Cincy Kicks Charlotte's Aspirations
Keeping tennis here is a big W for our self esteem
FreeForAll Thursday gets bumped up a day, to account for the breaking tennis news. Enjoy, Mobster Nation. To those who support TML financially, thanks beyond all measure. To those who don’t, enjoy today. You’re not forgotten.
(Ticketmaster)
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We won!
Our big-time tennis tournament won’t be going anywhere. L’il ol’ us, humble denizens of the modest Republic of Cincinnati, out-moneyed Charlotte, NC, one of those sexy, upstart cities on the Sun Belt rise. Personally, I’ve never found much appealing or charming about Charlotte — it seems a pre-fab, born-yesterday kinda place — but apparently I’m in the minority. Charlotte is exploding with people, commerce, money and — truly the surest sign of success — unbearable highway traffic.
Beyond retaining for 25 years an internationally recognized sporting event, this straight-set W over a city peer provides the priceless intangible of making us feel confident about ourselves. This can be a Can Do region, even if it usually takes a whiff of desperation to get us going. Thirty years ago, who’d have thought we’d have two new stadiums, a streamlined Fort Washington Way, a couple entertainment districts downtown, a championship soccer team and a truly world-class tennis tournament that will expand again in 2025?
Charlotte wanted to add a little sophistication to its portfolio, maybe something to counterbalance the overarching local presence of NASCAR. A world-class tennis tournament seemed a fit. Charlotte committed to building a $400 million facility to impress something called Beemok Capital, a South Carolina investment firm that last October bought the W&S Open from the US Tennis Association.
Charlotte’s only problem was that, at pedal-to-the-metal time, it couldn’t find enough money. Cincinnati sprinted through a hole in Charlotte’s money plan. In September, the state of North Carolina said it would contribute $20 million to tennis construction. Beemok wanted $25 mil. That gave our region a puncher’s chance. Area businesses and governments delivered a KO.
(It’s telling that from the moment Charlotte announced its intentions, we assumed we’d lose. Today, it’s more telling that we bowed our necks and turned those assumptions on their collective head. But we digress.)
The details matter, but they are boring, so we’ll omit them here. The notion that the tennis tournament adds some gigantic amount of money to the regional economy is overblown as well. Those hotel rooms and steak houses would be filled by somebody else, if the tennis folks didn’t fill them. All that’s important is, we won. Winning is good.
Beemok’s plan to extract more money from the public was textbook. Buy the tournament, find another city serious about stealing it from here, then pit the two towns against each other. Checkbooks at 10 paces.
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That’s malodorous in a way only sports shakedowns can be.
It’s also a fact of life.
We have decided a tennis tournament is important enough to drop $200 million in public and private money to keep it. Whether you agree with that or not — whether you’re a tennis zealot or think Novak Djokovic is an Eastern European holiday — fact is, we cannot win if we do not pay.
That’s as true for the Western & Southern Open as it is for the Cincinnati Bengals. If you think keeping tennis in town was tough, just you wait.
It helps that the tennis for at least the three-plus decades I’ve been here has been the best-run sporting event in town. It' helps, too, that in some small way, the tournament helps put Cincinnati on the world map.
And really, where else around here can you buy a 3-way and a $10,000 tennis bracelet in the same locale?
Carry on, Cincinnati. Ya done good.
Now, then. . .
WHINING REDUX. . . Ratings are down for the MLB postseason, at least so far. A reason cited has been the ongoing bitching about how having more days off was unfair to the top-two division winners in each league. The suggestion is, the “right’’ teams are being taken out. 101-win Baltimore is out, 100-win LA is in 0-2 trouble.
Let me say this about that: The postseason is a different animal than the six-month grind that precedes it. The regular season rewards steadiness. October is for heroes. Big difference.
Across six months, the value of Mookie Betts, Ronald Acuna, Freddie Freeman etc. is apparent. In the sprint of October, not so much. It shouldn’t be surprising that steady successes such as the Dodgers and Orioles are floundering in short series. The best teams of players don’t always win the sprint. The hottest individual players do.
And just think: It’s possible the Texas Rangers (who, Doc?) will have Max Scherzer ready to go in the ALCS.
There is only one franchise more nondescript than the Rangers. That’s the Angels, who have achieved non-descriptness despite playing in Los Angeles and having Mike Trout and Shohei Otani on their side. That’s impossible, isn’t it?
GROWING THAT ALREADY RAGING UC-GONZAGA RIVALRY. . . From USA Today:
Gonzaga and the Big 12 flirted previously, but those talks cooled when the conference picked up new members Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah from the Pac-12 -- additions that will take effect ahead of the 2024-25 athletic season. However, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark is leading a renewed push to land the Bulldogs.
Yormark would like to have Gonzaga join the Big 12 -- along with the four Pac-12 acquisitions -- in time for the 2024-25 academic year.
Hey, boys and girls, get ready for that really great, all-day roadie to Spokane, which is Native American for “can’t get there from here without a Sherpa guide and a pair of Chucks.’’
The Big 12 is hoping to add the ‘Zags as its 17th team. Surely its next move will be to make it an even 18. Does the University of Vladivostok have a volleyball team?
Adding Gonzaga would make the Big 17 hellaciously good in basketball. Kansas, Baylor, Arizona, Gonzaga, Houston. Wes Miller’s excavation project would suddenly need more bulldozers.
TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . In recognition of the day’s news, I was trying to find some good tennis music. But really, what is good tennis music? So, skip that. But I did recall John McEnroe sitting in with the late, great Glenn Frey on this tune.
I umpired, and refereed, many inner city games. The facilities were horrible, but the kids still played. So, I hope you understand my take. Multiple entities can unite for a multi million dollar event, once a year. Imagine if that energy was sent to our kids ? I applaud everyone coming together for a cause, I just wish those kids had the same consideration.
Non-descript is an apt description of the Texas Rangers. My son and I were riffing on that last night as they destroyed the Orioles. Non-descript location (Texas, not Dallas), meh nickname, boring logo, and dull and common uniforms. That said, they are in the LCS and have played in two WS in the past 15 years.
Count me among those who thought the WS Open was gone. What made it galling to me was it seemed that Cincy did not have a chance - if a billionaire buys a new toy, he will do what he wants with it, a century of loyal support be damned.