jad
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Everything posted by jad
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Los Feliz is very cool, and yeah, Orange County is no more LA than Westchester County is NYC.
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I'm sorry for your experience and esp. that of your friend. I've never been to Baltimore, but one of my best friends grew up there, went to grad school at Hopkins and LOVES it. So much for anecdotes. I've lived in 3 major us cities NOLA, NYC (in the 70s, before it was gentrified) and now LA. And everything you say about Baltimore I was warned about of those places with equally hideous tales. I have never had a problem with anyone, even though I take public transportation and walk alone at all hours of the night (well, less so these days!). I confess, that's due to a number of factors: I'm male; I do not frequent bars; pure blind luck; plus (I'm told) I look like I'm a borderline street-person.
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Problem is by then, it's often too late. Not sure what the stats are when voters actually get to vote on stadium proposals, but I think they generally? or very often? vote against. I did finally find an article on referenda on stadiums, subsidies, improvements, etc.: I quote only one sentence in the conclusion: " The retrospective evidence about the economic impact of professional sports teams and facilities on local economies suggests that at best they have no economic impact and, as much recent evidence shows, at worst they have a negative economic impact."
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You're right, of course. And as far as the owners are concerned, I am likely now in 'Aunt Polly' mode, when Tom protests he didn't deserve to be whupped: "This makes up for all the times I should have whupped you and didn't." Each stadium situation is different, but the one commonality I've noticed in those I've read up on is that the taxpayers get screwed--through various means such as paying for it outright, 'guaranteeing' a certain gate, or having the team/stadium ownership group lease the land for $1 a year ...
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Yes, but when the players give something to support them (the supposed 'millionaires'), the league (the 'billionaires') will make a great show of matching it. If the league really gave a crap about the local community, they would insist on paying property taxes on their ballparks.
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Exactly. They are good at changing the subject. If they were interested in serious negotiations, they would have started in December when they locked the players out. Pretty obvious that this was the game plan all along. Good. Because the owners are going to lose a lot more from a missed season or half season than the players will. Watching their billion dollar investments crater will almost be worth missing a few baseball games.
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"Pessimistic" about what? Their ability to bully players into accepting yet another bad deal?
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You're right of course.
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I love MLB's 'threats' (i.e., cancelling games), each one of which results in further losses to the owners themselves. It's like Monty Python's fierce knight: 'I'll fight you with one arm cut off. I'll fight you with NO arms. ..."
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Ha! I think that tells us all we need to know about the delusions of your basic sports fan!
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It's the point made by J. Passan: MLB players have already proven they are the best; not so with owners: there are plenty of people and conglomerates out there perfectly capable of running professional sports franchises; and by implication, when franchises change hands, in some cases they improve dramatically (e.g., the present LAD group as opposed to Frank McCourt). There are also cases where owners make no effort to improve their product (Marlins, Baltimore, Pittsburg), but rely on the earnings of others to sustain them. Yet if I'm a .150 hitting 3rd baseman, I can't take .100 points and 20 HR from Devers to prop up my career; nor if my fastball tops out at 80mph can I borrow 10mph from Ohtani. (I agree that the argument may well be dumb. But what else, alas, are we going to talk about?)
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I'm aware of that. The fact that anyone needs to say this is what is mind-boggling.
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Did someone actually suggest that professional AAA or AA players are better athletes than a bunch of 70-year-old and 10-year-old internet posters????? Wow. NO WAY!! And I guess the conclusion is that THEREFORE, let all the revenue from MLB go to owners??? (We really need the season to start, as this lock-out is clearly causing neurological damage).
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He is. That's why he's on Ignore.
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I'm not sure what this has to do with what I said, nor where those phrases come from (were you responding to a different post?) We were talking about baseball players. I was saying that the top 1200 baseball players were much better than the next 1200 baseball players.
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I'm with Passan on this. You replace the 30 owners with the 'next 30' in line, and nothing would change (some teams might even be better run). But (I say this having watched a lot of minor league games), you replace MLB players with the next 1200 down, the difference is night and day. You can see this when a big league player is sent down to rehab with a AA or AAA team--it's like they're playing a different sport.
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It's amazing, given that MLB franchises are struggling so much financially, that they so rarely get sold, and that MLB owners refuse to open the books for the MLBPA to examine-- I guess because they don't want to take unfair advantage of the players during negotiations by providing them with actual evidence.
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Let's not start on college sports--which are the biggest money-pits of sports. (Just read that Rutgers athletic department lost over $40million last year, and I believe UConn's losses were much greater the last time I checked). Much of it tax-supported either directly (student fees, direct state support) or indirectly (donations to athletics counting as 'charitable' deductions), even though the athletes are essentially un-paid (only the coaches and administrators get paid). Is this the model MLB longs for? ... (Oh ... I guess I did start, didn't I? My bad.)
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Yes. A businessman once explained it to me as "the rule of 72." Divide 72 by the return in 'percentages'. That gives you the number of years it takes to double the investment. So 72/12 = 6. Meaning in 6 years you double your investment and have 22M. In another 6 you have 44. So another 4 (I'm estimating now) 67 sounds about right.
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No they don't. They pass out money to those who put on the show. The owners 'do' no more than we do when we are paid interest on our bank accounts.
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This makes 0 sense to me (not because I disagree, but because I cannot follow it). "Because" no one is eliminated, THEREFORE it is MLB's 'best' month???? And that (what????) is the reason we have snowed out games????? (My head is exploding).
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The owners obviously feel they don't lose much by cancelling ST. Also, revenues in April? big deal. Players lose paycheck; owners? meh. What will get their attention is players' willingness to lose months if not the entire season. When the value of their leveraged franchises craters, maybe all this macho posturing will end. Surely some of the owners/stockholders are going to say--we are making millions and millions in this business. Why risk that just to proclaim victory over our employees?
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Do you think Ted has ever actually seen an NBA game?
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"Debt service fees" is a peculiar phrase for business expenses. If I buy a Lexus, of course I consider my car payments as 'expenses'. However, if I buy a VW with cash, I don't compute 'the interest I WOULD have gained had I bought the car on time' as 'expenses'. This kind of accounting (where you do not re-invest in the business, but rather get rid of assets, or in the case of players, essentially refuse to acquire them) is not all that different from junk bonds.
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The poorer clubs will not want a straight cap, because then, they lose out on the 50% of the lux. tax that ends up in their coffers. If you want competitive balance, stop rewarding failure, bad business practices, and fiscal incompetence.
