Let's look at what we have before us: leaked documents that by all accounts should be part of the public record; an alarming snapshot of corruption, waste, and fraud that connects the seamiest worlds of politics and big business; calls to prosecute whoever might be responsible for daring to drag truth into the light of day.
No, this isn't a summary of the "WikiLeaks scandal" that exposed the brutal facts that surround the US quagmire in Afghanistan. It's Major League Baseball, and the leaked private financial statements that show how some teams, claiming poverty, demanded tax dollars for new stadiums while pulling in record profits. Like with the war in Afghanistan, it's a reminder that, for people in power, words like "democracy" and "transparency" aren't sacred values. They're punchlines.
The leaked Major League Baseball documents show the National Pastime to be an
unaccountable, highly-secretive legal monopoly that demands and receives billions in tax money for publicly-financed stadiums while willfully misrepresenting their bottom line. They show that, despite team protestations of perpetual poverty, the Pittsburgh Pirates have made a fortune while not fielding a winning team in 18 years. Pirates owner Robert Nutting pulled $30 million in profit in 2007 and 2008 despite fielding losing teams with a 23-million dollar payroll, the lowest in the game. As long as he receives revenue from big-market clubs via the luxury tax and extorts millions in revenue from their publicly funded home at PNC Park, he could care less. If the old Willie Stargell Pirates of 1979 won a World Series to the tune of "We Are Family," the Nutting Pirates dance to the beat of "Gangsta Gangsta."
But the worst story to emerge from the documents is that of the Florida Marlins, owned by multimillionaire art dealer Jeffrey Loria. The Marlins have secured funding for a new 400-million dollar, publicly-funded stadium, all while lying about their bottom line to max out their corporate welfare potential. As Yahoo sportswriter Jeff Passan wrote:
The team fought to conceal the $48.9 million in profits over the last two years because the revelation would have prompted county commissioners to insist the team provide more funding. Loria, an art dealer with a net worth of hundreds of millions, wouldn't stand for that. He wanted as much public funding as possible -- money that could've gone toward education or to save some of the 1,200 jobs the county is cutting this year.
As politicians begin to rev up their shock and outrage, it's worth asking why this is a story at all. As with Afghanistan, where for years independent, unembedded media has been raising critical questions about the US military intervention, it should hardly shock us that public funding of stadiums is a sham, and the owners of teams simply lie their way to the bank.
Neil deMause, editor of www.fieldofschemes.org, wrote to me:
The remarkable thing to me about the leaked MLB documents is how much of this we already knew: Forbes has been reporting for years that franchises like the Marlins and Pirates were turning profits despite dismal teams, and the leaked documents show that their estimates were generally right on target. It shouldn't come as any surprise that if you're eligible for a cut of league revenue and don't spend anything on payroll, you're going to make money -- does anyone really think it costs that much to paint in the batter's box every day?
He's absolutely correct. The numbers have been there for years but politicians simply took owners at their word that Forbes was simply wrong. Politicians now either look incredibly naive or utterly complicit. They were dupes or participants in what has been a Ponzi scheme of lies and organized theft. Passan was absolutely correct in writing, "The swindlers who run the Florida Marlins got exposed Monday. They are as bad as anyone on Wall Street, scheming, misleading and ultimately sticking taxpayers with a multibillion-dollar tab. Corporate fraud is alive and well in Major League Baseball."
The question now is about the appropriate response -- and this question far transcends the world of sports. It's about approaching our political leaders with the now indisputable truth: stadium construction deals are corporate welfare hotels that don't return on their promised investment, and most city officials are either too cowardly or too compromised to stop them. The idea that we are giving tax money to owners who are then under no obligation to tell the truth to the public about the general state of their finances is appalling.
Let's make it clear to the billionaire owners of baseball teams: Pay for your own damn stadiums. If you do take public money from us, then we the people should have a public ownership stake in the teams. Major League Baseball's owners have been playing dirty for far too long. It's time to send them to the showers and for fans to get off the bench.
Cross-posted form thenation.com
Dave Zirin is the author of "Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love" (Scribner) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
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As much as I would like to fault the Pirate's owners...they could spend another $40 million a year and it would change nothing as long as the Yankees can spend $300 million a year.
They have no problem using the capitalist system to make their fortunes by holding down the wages of their employees when capitalism is to the owners advantage. But as soon as 'free trade' of labor is to their disadvantage, they cry that they must have socialism.
Wahhh! Protect us from the other owners. Buy us stadiums. We can't survive without salary caps and years of restrictions before free agency. We have to have exclusive territories. We don't want any guaranteed contracts.
Typical of today's wealthy, they want to capitalize the profits and socialize the costs and losses.
On the other hand I have to give props to my home town CBus Ohio. The voters of the city and the county 4 times voted down susidies for NHL Blue Jackets arena. Of course since the day Nationwide Arena opened the team and the owners of the arena have been pleading poverty, claiming that if they don't get tax dollars the team will have to move south.
Now nobody wants another NBA franchise and that league and David Stern are about as popular as the bubonic plague.
The L.A. citizenry continues to not be interested in paying for an NFL franchise, either and, when the Rams and Raiders left, nobody paid any political price for it nor was Seattle mayor Greg Nickels hounded for it (Nickels problem was the incompetent way he handled the freak snow storm we had).
Localities need to call team owners' bluffs because they can get by just fine without a pro team.
Low paying comcession jobs are not so beneficial as to offset the taxes they should be paying.
and any city that actually PAYS for the arena to be built is corrupt.
You left out the Cubs. But anyway, if you judge MLB by what teams regularly get ESPN game time, it seems like the national pastime is down to about ten teams and not a peep about that from anyone in Selig's or the other team's offices.