Portland: Bring MLB To Oregon

If there’s one team I love more than any other, it’s the Seattle Mariners. I can’t get enough of them. But there’s something I’m really tired of, and that’s the fact that I have to drive four hours just to watch them play. Portland: it’s time for you to step up and bring our state a Major League Baseball team.

There’s no doubt that the city of Portland would support an MLB team. The dedication the city has to the Trail Blazers, and the surge the brand new Timbers have brought to the city, is more than enough proof that a Major League Baseball team could not only survive, but thrive here.

In the not too distant past, there was a major push to get a deal done that would have finally brought a MLB team to the Rose City. The deal basically hinged on the idea that a casino would be built in Portland in exchange for funding for a stadium that would have brought a team to Portland. Instead, the deal fell through thanks to some poor decisions by politicians.

The gap between Seattle and San Francisco (the two closest MLB teams to Portland) is plenty large enough to create a fan base for what would be the Portland squad. And, with the standard of living in Portland ranked 42^nd in the entire world, there’s no argument that the city couldn’t support a Major League team.

In fact, back in July 2011, MLB began serious discussions for expansion, which would likely bring two new teams to the league. The two top cities under discussion? Las Vegas and Portland.

And yet, here we are, with seemingly no hope of any team – new or old – coming to Portland. It’s true – the 29^th most populated city in the country does not have a Major League team, yet the Trail Blazers still hold the longest consecutive sellout streak in history – 814 games. (Oh and by the way, that streak only ended because the team moved into a new building in 1995, technically retiring the streak.)

Portland can and will sustain a Major League Baseball team. But something’s gotta budge. And yes, that probably means allowing a casino to be built in the greater Portland area.

There’s a lot of people who oppose allowing the building of a new casino, and for seemingly sensible reasons. Some economists have actually challenged the previously accepted idea that casinos are good for cities, instead contending that casinos do economic damage. Others contend that a casino in such a heavily populated area would seriously disturb Oregon’s state lottery revenue (due to more people gambling at the casino than purchasing lottery tickets at the local mini-mart). And there’s always the age old argument that casinos inevitably create gambling issues.

Okay, I get it. A brand new casino might not be the best thing to ever happen to Oregon. But you’d have to believe that if people really had the urge, they would take the short trip to Spirit Mountain – or any of the other area casinos in Oregon and Washington – to quench their thirst for gambling. And while the state lottery might lose out on some revenue, it would more than be made up in the city of Portland with the incredible surge in revenues for local businesses.

Can you imagine the revenue a 40,000+ seat stadium for 81 games a year, plus concerts and other promotional events, would bring to the Rose City and the surrounding area? We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars going directly to the local businesses. Is taking a stand against gambling really worth more than the economic surge Portland would experience over the life of its MLB team?

So, I ask you: is a casino-for-an-MLB-team deal a good one?