And the air was such a wonder from the hot dogs and the beer

Giants Stadium was torn down sometime in the last year or so. I only ever attended one football game there, the Giants, back in 1986, when they had a quite good year and wherein I began my minor editorial pet peeve over how a team might be the Super Bowl Champions for 1987, when nearly all the season was 1986, or for 1986, when they actually played the game in 1987. Baseball has no such ambiguities regarding the year of the action. I remember the experience pretty fondly, although it rained in the second quarter, and the Giants lost, and there's no way to score a football game like you can with baseball. Still, at least I never saw the Jets there.

Anyway, the New York Times reported that there's still over $100 million in outstanding debt on the original Giants Stadium, which won't be paid off until 2025: kids born after it was demolished will be well advanced into high school. There's something perversely amusing to me about that. I'm not fond of publicly financing stadiums --- I don't want to say I'd reject all at every level, but I'm very leery of it as something major leagues Need --- but I can't complain about the New Giants Stadium, since that's privately financed. Still, a hundred million dollars and what we get out of it is the parking lot which used to be Giants Stadium. (And, to be fair, other stuff on the side; debt was rolled over and increased to finance other projects at the Meadowlands, as well as to get maintenance deferred.)

It could be vastly worse. It turns out that around Seattle, Kings County still owes $80 million on the Kingdome. Never mind that that was torn down a decade ago: even if it were paid off, all the residents of Washington State would get out of it would be the Kingdome. At least the Old Giants Stadium didn't inflict despair on all who approached it except for Jets fans.

Trivia : During the Civil War, William H Cammeyer opened the Union Grounds in Brooklyn as a rent-free (baseball) field for three clubs, making money instead by charging a dime admission free. Source: Gotham: A History Of New York City To 1898, Edwin G Burrows, Mike Wallae.

Currently Reading: Billy, Alfred, and General Motors: The Story Of Two Unique Men, A Legendary Company, And A Remarkable Time In American History, William Pelfrey.