Holy Crap!

Anyone who thinks baseball isn't about money over winning, check this story out viaFishstripes (via Deadspin.com).

The New York Post reports that numerous Wall Street firms pitched to take Major League Baseball's Advanced Media public in an offering that could have been worth $3 billion, or $100 million a team. But it reported the baseball team owners couldn't be convinced that reaping a few billion dollars was worth it considering that the contract with the Major League Baseball Players Association is due to expire Dec. 19, 2006.

Fishstripes comments:

So, what we've learned is that keeping their financial details private is worth (on average) more than $100,000,000 per team. That's amazing.

And that's sick. Clearly if the books were open, all the taxpayer financing of stadia that's been approved would be shown for what it is: Welfare fraud.

Additionally, we'd see that payrolls of $100 million are cheap and still insanely profitable for the teams.

If this isn't proof that all baseball teams are cheap, then, short of becoming owners ourselves, there never will be proof.