Baseballhead:
Forbes Feeled

Michael Cox

Hey folks! It's Baseballhead time again, coming to you from the Strikethree.com Towers' "panic room" (formerly our "happy place," until we saw Selig coming and bolted the door).

Before the baseball hap'nins, you may have noticed a new "look and feel" to the ol' Strikethree.com homestead. Indeed, after what seemed like months (but was in fact months) of toil, we've not only slightly retooled our pages (note the fine Corinthian leather), we've also added new features you'll grow to love.

For those of you who remember when we had team pages, they're back, this time with a selection of team news from around the Web, as well as easy-to-read 2002 schedules and links. The Prospect Ten now has an archive, so you can watch your favorite farmhand's progress (or lack thereof) over the weeks and months. And check out the JockStrip -- a single-panel cartoon featuring cutting, topical humor (not to be confused with BenGay, which is a burning, topical ointment).

Everything that was here still is, and in about the same place as it was before we started building additions and repainting the sitting room (or was that the drawing room?). The renovation hasn't stopped, either -- there are some cool new features still to come in the weeks ahead. Let us know what you'd like to see (or what you fear -- don't worry, the Rivals folks have been permanently removed from our speed dial).

Moving on to baseball, I don't think the first week of MLB has ever been as eventful as this one. There was Barry Bonds, picking up where he left off in September. The Brewers did the same, fanning 17 times against Curt Schilling. The Mariners fell out of first place for the first time since September 2000, not that it means much. Jason Giambi was welcomed to the Bronx the same way Tino Martinez was in '96: by fans asking if they could have his predecessor back (note to Yankee fans: trust me, you'll prefer the current first baseman).

As of press time, the Giants haven't lost a game, the Tigers haven't won one, the Pirates share the second-best record in baseball, and every team in the NL East is tied for first place. Tampa Bay even got to enjoy a division lead for a couple of days (they won't have to tell their grandkids when they led the AL East...).

Not that everything has been a bowl of eggs this past week -- Ken Griffey, finally feeling like himself again this spring, ends up doing himself an injury whilst in ye olde baserunning pickle against Montreal. I sincerely hope Griffey's career isn't turning into a rerun of "The Mark McGwire Story."

Of course, this development also thickened the plot of Les Expos saga: could it be that the Dead Team Walking is destined to wander the NL like the Grim Reaper, rending the league asunder with the touch of its bony finger? With the Mets hosting Montreal next weekend, should they be hiding Mike Piazza and Robbie Alomar somewhere in Brooklyn? Time will tell, but I hope Selig appears at an Expos game to test my theory.

Jeff Kent got to spend Opening Day watching his team on TV as punishment for his "washing my truck" fib. Fans across the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex nearly developed aneurysms when they read the headline, "Rodriguez placed on DL," before reading that the afflicted was Rich Rodriguez (to which approximately 68% of those folks replied, "they have a Rich Rodriguez?"). Moises Alou is seriously considering calf-replacement surgery after his third straight season of right-calf-related disability.

Then there's the sad tale of Chuck Finley, who missed his first scheduled start after being pummeled by wife Tawny Kitaen. Finley, unable to fight back because he was controlling a motor vehicle at the time, likely wouldn't have reported the abuse himself, but a family friend called police and the former actress has been arraigned and ordered to have no contact with her husband.

Of course, in this situation there was a hue and cry from some that the situation wouldn't be taken seriously because it was one of a woman abusing a man. Unfortunately, most MLB teams don't seem to take the situation seriously when a player commits the crime, so I'm not sure how this would differ. Perhaps, however, seeing the consequences of abuse, instead of just the rationalizations and denials of the accused, might make players and teams understand the gravity of this issue.

Finally, as the season kicked off last week Forbes magazine announced to the world what most of us suspected anyway: Major League Baseball actually made a gross profit last year. The figures Bud Selig provided to Congress were an exaggeration at best (a fabrication at worst). Those evil players haven't sent baseball to the poorhouse via mind-control powers that make perfectly rational owners spend four times what Pokey Reese is worth.

How did Forbes come up with a different result? Easy. They used not only the figures given to them by MLB, but they also researched and corrected items that were not actual expenses but were claimed as such (depreciation, for example, which makes an excellent tax deduction, but costs absolutely zero out-of-pocket), and others that were just plain not correct (owners say they pay all minor-league expenses but get none of the revenues, which Forbes found to be false).

The punchline? Forbes declared that MLB actually made a combined operating profit of $75 million, and not the $232 million loss Selig took to Congress.

The fun since the Forbes news has been watching the reaction from Selig and his cadre of lawyers who now seem to run MLB. Selig called the report "pure fiction," while lawyer Rob Manfred (also known as the man Selig trusts to negotiate in good faith with the players) chose the direct slander option, calling it ''the type of journalism one expects from a supermarket tabloid.''

Adding that "it was written in total disregard of actual audited financial information that we provided to the authors,'' Manfred was seeking to distract us from the fact that Forbes didn't disregard that information at all -- in fact, they double-checked it. Now, I wouldn't trust Forbes to know baseball talent, or even fan behavior (their 2001 report suggested most Yankee fans drive to the Bronx), but where dollars and cents are concerned I trust them at least as much as I do the MLB owners.

So rest assured, dear fan, that your game is not going to debtors' prison anytime soon. In fact, considering Selig's continued attempts to kill it, it's proving to be amazingly resilient.

about the author

Michael Cox is looking forward to one of the commissioner's now-legendary "courtesy calls" to gently correct the above opinions. Suggest he offer to retract his opinions if Bud gives him the Expos at mc@strikethree.com.