The worst development in sports isn't PEDs or expansion or tinkering with the playoffs, but it's the use of public funds for sports stadiums. I'm not sure where it started, but we haven't even begun to experience the problems that will bring.It actually began with Milwaukee County Stadium, built for the old-old Milwaukee Brewers minor league team. The park was the first sports stadium in the country to be built entirely with "public funds."
The irony: the old Brewers never got to play there---the park was ready in 1953 . . . just in time for the Boston Braves' arrival. And the Braves weren't the first major league team to cast eyes on the Milwaukee park: Bill Veeck hoped to move the St. Louis Browns there a year before the Braves moved, but Veeck was blocked.
Another irony: moving the Browns to Milwaukee would have meant returning the franchise to their city of origin. Where they had been known, from 1894 through 1901, as the Milwaukee Brewers! Those Brewers had been an ancient Western League franchise and one of the two not to fold when, in 1901, the Western League declared itself a second major league: the American League.
Then how do you explain the name "Municipal Stadium" in Cleveland, which was built, I believe, in the 1930s. Wasn't that a government funded project?