Fantasies galore

A reader sent me a link to this column by John Canzano, the Portland sports writer. It's almost like he's on another planet. He's still nattering away about major league baseball coming to Portland. 

We are so far from that at this point. If we could get basic civil society reinstalled here, that would be an achievement. Blowing $4 billion on baseball? It is not going to happen during Canzano's lifetime.

The other thing he's preaching, and this comes from a recent column by his colleague Steve Duin, is that if we would all just pitch in and adopt a block for litter pickup and graffiti cleaning, everything would be on its way back to fine. 

He's got to be kidding. The situation in Portland is way beyond "I've got an idea, let's put on a show." Take a ride along I-5 between the Marquam and Interstate Bridges. Every public space is covered in garbage and spray paint. Get off the freeway at Jantzen Beach and ride around the old race track and the Lowe's. It's like a ghetto in a third world country. No amount of "adopting" is going to clean that up.

Maybe we should each be encouraged to "adopt" a cheap institutional shelter bed, or a jail cell. Unfortunately, those are the only ways out of this. Giving public money to Homer Williams to build shacks is not the answer. Life is hard, harder than the current generation of local politicians is willing to admit.

Anyway, anyone who is still talking abut major league baseball in Portland needs his head examined. We'll be lucky if the Trail Blazers don't get sold out of town pretty soon. There's a contract out there somewhere that requires the team to stay in Portland for a while longer, but I think it runs out in 2025 or thereabouts.