TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Midnight Strikes for Expos Fans

No Stay of Execution This Time - Governor Sells Tickets to the Hanging Instead of Granting a Reprieve

The cruel and unusual punishment for Expos fans will finally end on Thursday, as Major League Baseball is expected to announce the sale and removal of the franchise to Washington, D.C. The agony of stayed executions has taken the stuffing out of the remaining Expos fans -- the first "last" season was first rumoured to be 1999 -- and the expected attendance for the last series will fulfill the lowest expectations of those who have been preaching the low expectations of self-fulfilling prophecy for the franchise for the last ten years.

Just to show you that MLB has learned its lessons from the Washington Senators, they're delaying the formal announcement until after the last series at the Big O is over -- the last game is Wednesday -- to avoid a riot like the one that closed down the Senators in 1971.

There are plenty of bitter ironies in this week's franchise announcements. Commissioner Selig, the man most closely associated with killing baseball in Montreal, has been right in the center of two of the last three franchise moves and peripherally associated with the third. Contrary to the weird mythology surrounding baseball economics, MLB has been the most stable of the major sports. There have been over four dozen franchise moves by the NBA/ABA, NFL, and NHL since MLB last moved a team. That last team, of course, was the old Senators, and the team before that that was moved was the Seattle Pilots -- to Milwaukee, moved there after one Allan Selig bought them in bankruptcy court. Selig had pined for baseball in Milwaukee after the Braves were "ripped out of the heart of the community" and moved to Atlanta, although of course the Braves had previously been ripped out of Boston to be moved to Milwaukeee.

Let us think about that for a moment. When the Senators/Expos reappear, that means the last four cities to lose baseball (not counting Montreal) -- Kansas City, Milwaukee, Seattle, and Washington -- will have all gotten it back. Not that Kansas City and Milwaukee have ever been great markets in terms of size; combined they still aren't quite as big as the basic market in Montreal. Somewhere at the heart of all this moving, or non-moving, is the truth that quality of the management counts.

Speaking of the quality of management, the Brewers (64-91, last in the NL Central) are for sale, and a buyer has been named. The Selig family still owns 26% of the Brewers, and the Brewers in turn own 3.45% of the Expos right now as part of MLB's joint ownership of the club. Just to do a quick recap on the Selig legacy in Milwaukee: the team hasn't finished above .500 since 1992. In the 35 years the Seligs have owned the Brewers, they finished above .500 ten times, half of them between 1978 and 1983. Since the labor "peace" Selig brought as commissioner after the cancellation of the 1994 World Series -- which the Expos almost certainly would've been playing in had it been held -- the team's record is 699-893.

The Brewers got a $310 million windfall during that period in the form of public money for Miller Park. Of the $90 million "contributed" by ownership, 100% has been covered by sale of naming rights and new parking and concession deals.

The reported sale price of the Brewers after all this infusion of capital from the public trough is about $180 million. By contrast, the Texas Rangers, after getting a publically-financed stadium, went from a $75 million valuation to over $330 million. And the Montreal Expos, when sold back to baseball, went for a cool $120 million with no stadium, no home, and a fan base smaller than the membership of the Skull and Bones Society.

35 years after the two franchises came into being, and the Brewers, with a $400 million asset, revenue sharing more or less guaranteed, and they're worth only $60 million more than the Expos? Not quite! The Expos may be sold for $150 million or more, up to $175 million -- terms have not been disclosed by Major League Baseball -- so it's a marginal gap at best.

It's really hard to say exactly which team he's done worse by, but Selig will have the dubious record shared by few of having run two major league franchises into the ground. But he'll still make money on both deals, personally.

So here's how it works. If the Expos are sold for the purported $175 million asking price to the Washington DC-Malek group, the Brewers will take $6 million of that as co-owners of the club. If the Brewers are sold for $180 million, the Selig's family share of that will be $46 million. The $6 million will be transferred as a cash asset to the Brewers prior to the re-sale of the Brewers, so the current Brewers ownership group will benefit. So that's another $1.56 million in assets going directly to the Selig family as authorized by Commissioner Selig.

This is not like the 10,000% windfall on an out of pocket investment of $105,000 George W. Bush got when the Rangers were sold by his silent majority partners, to be sure, and may or may not be a lot to show for 35 years of work. We do not count executive compensation and profits taken out of the club by various family members over the years, of course, nor the Commissioner's salary. So relatively speaking, others have gotten a lot richer on baseball over the years than Bud Selig. It's a cheap form of grave-robbing, and the legacy will be a hollow team in Milwaukee and ghosts in Montreal.

Not quite. Baseball continues to employ as its Chief Executive Officer a gentleman who couldn't even break even, by his own testimony, in 35 years of trying to run his own business. I don't actually believe the Brewers didn't make money during Selig's ownership tenure, but that's the story they put out. What a great recommendation for promotion -- I did so badly in my middle-management job that I would like to run the whole industry, please. It's a sign of how great baseball is that it's prospered despite Selig's historically-long stint at commissioner/CEO, or maybe just an indication of how useful that anti-trust exemption really is.

The bottom line: when the Commissioner pulls the trap door on Thursday and finally kills baseball in Montreal, he'll be putting money in his own pocket. That's the only bottom line Mr. Selig has improved during his management of Montreal and Milwaukee's teams.

posted by The Crank 8:11 AM