Bud Selig told the House Judiciary Committee Thursday that Major League Baseball is losing its shirt. Its red amounted to $518 million last year, including interest payments, amortization costs and other things you need an eyeshade to understand.

        Selig wants to prevent passage of a bill stripping baseball of its antitrust exemption, granted by the Supreme Court in 1922 when someone believed baseball was a game and not a business.

        Baseball is nothing of the sort, of course. But that's a discussion for another day, when your only other life option would be whacking yourself senseless with a ball-peen hammer.

        Selig should not have been discussing his industry's poverty. Because if baseball is poor, I am Bill Gates.

• 2001 team-by-team revenue and expenses (460k PDF) • Reds financial chart (160k PDF)

Statistics don't lie

        Baseball is in the money. Its skies are sunny. It's got a lot of what it takes to get along.

        Baseball has a $2 billion television deal. Baseball had an average attendance of 30,000 last season. One of baseball's franchises, the Boston Red Sox, is likely to be sold for about $500 million, the highest price in baseball history.

        Between 1992 and 2000, 13 baseball teams were sold, for an average profit of 8 percent. Baseball is paying players an average wage of $2.15 million. Baseball had record revenues last season, of $3.5 billion.

        Think about that. This is an industry that, on the major-league level, employs fewer than 5,000 people, only 750 of whom are players. If you were the CEO of this industry and you were asked, “How do you have record revenues and still lose half a billion dollars?”, what on earth could you say that would make any sense?

Time to share the wealth

        Baseball's problem is not money. Baseball's problem is distributing the money. Your average Reds fan gets this. The Reds are the skunk; the Yankees are the truck tire.

        That's what the evidence suggests. That's what the numbers say. Consider this: In 2001, the Yankees sold $98 million worth of tickets. The Kansas City Royals did $19.5 million. The Yankees sold local broadcast rights for $57 million. The Minnesota Twins checked in at $7.2 million.

        In a smart league such as the NFL, this is not a problem. Everyone gets the same pile of swag. There are no skunks. Only tires. (Except in Cincinnati. But we digress.) In any given year, 30 of the 31 teams have a chance at the playoffs. It's a nice little system. All it has done is make the NFL the king of the sports universe.

        “I am the leader of an industry that is doing a terrible job of running itself” is what Selig should have said to the committee Thursday. “Help me, please, find a mechanism that forces the owners to be responsible. Help me protect them from themselves.” Devise a system that allows every team a fair shake, that allows clubs to rise or fall on their own merits, not on the width of their wallets.

        Selig didn't say that, though. He defended the accuracy of his unaudited numbers. He said the game is in trouble. We've heard that for only 25 years. During that time, the game's revenues have increased 19-fold.

        Selig talked about poverty. Poverty? Blue seats at Cinergy Field are going for $32 next spring. As recently as 1998, they were $14. That's a high price to pay to prop up an industry that's going broke. Family of four takes it in the neck again.

        Contact Paul Daugherty at 768-8454; fax: 768-8550; e-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com.

Teams in trouble, Selig says DAUGHERTY: Baseball Money Reds not as bad off as some Fans get tickets to ensure autographs at Redsfest

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