I grew up in Kansas City, and was in attendance on Aug. 12, 1972, when Arrowhead Stadium opened with a preseason game between the Chiefs and Cardinals. I can remember looking around the gleaming stadium and marveling, with the slack-jawed wonder of a 9-year-old fanatic, at what a magnificent structure had been built for my favorite football team. </p><p>Since then, I&rsquo;ve been back to the Truman Sports Complex hundreds of times &mdash; regularly as a Chiefs and Royals fan growing up in Kansas City in the &rsquo;70s (including a two-year stint in high school as an Arrowhead usher, when flying the colors meant donning a red double-knit leisure suit), and whenever I could since then, as a dislocated Kansas Citian, returning to my hometown from Chicago or Austin or St. Louis.</p><p>Much of the Kansas City that I grew up in is gone or forever changed, but Arrowhead and the rechristened Kauffman Stadium remain majestic touchstones, a place to revel in the inimitable, barbecue-scented atmosphere of a Kansas City afternoon or evening.</p><p>So I was alarmed to read The Star&rsquo;s myopic, misguided editorial (10/6, &ldquo;Hey, sports fans: Real losers are the taxpayers&rdquo;). The story felt like a cheap shot, and an uninformed one at that. It seems, in the narrow view of the writer, that after a 3/8-cent sales tax was passed, both teams could fulfill their end of the &ldquo;implicit bargain&rdquo; only by immediately printing playoff tickets and winning championships. That betrays a startling ignorance of big-time sports. In that hyper-competitive world, especially for a market like Kansas City, it simply doesn&rsquo;t work that way. </p><p>Teams don&rsquo;t win championships because they have new stadiums. Teams get new or refurbished stadiums so that they have a <em>chance</em> to compete, financially and on the field.</p><p>The Chiefs and Royals have performed poorly of late, but they are our teams, and the much-needed renovations to the stadiums, which as I recall The Star supported, guarantee that they will remain in Kansas City for the foreseeable future. This is more than can be said for some NFL cities whose teams have better records, such as Minneapolis-St. Paul (where the Vikings will almost certainly move if they don&rsquo;t get a new stadium), San Diego or Buffalo.</p><p>In the last year I have been working as an editorial consultant on the Chiefs&rsquo; Hall of Honor, which will open at the renovated Arrowhead in the fall of 2010. It&rsquo;s been a pleasure to regularly return to my hometown and revisit the history of this proud franchise. After all these years, I still feel a stirring inside when I approach the Sports Complex and am reminded of how much these beautiful stadiums are bound up with the city&rsquo;s identity and my own personal history.</p><p>These teams and the places they play have brought Kansas City widespread acclaim. (If I&rsquo;m not mistaken, they might have helped sell a few newspapers as well.) While we true believers have suffered through this latest dry spell, I hope and believe that the Chiefs and, yes, even the Royals will be great again. However long that takes, the renovations to both stadiums strike me as money well spent, by both the residents of Jackson County and the owners.</p><p>As for me, I returned to Arrowhead to cheer for the Chiefs against the Cowboys, and to give my own children &mdash; 8 and 10 &mdash; the chance to see for themselves.