upnorthsox

I believe you're thinking of the 3rd baseman who's name I can't recall.

Ol' Chuck Comiskey would've also been at the head of the TV money line too. Don't kid yourself as you reminise about the good ol' days, it's the TV $$$ that drives the sport(and salaries). What was once an economic boon for the owners has slowly crept to the players coffers, that no doubt would piss the ol' Roman off to no end.

Exactly Gene. :headshake

I'd have much much prefered him over Timo and for less money no less.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?id=1952374

Interesting comments by Mr. Stern, even more interesting in what he didn't say than what he did. First he decides to answer to a throw off line that if removed from the story would not take away from it's main point one bit. Fine, I guess that's his perogative but it illicits no sympathy from me. So his shares don't pay a dividend, great I own lots of shares in my company too and they also don't pay a dividend but that doesn't mean my company isn't profitable(and there's soo many ways to disguise that too btw). Indeed, that he goes rambling on about unfavorable changes in the tax code is a big red flag to me. Now one thing that always gets me about people complaining about paying taxes is that first you've had to make a profit before you're taxed, the rate and/or how the tax is accrued effects your net take but you've still made profit. He also says that the Sox have paid him the taxes on these profits of his, a nice arrangement, but since you don't prepay capitol gains taxes and profits have already been taxed at the corporate level, this would suggest there's some mechanism in place to hold these profits for future disbursement. Now in a publicly traded company, these are either rolled into the company's cash reserve(and thus reflected in the stock price) or payed out in dividends, in a limited partnership such as the Sox these profits can also be rolled into a partnership trust where they accumulate over the yrs and with the taxes having already been paid, when the partnership trust is desolved and the funds distributed the only taxes paid are on the capitol gains from the interest accrued by this trust account. This btw is seperate from appreciation realized from the sale of the business. Also, in his defense, this doesn't mean that the Sox are profitable EVERY yr, it's just that when they are funds can be deposited into the account for investments(say tax free shares of a new comcast sports channel maybe???) and later disbursement without a direct payment that yr to the partners. As I said, what he didn't say was as interesting as what he did and what caught my eye here was that he made no mention of having to put more money into the business at any point. This btw was exactly the main point that Couch was making in his article. As someone who has just done a kitchen remodel I have both sympathy for him here and no sympathy at all. It was hard for me to write those checks but I did so with the knowledge that I'd be able to recoup most of it on the sale of the house. Was it worth it to me? Hell yea, not only as an investment but also in the quality of my life now. In the Sox case, can such an investment pay off? In all the ratings of where the Sox are in revenues and payroll and such, the one place where they are head and shoulders above anyone else in baseball is growth potential. They can not only increase their appreciation on a future sale but also their profits now. This doesn't even have to come "out of pocket" from the partners because, as the Forbes article points out, they carry one of the lowest debt loads in the business. Instead, we get frugality and whining about players salaries which suggests they are content with the current profit return and a chance to say "I did it my way" in how the business is run. Damm, I just wanted to rebut a few things said and all of a sudden I'm writing a fricken novel!!!! Let me just close by saying if you want to run the business philisophically, fine. If you want to leave your growth potential untapped, fine too, these are your perogatives. But in doing so, if you choose to ignore the main objective of this business, winning, and instead ellicit sympathy by crying poor then I have only one response: 1917!! Do you feel my pain?

What would it have costed us to have made a deal? Not much at all considering Anaheim got nothing for Eck with the non-tender. For those who wanted Eck, a marginal prospect for him would've been a good deal. For those who wanted Cora, there would've been some gnashing of teeth over the loss of our great marginal prospect. And of course for those who think KW can do no wrong, they'd have thought it was a great move no matter what they thought before hand. Anyhow, I'd be happy with Cora or Cairo. I just won't be at all surprised if we miss out on both. But then as you say, who knows.

Well as I believe I said before, the only way we were going to get Eck was if we had traded for him with Anaheim. There were just too many teams that could've used him. That's too bad as I'd really loved to have gotten him, but I'll only be upset by this if KW comes out talking s*** about how he loved him but then uses the contract he signed with the Cards as an excuse for not having got him. If you wanted him at all, all you had to do was trade for him and then take him to arb. That said, I don't see us getting Cora either and I wouldn't be at all surprised if we missed out on Cairo too.

Not sure why you think Miller Park isn't a hitters park, it's smaller than the Cell. I'd say more often than not it's the team that plays there 81 games that dictates what kind of park it is. expect the Cell this yr not to seem so much like Coor's East now that it's not the home of the biggest power team in the AL.

And I'm sure people like you were using the fact that we lost our #3 and #4 hitters for more than half the season as the excuse for us not winning last yr or that in 2003 in was because we had no 5th starter or in 2002 it was all Todd Ritchie's fault, it's always some excuse with you koolaid sippers after the buzz has died and you find out the Sox aren't the best team in the world. But then the off-season begins and you take another big swig of koolaid, once again KW can do no wrong and the Sox are headed to the World Series. Yeah baby!!!! Woohoo!!! If you actually knew me you'd know that I've wanted to blow this team up for almost 3 yrs now and that if that had happened this winter I'd be one very happy camper right now. Instead, we've made some salary moves and cloaked it in a "New Direction" propaganda replacing real production with a bunch of "Ifs" and "Coulds". But please, take another long gulp off that koolaid and let out that world series WooHoo of only a true "fan" because IF everyone stays healthy AND produces then they COULD go to the series. That much I'll grant you, which appears to be more than I'll get in return.

What balance? Dye is a potted plant and if you take Willie out of the lineup then you've negated Spods gains. Unless by balanced you mean that we can suck pretty much everyday of the week now then yea I'd agree with that.

I like Zaun too, and Timo and Davis are garbage. If anything goes in KW's plus column then those two signings need to go in his minus column.

$5 mil, the same amount their revenue went up with the TNT deal?

Funny, right here they have an operating income of $12.8 mil http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2004/0426/066tab.html That's 2nd highest in the majors with only Seattle having more.

My guess is he'll end up in Minny.

Actually Davis' and Spod's salaries aren't estimates so they could go up top.

They still have one of the top 5 TV/Radio contracts in the MLB and it just got better. They may only draw 2 mil but they're in the top 10 in prices so they do better than most. I've seen no proof even once let alone over and over.

The same questions come to mind again: -How much does the CWS make on parking? I believe it's 40% -How much does the CWS make on concessions? That's usually a set contract based on crowd estimates but considering the typical Sox fan I wouldn't rule out a separate % of beer sales. -How much does the CWS make on club/luxury boxes? All they can, but less than JR originally thought he would. But if you want to guestimate, they rent for about $1000 a game.

Teams that could offer him a starting job without having to "sit" someone: Tampa Bay Washington Mets Pittsburgh Cincy Detroit Milwaukee Minny KC St Louis Seattle

LOL!!! I don't understand why any player would want to play for the White Sox. The stadium is a dump. The fans don't come out to the games at all. The south side is a ghost town. - Jay Marriotti

There's 6-7 teams that could offer him a starting job at SS or 2nd and another 8 teams that'd love to have him as their utility IFer. I'd absolutely love to get him but realistically our only chance at him would've been via trade. Remember that the next time you feel the need to sing the praises of KW.

Davis, Burke, and Valdez. I'd love to get Eck and I wouldn't be unhappy with Cora but I can definitely see KW standing pat right now.

Huh? We were at about $63 mil before the Hernandez signing so add $3.5 and we're now at about $66.5 mil. Or did I read your post wrong and you think we're still going to add another $7-9 mil still. Our payroll last yr was $68 mil(minus any insurance money we got for Frank and Maggs).

So Kong didn't even like Frank taking a few AB's at 1st while he DH'ed but he'll gladly give them to Gload while he DH's a half of a season? Color me skeptical. In your opinion Carl is better, in my opinion he doesn't belong on the team.