Mayor Oscar Goodman is probably right on the whole sports team thing. Real cities have them. Pretend cities do not. And with due respect to the great legacy of the UNLV men's basketball squad, college ball isn't quite enough. We're not Ann Arbor or Chapel Hill or Norman, here. We're Las Vegas. We need a pro team.
America's a competitive and insecure society. Look at me! Notice me! Like me! Every city, with the possible exception of New York, wants its due. Great American cities (Boston, Chicago, D.C., LA) at some point put themselves up against the Big Apple to establish their world-class bona fides, and every other would-be great city (Miami, Seattle, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas) tries to convince the country that they belong on the next rung. And so it goes with Sin City.
Real cities have a hard-to-define swagger, a heft. World-class town? Major League city? Yeah, show me the sports. Las Vegas is the first city I've ever lived in with no major professional sports team, and the lack of civic pride shows. Now, don't get me wrong: Las Vegas is a proud city, proud as a peacock, forever strutting about and beating its chest. But it's not the deeper, richer pride that parents take in the accomplishments of their children. Our pride is fueled by a seemingly inexhaustible supply of hot air; the pride of a real sports town is like the implacable roots of a sequoia.
I grew up outside of Chicago, where sports helped yoke our suburban identity with that of the city (so much so that friends are quick to correct me when I tell people that I'm from Chicago itself). Cutting class for a day in spring to watch the Cubs at Wrigley—as good a place to spend a warm afternoon as anywhere in America—was a high-school rite. Living in Denver in 1998, I watched the city experience an orgasmic release after its star-crossed Broncos finally won their first Super Bowl. The city held a huge parade, which not only allowed us to cut work for an hour or so, but gave the city an enormous feeling of unity, as hundreds of thousands turned out to cheer the team as it rode through downtown. I spent last year in New York, the one place you'd think is above it all, but even amidst the warbling noise that is Gotham, I could feel the groan of the Yankees' post-season collapse against their hated rivals, the Boston Red Sox.
This spring, when Washington, D.C., welcomed the return of baseball, which had been absent since 1971, it was like part of the city's soul was restored, a transparent visage brought back into focus. Perhaps this could happen in Las Vegas, although the promise of pro sports here, thus far, has proven to be only a mirage. Over the years we've seen 18 pro and semi-pro teams come and go, in a variety of leagues, including the North American Soccer League, the Western Basketball Association, the World Basketball League, the XFL, the Canadian Football League, the International Hockey League, Roller Hockey International, even the National Volleyball Association. The teams bore names like the Dealers and the Thunder and the Aces and the Seagulls (don't ask) and the Americans. Some say this scrap heap of failed franchises proves that Las Vegas is too small to support a major professional team. Others say that when Vegas gets a real sports team, playing in one of the four big-time leagues, the city will embrace it.
Mayor Goodman attended baseball's off-season winter meetings in Anaheim with showgirls on his arms, trying to stir up interest, but it was all a tease. The Expos were getting ready to decamp for Washington, the Marlins were grumbling about leaving Miami—but one sensed they were only angling for a new stadium deal. Las Vegas is still probably too small in population and television market size to support any professional team.
But eventually something will come. Football would be great, weather-wise, but football is too rough a game for a resort and leisure town, too blunt. And I can't imagine fans filling a 70,000-seat stadium. Hockey is for cold cities. Basketball would be cool, but would an NBA team cannibalize UNLV fans?
Right now, baseball is the best fit. For one, it's the most urban of the major pro sports. There are far more games played than the other sports. Also, baseball seems the most leisurely. It mirrors the combination of hustle-bustle and grand, spacious elegance of our best cities. And hey, it can work. Minor league baseball, after all, has been the only enduring professional sport in town—the Stars/51s of the Pacific Coast League have been a fixture here since 1983. (The East Coast Hockey League's Las Vegas Wranglers and the Arena Football League's Gladiators have found energetic fan bases, but it's too soon to tell if they'll pass the test of time.) And as for the majors, Phoenix has demonstrated that big-league baseball can work in the desert. Can you imagine how cool cascading fountains like the ones at Kansas City's Kauffman Stadium would look against a backdrop of, say, Sunrise Mountain? Beyond the spectacle of a well-designed stadium, baseball would go farthest toward giving the city the feel of urbanity, the texture of conversations, the box scores in the paper, a generation of young Las Vegans with something specific to root for, instead of having to settle for the Dodgers or Angels or Diamondbacks.
Do we need it? In the strictest terms, no. Economists have published enough reports and studies challenging the idea that stadiums and teams invigorate local economies. But that's a line of reasoning for struggling cities. We are not, at last check, a struggling city. The argument for big-time sports here is not economic, but emotional. If we "need" the big leagues, it's only because, around here, "need" equals "want." Nothing wrong with that. But there are big questions. For instance, where would a team play while a stadium is being built? Monterrey, Mexico, an idea that has been tossed about, doesn't seem very practical. And even more significantly, what if Las Vegans, as they have in the past, refuse to support anything but a big winner? In the end, though, local fans' impatience may be a good thing: While we won't embrace lovable losers, we may prove quite effective at harassing an organization into winning. Maybe the time is not quite ripe for the big leagues to come to Vegas, but it's coming. And we're counting the days.