Columnist Ron Kantowski: Baseball talk takes public hit from Wynn

Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2005 | 9:19 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

On Jan. 5, Mayor Oscar Goodman told reporters that he hoped to make an announcement about a Major League Baseball team coming to Las Vegas "within the next month."

I guessed I missed it.

Then last week, Steve Wynn went on TV to tell Las Vegas ONE's Jon Ralston about myriad things one can see while standing at the top of his 50-story megaresort going up on the Strip, one of which is that Major League Baseball probably isn't coming to town anytime soon. Or ever.

Suddenly, it's as if that dog and pony show at the MLB meetings in December, where all those baseball people told Mayor Goodman all those things he wanted to hear about our city's viability as a major league city, never happened.

Perhaps it's time to load up the showgirls and head off to spring training for confirmation, because any momentum about baseball and Las Vegas seems to be stranded at first base. Or in the on-deck circle.

Wynn's comments on "Face to Face," while not surprising, still came off as a nasty curveball to anybody foolish enough to believe baseball is coming sooner than later.

"Probably not," Wynn said when Ralston asked about Las Vegas and big-league sports.

"This is a city that is very unique in the sense that it is entertainment overload and this entertainment is paid for by all the same people who pay the taxes, the gaming industry with the convention bureau's room tax. Unless the gaming industry supported it (it won't happen), because you know you need to spend a lot of money."

Well, with his new place getting ready to shoot off some fireworks, Wynn is back front and center in the gaming industry and he obviously doesn't think much of Las Vegas as a baseball town. While he doesn't speak for everybody in his business, he's the only one talking.

But I'm not the only one listening.

Even one of the city's biggest baseball proponents says Wynn's views aren't exactly coming out of left field.

"Nobody has been as instrumental as him as creating what's here," said Las Vegas 51s president Don Logan, who along with the eternally optimistic Goodman, are still the closest thing the baseball project has to front men. "Some of his points are valid, especially in terms of competition for entertainment."

As far as expressing his skepticism for baseball, Wynn indicated he isn't alone among the gaming moguls. Just first. So call him early Wynn.

"All these cities that have sports, they build a venue, they build a stadium or an arena, because they need it to bring people to the city," Wynn told Ralston. "We have all the people (already) coming here, too many as a matter of fact in some people's view.

"So that the fellows who would have to pay for it, the business community, they don't think we need this. They think there are other things that are more important and they may be right."

Don't be alarmed by that loud whirring sound. It's just Wynn sawing off the bat in Mayor Goodman's hands.

Logan said that while he can't argue with Wynn's business acumen, perhaps he's a little premature in thinking that major league baseball and the gaming industry couldn't co-exist or even benefit one another.

He talked about a major league franchise attracting big business, maybe even the diversified kind we don't have now, and while agreeing that there is plenty to do in Las Vegas without major league sports, he said that also is the case in New York City.

"There's plenty going on in New York and they've got more (pro sports) than anybody," Logan said.

So what appears to be happening is that the movers and shakers on the local baseball scene, or at least the few guys talking about it, are on opposite ends of the dugout. If Las Vegas learned anything from the long and contentious process that at long last transformed the forlorn Montreal Expos into the Washington Nationals, it's that everybody needs to pull together to make it happen. Here, we seem closer to a tug of war.

As Ben Grove of the Sun's Washington Bureau recently wrote, "Baseball doesn't have much patience for bickering among the city officials who are supposed to be selling the league on a pitch."

So far, we can't even get the guys on the same team to agree on which pitch to throw. The mayor wants a commitment from Major League Baseball before building a stadium. And he's adamant that if it happens, the ballpark will be built downtown on those 61 acres where, amazingly, tumbleweeds still flourish.

Logan believes if Las Vegas is serious about attracting a major league team, it needs to get started now by building a new stadium for the Triple-A 51s, which would then be converted into Goodman Yards when the time comes.

He talked about cities such as Portland being much better positioned than Las Vegas, in that it already has committed $200 million toward a new stadium and has an old one that seats 40,000 that could be used as a temporary home for a displaced major league team.

That's a lot more than we have.

Mayor Goodman has done a wonderful job in creating the perception that Las Vegas is ready for Major League Baseball. Heck, six weeks ago, he even had me drinking the Kool-Aid. But today, one might argue that we are no more ready for major league baseball than Clint Hurdle was when Sports Illustrated put him on the cover in 1978 and proclaimed him the next Mickey Mantle.

Other than the number of teams that will use Las Vegas as leverage to get a new stadium deal -- most recently it was the Marlins -- what really has changed around here?

Apparently, not much.

"We're not even in the game," Logan said.

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