Here is an excerpt from a bizarre column by Chronicle “Couch Slouch” columnist Norman Chad:
To: My hometown of Washington
From: A fallen son who will not return
Re: Your new baseball stadium
So, how’s that spanking-new, paid-for-by-the-people Nationals Park working out? The Nats are 12th out of 16 National League teams in home attendance in the first year of the fresh-faced, gleaming facility — your tax dollars hard at work!
Washington: First in War, First in Peace and First in Half-Filled State-of-the-Art Ballparks Funded Entirely From Public Coffers That Are Now Nearly Empty.
I first saw the retro ball yard on opening day, courtesy of ESPN. It looked like a picture postcard. Outside, the city looks like a living nightmare.
(Sure, some readers might ask: Why are you moaning about the Nationals’ new park one week after moaning about the new Yankee Stadium? Because I’m tired of sports franchises feeding off the public dime and I’m tired of the public’s compliance in this process. I’m tired of rich men pillaging the poor and then asking them to clean up afterward. If Nero were alive today, he’d be fiddling in a luxury suite at the Colosseum while Rome burned.)
Actually, some readers — including this one — might ask, why so much interest in what other cities are doing in terms of sports boondoggles, and not Houston? Isn’t our city in the middle of trying to build another one, and didn’t Jeff Cohen once say the name of the newspaper is the HoustonChronicle?
And while we’re asking questions — what is the purpose of a “couch slouch” column in the sports section anyway?
