If you don’t win, stadium doesn’t matter
To the editor:
To paraphrase the movie "Field of Dreams," if you win, they will come.
Between May 12 and May 15, the Class AAA Las Vegas 51s baseball team drew 7,000-plus on Thursday, 10,000-plus on Friday, 5,000-plus on Saturday and 7,000-plus on Sunday, according to attendance records. To date, the 51s have a winning season, which has not been the story in the past five years that I have worked Cashman Field as a parking attendant. Attendance was low.
The new owners or potential owners of the 51s who promise a new stadium near Mandalay Bay, as well as the UNLV football team, should take note that, unless you have a winning team, your new stadiums will end up like other defunct monuments to stupidity that grace the north end of the Strip, namely the Fontainebleau and Echelon projects.
Las Vegans like winners. Cashman Field is old and needs to be upgraded, but in my five years working there I have never heard people attending baseball games complain about the ballpark.
The players' infrastructure needs to be improved, but this is Triple-A baseball, where admission prices are still reasonable and family outings are not going to cost exorbitant prices like those in the major leagues. Keep it that way.
TOM McCARTHY
LAS VEGAS
Stadium dreams
To the editor:
How do the various sports venue developers stack up on the reality scale?
At first we had dreamers focused on Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman's Union Pacific site. Then we had dreamers focused on a site along Main Street east of Interstate 15.
Next, someone decided to tap into the UNLV name to create a sports entertainment venue on the southwest edge of UNLV, from Tropicana Avenue north along Swenson Street, next to the Thomas & Mack Center.
The latest announcement is the multi-sport complex on the west side of Interstate 15 off Hacienda Avenue.
Are any of these proposals realistic? Professional sports don't seem interested in Las Vegas, except in the mind of Mayor Goodman. So a downtown venue seems unlikely. The UNLV site is heavily encumbered by airport and FAA flight restrictions. And finally, we learn that the high-speed rail and off-Strip sports complex are in conflict (Friday Review-Journal).
Perhaps the Review-Journal could try to sort out this hodgepodge of sports venues for the taxpayers, who surely can't be expected to pay for any part of these ventures.
Bill Wood
Las Vegas
No discrimination
To the editor:
Bob Stoldal practices age discrimination ("KSNV anchor Manteris alleges discrimination," Wednesday Review-Journal)? Has anyone looked at the anchors on KLAS-TV, Channel 8, newscasts, where Mr. Stoldal was news director for decades? Several are older, and he kept them.
The difference between them and the anchors on KSNV-TV, Channel 3, when Mr. Stoldal started is that Channel 8 has serious, legitimate news people as opposed to the lightweight, airhead staff previous news directors at Channel 3 had hired.
Mr. Stoldal was hired to improve the news at Channel 3, and he has done a great job so far. He has never shown age, sex or racial discrimination in any of his hiring decisions.
Brian Adrian
Las Vegas
