So. Drayton’s losing money and is threatening to sell the club if there’s a strike. Well he better get his e-bay posting ready, because here it comes folks.
Did anyone hear Richard Justice on 610AM today (7/17)? Apparently, the owners vs. players meetings have been so bad that at one point a players’ rep. (not Fehr) and an owner (Angelos I think he said) got into it pretty hard and started f-bombing each other. The players’ rep. stormed out of the room and had to be calmed down.
The owners say that they’ve put a comprehensive offer to the players, but have heard nothing. The players’ reps say that they’ve made concessions to the owners, but aren’t getting any feedback. The players are making Selig the issue; the owners are making steroids the issue. Bud wants to tour the locker rooms because he doesn’t trust Fehr’s boys to be disseminating the correct information (no one has yet suggested that he wants to tour because he misses getting to see the players naked).
It’s Armageddon time, people. Grab yer ankles and kiss MLB goodbye.
Be Careful What You Wish For
As for Drayton, he’s lost money? WFW!!!! He bought the club for about $90mm (after he unloaded some Astrodome area property that came with it). If the Expos can be contracted for $250mm (IIRC), what’s the value of one of the most successful (regular season) clubs over the last 10 years which has a state-of-the-art flip-top downtown ballpark with a $180mm naming rights deal in the 4th largest city in the US which draws about 3,000,000 arses in seats per year who go to see some fabulous young talent that’s gathered from the best minor league system in the majors?
I’d say that $400mm would be a bargain. That’s a growth of $310mm, or circa 450% in less than 10 years to put against his alleged operating losses. And until someone not called Arthur Anderson audits the books, I won’t trust the figures. There’s all sorts of things Drayton can do to show a loss without actually lying. Does he include all the receipts from associated businesses? Did he exclude the tax benefit derived from the depreciation of players’ salaries? Until we know such things, his losses, to me, will be nothing more than unsubstantiated propaganda.
And then…how much of the publicised loss relates directly to revenue lost during the last work stoppage? It’s still money out of his pocket, but it’s not money that’s lost in the normal course of bidness. Wait a minute, this is baseball. Strikes *are* the normal course of bidness, because it’s run by idiots.
The problem with Drayton selling the team is that for every baseball savvy owner, there’s 10 idiots the likes of Angelos, Loria, Pohlad or Hicks with enough money to buy it and no idea what to do with it. Or worse, maybe they think they know, and will simply fuck it up anyway.
You Make the Call
The sunny-side-up view of this is that a strike is averted, the owners agree to meaningful revenue sharing while the players agree to salary controls. Drayton’s conservative approach coupled with Hunsicker’s uncanny ability to extract value from trades will have the Astros vying for honors in an exciting, competitive baseball world.
Alternatively, the players can strike, there’s no stretch drive, playoffs or world series. The owners cave around Autumn 2003, after which the Yankees and Dodgers gorvell all the decent free agents and go on to meet in the next 5 consecutive World Series. Drayton sells the team to Ken Lay’s lawyer (who has now made more money than God) and he snaps up the free agent dregs for way too much money, runs the franchise into the ground and agrees to be contracted in 2007, just prior to the next work stoppage.
I know I don’t favour the sunny side up view. I’m leaning towards over easy…with the yolks broken.