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Greg Moore and Mark Faller discuss the status of the Diamondbacks threat to leave Chase field over lack of proper plumbing from the state.
The Diamondbacks have made headlines in recent days not for their play on the field- which has been inconsistent of late- but for their complaints about Chase Field – which have been fairly consistent in the last year.
An attorney representing the Diamondbacks claimed in court this week that Major League Baseball was so alarmed at the condition of Chase Field (the attorney called it a ‘crisis’), that MLB might consider relocating the team from Phoenix.
Photos the Diamondbacks took of a broken pipe on June 25 were intended to bolster the team’s point, though many fans and observers thought the Diamondbacks were turning a trickle into a torrent.
Diamondbacks CEO Derrick Hall, in a regularly scheduled radio appearance on the team’s flagship station, tried to further explain the Diamondbacks stance on Thursday morning during an interview on Arizona Sports’ ‘Doug and Wolf’ show.
You can hear the entire interview here, but here are a couple of highlights.
RELATED: Notable moments at Chase Field, home of the Diamondbacks
Hall: Major League Baseball has the ultimate authority and they naturally are very concerned about the building, in light of what happened about a month ago, or a little over a month ago. (Maricopa) County’s attorneys made reference to a leak that was ‘mop up and move on’, which I think is not fair or accurate. This is … over a month ago, we had a huge power outage with the heat downtown and when the power came back on, on a Sunday before our day game, our chill system, our air conditioning system went down and we had huge, like gushing and rushing water leaks throughout our entire ballpark, in major spots, and we had to evacuate the building just prior to opening the gates. They found out about this. We had to relocate people, move people out of suites. So we have been warning the county stadium district about this for quite some time, that this was going to happen as the building gets older. And now it has happened. We had not… that’s near catastrophic and if we had not had air conditioning that day, we can’t play baseball. So I think when you hear Major League Baseball saying that they would move us out, it’s more temporary because, obviously, Ken (Kendrick) and I would never want to leave Arizona. That’s not our intention nor have we ever said we wanted to. This is our home, this is where we want to be. But there’s nowhere to play in the marketplace if something like that happens, indoors in the summer, so I think Major League Baseball is talking about an emergency or contingency plan and again, they do have ultimate authority.
Hall: We are the maintenance manager, which is why the building looks so good and when fans say, ‘Oh, the building looks great. It’s only 20 years old, it looks terrific’, that’s naturally the work we put into it to make it look good each and every year with maintenance. But when it comes to major issues, capital repairs and needs, that’s the responsibility of the landlord. So that’s why we’ve been asking all along… is just to have conversations to figure out in that building, somewhere else, who knows, how we can stay there long term, to find the right partners to stay, uh, you know, here long term. And that’s the intention all along. And there’s also this talk of the county keeps saying ‘the taxpayers’… you know, we’ve partnered with the taxpayers. We’re trying to protect the taxpayers and at no time have we ever said whether we needing money there, downtown with our stadium or elsewhere with a new stadium, that we would assume it would be taxpayer dollars. Nowhere has there ever been a quote from me or any of us saying that.
Doug Franz: What does the county want? If you could speak for them, because you kinda know. … and what do you guys want just out of this Superior Court case?
Hall: It just seems like the county is trying to take as much time as they can and put it off and continue to slowly kick the can down the road. We know that there’s more needs like that air conditioning issue that we have to address right away. We go in to the offseason wanting to improve the building and address those capital needs. We’re trying to get that answered now. How soon could we go to a hearing in arbitration or a lawsuit so that we can get these answers and find out, in priority order, which needs are going to be addressed and how they’re going to funded by the landlord.
MORE D-BACKS: Could MLB move Diamondbacks over Chase Field conditions?
BICKLEY: D-Backs learning that lawyers and playoff teams don’t mix
MORE: Chase Field has seen a little bit of everything through the years
YOUR TAKE: Favorite Chase Field memories | Fans react to Chase Field ‘crisis’
PHOTOS: Chase Field through the years | Chase Field memories
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