Stadium Games: Fifty Years of Big League Greed and Bush League Boondoggles [Hardcover]

Jay Weiner (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

A spectacular creation. As the Star Tribune’s main reporter of Minnesota’s protracted, internecine stadium wars, Weiner brings a unique perspective. -- Minneapolis Star Tribune

Jay Weiner is my new role model as a thoughtful, precise and idealistic fan. -- Robert Lipsyte, New York Times

Stadium Games has some enlightening lessons for people and government officials around here. . . . interesting. -- Long Island Business News

Stadium Games should be required reading in the front office of the Cardinals, at City Hall and the Missouri Capital. -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Tells how former Governor Carlson created the threat of Twins selling the team to gain support for funding a stadium. -- Washington Times

The longtime Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter unreels a history of Twin Cities ballpark shenanigans that put George Steinbrenner’s to shame. -- Village Voice

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press (March 13, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816634343
• ISBN-13: 978-0816634347
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,625,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #4 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Miscellaneous > Sports Facilities Management

More About the Author

Jay Weiner is a Twin Cities journalist who wrote about sports for 30 years before being asked by editors at startup MinnPost.com to "help out" on coverage of the Al Franken-Norm Coleman U.S. Senate recount.

That led to eight months of daily recount coverage for MinnPost by Weiner, reporting that earned him Minnesota's top journalism prize, the 2009 Frank Premack Public Affairs Award for breaking news.

It culminated in him authoring, "This Is Not Florida: How Al Franken Won The Minnesota Senate Recount."

From 1980 to 2007, Weiner worked as a reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune specializing in off-the-field sports issues, mostly sports business matters, especially stadium finance debates. His first book, "Stadium Games: Fifty Years of Big League Greed and Bush League Boondoggles" was published in 2000 by the University of Minnesota Press.

Weiner also has covered every Winter and Summer Olympics since 1984, most recently the 2008 Beijing Summer Games for Sports Business Journal, the national sports trade publication, and the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games as a research supervisor for NBC's various networks.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Weiner attended Oberlin College and is a graduate of Temple University. He also has been a Policy Fellow at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. Married to William Mitchell College of Law Professor Ann Juergens, and the father of two sons, Henry and Nate, Weiner lives and works in St. Paul.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incisive and Entertaining Case Study, August 10, 2000

By 

solly (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stadium Games: Fifty Years of Big League Greed and Bush League Boondoggles (Hardcover)

New York and most every major city has been through some sort of stadium game of late. But no state has such a rich history of sports hijinks as Minnesota. Weiner does both an entertaining and informative case study of that would be interesting and enlightening for any fan, reporter or elected official in any city that has a franchise or is trying to lure one. Weiner shows that the games off the field are as fun to watch as the ones on.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Bloated and Pedantic. Editor needed!, October 21, 2000

By 

Eric R. Thornton "Eric" (Exton, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stadium Games: Fifty Years of Big League Greed and Bush League Boondoggles (Hardcover)

This 500 page book could easily have been half as long, and twice as effective, with a good editor. Weiner is a newspaper reporter that obviously became drunk on the idea of not being held to time & length limitations as he usually is in the newspaper. He is very repetitive and it takes away from some of the very sound ideas that he proposes. Skim this one.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Could've been great, January 7, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Stadium Games: Fifty Years of Big League Greed and Bush League Boondoggles (Hardcover)

Jay Weiner caught hold of an idea that has plagued Minnesota sports for almost 50 years: the fight for stadiums. Minneapolis/St. Paul just can't keep teams in their respective areas, and apparently build ugly, uninteresting stadiums for professional sports teams to play in. Jay Weiner could've made this book great, but he, like the city of Minneapolis, couldn't keep the fans coming back for more. He tends to drag along and introduces some irrelevant players in the games for Minnesota sports stadiums. There are some very good sequences, but he tends to build some of them up with mindless dribble. He did seem to have the inside track on all stadium related information, and used that to his advantage. He also kept someone not from the state of minnesota or a non-fan of the minneapolis sports scene interested in the teams. But, in the end, Mr. Weiner just can't keep me entertained. The story just doesn't get you excited to turn the page,and I tended to skip pages of useless information. I'm sure somebody out there would enjoy this book, but they would probably have to be a fairly bland person.