Meanwhile, the city's bustling port is at 100% capacity and in need of expansion. Expanding the port would bring tremendous new business to the city; in addition to construction jobs, the port expansion would create hundreds of fulltime jobs for longshoreman, who's pay starts at $19 an hour. Yet these high paying jobs will have to wait, since the stadium drive has monopolized all infrastructure resources.

Of course, no one has yet outdone George Steinbrenner in the art of scamming a city. Unsatisfied with his virtually free lease of historic Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, baseball's biggest brat is threatening to take his team to New Jersey. Governor Mario Cuomo has scrambled to avert this dubious catastrophe, proposing a 1 billion dollar bond issue which would, among other things, pay for a new stadium in the city.

Compare this with the scant $11 million in concessions that it took to keep CBS from moving across the river. CBS has over 4,000 highly paid employees; it pays full rent and taxes on its facilities. Can the Yankees boast the same?

The whole issues comes down to boastful civic pride. For some reason, cities think that without a phalanx of professional sports teams, they will turn into ghost towns.

How absurd! A school of unshowered, poorly dressed rock stars have done much more for Seattle's reputation than have either the hapless Mariners or Seahawks.

Despite the highest concentration of sports teams in the world, little East Rutherford, NJ is no less of a toxic waste dump and no more of a meadow than before the Meadowlands came to town.

And New York won't die without the Yankees, just like it didn't die when the Jets and the Giants crossed the Hudson.

Who needs the nightmarish traffic jams that snarl commuters on game nights, anyway?

I'll root for my team via satellite, thank you very much.