn’t want to get a loan, there’s another interested party who could probably swing it: the Boston Red Sox. While the Red Sox don’t own the Sea Dogs, they’ve been their affiliate for two decades now. Portland is a convenient location for the Red Sox for a wide variety of reasons, and they surely don’t want to see the Sea Dogs move. Portland isn’t just a beautiful city to visit, it’s an easy ride less than two hours from Boston. Having a Red Sox affiliate right in the heart of New England makes for a better experience for fans, players and coaches alike. Fans are more invested in the team as a Red Sox affiliate, so it creates a better environment for players. There are all sorts of reasons that having an affiliate in Portland is not only logical but essential to the Red Sox.

The Boston Red Sox, as an entity, is not only worth a lot of money itself; its primary owner, John Henry, is a billionaire. Although he’s worth less than half as much as Bob Kraft, a $5 million clubhouse renovation would be peanuts to him.

While the Portland Sea Dogs are a beloved local icon, the team is not a locally owned business expanding and boosting the economy, and there’s no good reason for taxpayers to foot the bill for its renovations. We shouldn’t be spending millions of dollars to subsidize a sports team owned by a corporation worth hundreds of millions. There are plenty of real problems facing this state; we shouldn’t be frittering away millions of dollars on corporate welfare. That would be a lump of coal in the taxpayer stocking.

Jim Fossel, a conservative activist from Gardiner, worked for Sen. Susan Collins. He can be contacted at:
jwfossel@gmail.com
Twitter: @jimfossel