Is a Reno Aces baseball ticket worth $40,000? Maybe if you are hospitalized after getting hit in the face with a line drive. One recent Sparks victim came within millimeters of losing an eye, then got an eye-popping hospital bill.
I wonder why my colleagues in the legit media don’t publish statistics about injuries at the Reno Corporate Welfare Ballpark.
I’ve asked for “statistics on how many spectators have been injured over the years at Greater Nevada Field, especially by line drives. How many required hospitalization and for how long? When a fan is injured, do you provide any medical care? Are all costs the responsibility of the injured person? Do you bill them? I am aware that amusement parks place such a disclaimer on tickets. If you also do so, I’d appreciate a copy. Have you modified your baseline netting to make the bleachers safer? (It’s been awhile since I made it to a game.)” I received no response.
I stopped going to games a few years back. A toddler was placed between me and the kid’s parents along the first base line. Around the fifth inning, a line drive screamed into the seats just below us, hitting with a blood-curdling crack and almost taking out some poor lout who barely managed to duck.
I spent the rest of the game frozen to my seat, ready to stop a ball from hitting that baby whose parents were distracted with their friends.
I felt only relief, even when the Aces won via walkoff homer.
Major league teams have only extended netting to dugouts, no matter that a 79 year-old grandma was killed at Dodger Stadium and a man was blinded at the Cubs’ Wrigley Field. The Chicago White Sox alone extended protection to the foul poles this season. Four states have even passed laws exempting sports teams from all responsibility.
“A 2003 study found that about 35 fans were injured by foul balls per one million spectator visit to major-league stadiums,” according to the Chicago Tribune. (10-14- 2017)
I recommend watching on TV.
INSURANCE SALES OPPORTUNITY. The billionaires who own the Aces can make even more money over and above getting a free ballpark and $1 million a year from the City of Reno. How about kiosks selling single-game medical and life insurance?
BURN, BABY, BURN. The fire house demolished to make room for the ballpark has never been replaced by cash-strapped Reno which, like Sparks, always teeters on the edge of insolvency due to corporate freebies. Two “temporary” fire stations have been operating under tattered tents for a decade.
THIS JUST IN: “LGBT Republican group endorses Donald Trump for the 2020 election”
Wow. All two members?
I AM THE TRUMP WHISPERER. My longtime conservative colleague in columny Thomas Mitchell expressed amazement and reproach last week that scurrilous Democrats questioned the sincerity of the scripted speech which El Presidente awkwardly read off a teleprompter after the most recent machine gun carnage.
The Tribune, as usual, has spared every expense in providing this translation. New York Times front page headline 8-6-2019: “TRUMP URGES UNITY VS. RACISM”
TRANSLATION: “You provide the unity, he’ll provide the racism”
LORD KEYNES, YOU’RE OUTTA HERE. Csar Donaldov has been openly cavorting with the most promiscuous woman in Washington, the notorious Ms. Rosy Scenario. His Wonderfulness proclaims that we are nowhere near recession while the price of gold futures just jumped more than $50 an ounce in one freakin’ week.
TRANSLATION: “Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” (Courtesy of the Marx Brothers)
DORIE AND DAVE. Nevada just lost two of her finest. Former Washoe Democratic chair and tireless women’s rights advocate Dorie Guy died August 3 at 75. Sweet Dora Jean chaired the Sparks Parks and Recreation Commission and served on the board of the National Alliance for Retired Americans. Her sendoff happens Sunday, September 1, fittingly at Sparks Parks & Rec, 98 Richards Way, 2:00-4:00 p.m.
Sparks resident and longtime Sparks Sheet Metal Workers Local 26 Business Manager Dave Peel, 82, departed for the big picket line in the sky on July 26. Dave helped me induct his fellow tin bender, Sam Lumpe, into the César Chávez NevadaLabor.com Hall of Fame in 2012. His adios will be celebrated where oldtime Nevadians have oft conducted proper sendoffs, the Coney Island Bar on E. 4th Street, between the IBEW 401 Hall and the Sparks City Limits; 2:00-4:00 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 8.
TARNISHED STAR. Activists plan a major demonstration at 8:30 a.m. today about Storey County Sheriff Gerald Cook-Antinoro. (He had his name changed, adding the Italian suffix, a great way to foil background checks.)
The Nevada Ethics Commission will meet at 9:30 a.m. August 21, at 808 West Nye Lane in Carson City. Organizers fear another Cook-Antinoro whitewash.
“We are protesting against domestic violence, sexual assault, rape, abuse and harassment, with Antinoro being the poster boy of repulsive conduct,” stated organizer Joe Panicaro, 775-322-1239, e-mail, paralegal@kozaklawfirm.com.
Lugubrious Gerald is the reason I have not ventured into Storey County in five years. (Barbwire 10-31-2014 and endless updates) He is nothing if not fastidious, even ordering a homicide crime scene cleansed before CSI’s could do their work.
Be well. Raise hell. Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Barbano is a 50-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com/E-mail Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988
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