April 10, 2011

Baseball is Big Business

I seem to be hung up on baseball lately. I'm sorry for the redundant subject but here is one more article that should not surprise any baseball fan. Baseball is a big, big business. From the Chronicle Review this paragraph in the middle of the article is not a revelation to anyone:

...It's not just our nostalgia for the idealized innocence of the sport that makes us avert our eyes. Look more closely at the patterns of public support. Baseball has always been a big business. Owners were even granted an antitrust exemption in 1922, a few years after crushing a rival professional league. That exemption amazingly persists to this day, when a middle-of-the-pack team like the Cleveland Indians is valued by Forbes magazine at more than $400-million. But as Andrew Zimbalist points out in his chapter in the Cambridge Companion on baseball's economics, unlike in other successful businesses, baseball's owners have never wanted to look rich or even particularly successful.

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