I still remember going to baseball and hockey games as a child, leaning way over the railing with my glove. When a foul ball rattled into our section or a deflected puck cleared the glass, it was finders keepers. That old tradition gave fans a real, physical connection to the game, transforming us from mere […]
Page F2From§Eachthe noon edition — 3 October 2026
Taxpayers back the Raiders' new stadium; the foul ball that lands in it still belongs to the team.
As it ran on the front
You will have taken a glove to the game, and leaned out over the railing, and called it finders keepers. A writer in the Washington Examiner remembers exactly that, and calls it "a real, physical connection to the game." Keep hold of the glove a moment.
In March 2017 the owners of the National Football League voted thirty-one to one to move the Raiders out of Oakland and into Clark County, into a stadium the taxpayer would stand behind. Thirty-one to one — and the account does not trouble to say which owner was the one. Bank of America extended six hundred and fifty million dollars of credit to buy the land and put the thing up. A handsome sum. You are thinking that standing behind a building buys you some small share of it. Backing is not buying.…
…(cont) And the ball that comes off the bat and down into your section, in the house you are underwriting? You have the usufruct of it ... the use, the enjoyment, the holding of it in two hands — and never the title. The title never leaves the club. It was not in your glove at any point.
You paid for the room. They keep whatever lands in it.
Every egg goes up to the house. The tenant keeps the straw.
“Thirty-one owners put their hands up, one did not, and the bill for the building goes to Clark County — that is the whole deal, right there. Then the one thing in that stadium a working guy could carry home, a ball somebody hit into his lap, that stays theirs too. You are the backer and the customer and the souvenir is a loaner.”
“Socialized? Did I say socialized? That does not sound like me — it is a six hundred and fifty million dollar credit line from Bank of America, that is private capital, look it up. The ball is club property, that is league-wide, that is every stadium in the country, so really Las Vegas is getting a franchise at a discount. And the fan experience, nobody is pricing that in.”
The receipts
· The National Football League (NFL) owners approve, by a 31–1 vote, the move of the Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas, Nevada, for the 2019 or 2020 season. The Las Vegas Raiders will become the second top-l from the morgue, 27 Mar 2017
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.