The Great Steinbrenner's financial genius

This is brilliant! Steinbrenner is in negotiations with NYC to build a new Yankee Stadium, with only the Yankees' money, and have NYC contribute $300,000,000 in area renovations, roads, parks, business help, etc. The current Collective Bargaining Agreement allows baseball teams to deduct the costs of stadium operations from their revenue sharing obligations. MLB has allowed those "costs" to INCLUDE stadium construction debt. Thus, Steinbrenner would NOT contribute revenue sharing and instead would be able to keep that money to pay down the construction debt!

Neil deMause on Baseball Prospectus (link above) calls this a scam and says "If it works--and it's worth noting that there's nothing stopping the other 29 teams from rewriting the revenue-sharing rules in the next CBA in 2006--it's a breathtaking ploy to build a stadium with other people's money, and reveals a huge loophole in baseball's revenue-sharing plan, which was designed specifically to keep the Yankees from doing stuff like this."

That's the socialist mindset for you: the Yankees' revenues that they obtain by being the best product and most recognizable brand in team sports is "other people's money." What a crock.

And I'm supposed to cry for the other owners? Like Carl Pohlad of the Twins, the richest owner in baseball, who actually RECEIVES a net profit of revenue-sharing money (revenues received minus revenues paid into MLB's overall revenue-sharing fund) and then pockets it whilst strangling his team's payroll, or Wendy Selig-Prieb who owns the Brewers -- the most profitable team in baseball according to Forbes? Get real.

Or stated better, by Rob at Say Anything:

Steinbrenner [is] forcing other professional baseball teams to pay for his team's new stadium because he found a perfectly legal loophole that allows him to deduct the stadium's cost from the amount of money he has to give to those other teams? That's sort of like accusing me of forcing orphans to pay for my new patio because I deducted the cost of its construction from the amount I give annually to the Poor Little Orphan's charity.

Give me a break.

Since when did it become the responsibility of the New York Yankees to fund every other team in baseball? Aren't these other teams supposed to be businesses? . . .

And let's not forget that most of these teams who benefit from revenue sharing aren't actually spending those proceeds on the betterment of their team. Most of the owners of those teams just pocket the money while only diverting a bare minimum of it to the team itself (I'm looking at you and your Milwaukee Brewers Mr. Selig).

So lets not kid ourselves. The Yankees are building themselves a new palace with the profits they receive from being the most successful franchise in all of professional sports and the rest of the league is jealous.