Not So Wicked Smaht: Boston's Olympic Hopes

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Looking past the Super Bowl - way, way past - the U.S. is pitching Boston to the International Olympic Committee - the IOC - for the 2024 Summer Games. Commentator Frank Deford wishes the city of baked beans and (in Boston accent) chowder would think again.

FRANK DEFORD, BYLINE: Oh, poor Boston. Where is Paul Revere when we need him to alert the citizenry? The IOC is coming. The IOC is coming. Boston, lock up your municipal bonds and your pension funds. We always thought that Beantown was (in Boston accent) wicked smart. In fact, Boston has fancied itself as the Athens of America. And be assured, if it gets the 2024 Olympics, it can pretty much count on that.

That Athens of Greece has been in financial cardiac arrest because it was conned into hosting the 2004 games. Boston, yes, you, too, can be Athens. Angela Merkel will be on your case. Grass will be growing down the middle of the Mass Pike. Faneuil Hall will be condemned. Beacon Hill, where once a team handball court so proudly stood, will now be a shantytown.

Hey, Boston, you think the Curse of the Bambino is bad just because it messed up a silly baseball team for most of a century? Hold the Olympics, and the curse of the IOC will bring down the whole city for a millennium.

Andrew Zimbalist, our premier sports economist, has appropriately a new book out - "Circus Maximus" - which details the financial disaster which comes to most every city or country that is deluded enough to host an Olympics or a soccer World Cup. Boston says it can hold the games for four-and-a-half billion dollars. Oh, sure. And they're selling six-packs of Sam Adams beer for buck and a quarter in heaven.

The IOC tells every wannabe Olympic city that the games will bring the world to its door. In fact, Zimbalist shows, it brings in a bunch of sports nuts for 17 days but in the long run, actually hurts tourism. Yes, Bostonians, the Olympics are a tourist negative. The Olympics do not improve, do not improve a city's image. It's like bidding for the chance to host an epidemic. And then, when the IOC leaves town, the sucker city is stuck with a bunch of useless real estate. Boston plans to build a temporary 60,000 seat stadium. And this is the wise city that once revolted because of tea taxes.

And so with no apologies whatsoever to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - listen my children, and you shall hear of the mid-summer crash of '24. Hardly a bank is still alive since Boston took its Olympic dive. The IOC said Beantown'd be beaming. One if by TV, two if by streaming. But after the show departed the Common, the awful message finally dawned on every high-rise and condo, cottage and home that all Boston had left was a used velodrome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.