| | So Jerry Colangelo is poor now, is he? Eating tuna out of the can
in front of the Circle K? Selling his players' blood for ready cash?
Well, OK. And the point is?
|  | | Jerry Colangelo took out a $20 million loan to cover operating expenses. |
We've had a week to sample the opinions and digest the conclusions
made from the Arizona Diamondbacks' borrowing $20 million to shoo that
lupine pest from the veranda, and the one thing nobody seems to understand
is this:
Big deal.
While it is true we live in a relatively flush age, economically
speaking, the fascination with baseball's financial state has always been a
bafflement. The drones at Fortune, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal
can be forgiven; money and the moneyed are all those folks traffic in, and
it would be wrong to give them a flaying for doing their jobs.
On the other hand, would you, the average Diamondbacker, rather have
the owner putting the best available product on the field and enduring a
temporary case of the money shorts, or would you rather have him warm,
content, rich and running a 70-win team?
Before we get any farther into this relatively easy topic, let us note
that the number of poor and endangered teams always seems to grow
exponentially a year before labor talks begin. I mean, the blue-ribbon
panel that just filed its report and is still leaning catatonically against
the juke box at Dexter's Midnight Lounge concluded recently that 27 of 30
teams have lost money in the last five years. They might as well
have announced that 30 of the 27 were losing money for all that anyone
believes them.
I mean, if baseball were this sick an investment, the major leagues
should have folded and reorganized as a keg league in downstate Illinois.
We don't want Rupert Murdoch's cheeks to sink into his skull now, do we?
But let's not go there now. Let's take another big draw on what Dad
left in the glove compartment of the pickup, believe that the D-Bax really
did need all that jack to keep the coins off their eyes, and re-pose the
question:
What would you as a fan rather have -- wins or wealth?
The issue has become hopelessly convoluted in the NFL and NBA, where
salary cap concerns affect everyone from Patrick Ewing to Sam Jacobson.
Baseball has no such cap, though, and all to the good. If George
Steinbrenner would rather spend his money on Derek Jeter than shove it into
his Cayman Islands IRA, isn't that good?
Well, isn't it?
You'd be amazed, though, how many people think not. You'd be stunned
to discover how many people think money is the root of all evil in
baseball, especially now that an owner is pulling his pockets out of his
pants and making that boo-boo-kitty face.
For one, Colangelo will make that $20M back for his investors. This is
what Paul Gigot, the WSJ talking-head, would call a liquidity problem.
There will be more liquid soon enough.
For two, without that spending, the Diamondbacks wouldn't have Curt
Schilling, let alone Randy Johnson, and they'd be the Milwaukee Brewers.
With all due respect to Davey Lopes, we have enough of them already, thank
you very much indeed.
For three, well, shut up. True, that's putting it indelicately, but
every owner in baseball bought his team in a year in which salaries rose
from the year before and would rise again the year after. Only an idiot
would budget it any other way. Colangelo knew the deal when he signed on,
the same way Mike Ilitch did in Detroit, and the same way Tom Hicks in
Dallas, and the same way Jerry McMorris in Denver.
All we want to know, in the end, is whether the team is winning games.
Arizona is winning games. That pretty much covers it. If Jerry Colangelo
can't cover a dinner check at Don and Charlie's, then we'll worry about
him. Otherwise, we simply can't, won't and shouldn't be bothered.
Ray Ratto, a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. | |
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Report: D-Backs borrow $20 million to meet expenses
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