Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit » (2nd Edition)

Neil deMause is a Brooklyn-based journalist who writes regularly for the Village Voice, Extra!, and Baseball Prospectus and runs the stadium-watch Web site fieldofschemes.com.

Joanna Cagan is a teacher and writer in New York City. She has written for numerous publications, including the Village Voice, the New York Times Magazine, and Interview.

In 1984 the NFL's Baltimore Colts ran away from home. Late at night and unknown to the fans and city they were leaving, the Colts packed up a dozen trucks, left town, and set up shop the next day in Indianapolis. Not the first professional sports team to change hometowns, they began a now-rampant trend in which owners threaten cities to put up cash for new stadiums or tax breaks or lose the franchise. Over the next dozen years, teams in all major professional leagues would give their hometowns pretty much the same ultimatum: Cough up huge amounts of public money or lose the team. Some sought tax relief; most wanted money to build new stadiums where they could charge higher ticket prices and build in luxury boxes to cater to corporate customers. Field of Schemes is a sad tour of this aspect of the lucrative and cutthroat business of professional sports and its relationship with city governments and the very functioning of municipal democracy.

Molly Ivins

“If this book had been around for the Greeks to read, they would have learned that they should’ve billed Troy for the horse.”

—Molly Ivins, newspaper columnist, political commentator, and best-selling author