I’ll be spending the evening breaking down Tim Finchem’s press conference for you. Listening to him did not engender confidence that he’s taking the Tour in the right direction, but that article is for tomorrow.
Giving credit where it is due, Outside the Lines proves they are still the best journalistic high water mark at the Four-letter. This excellent article, “Seats of Gold,” summarizes exactly how rampant greed and disregard for the fans has resulted in families getting priced out of ball games even though they pay for the construction of the palatial stadiums. From the article:
“I order a $60 glass of pregame scotch and throw the last swallow away, because backwash is for proletarian strivers. I seek refuge in the Legends Suite from everyone’s favorite prepositional phrase — in this economy — because here, the crash never happened. Look around. This place reeks of a bull market. Here, it is perpetually 2007, and we are all fat and happy (though not as fat and not as happy as we will be in a few innings).
The waiter comes to my seat, which is three rows from the field, right next to the Yankees dugout. I’m close enough to see A-Rod choke. My throat is dry from making small talk with commoners.
“I want a bottle of Dom and a bag of peanuts,” I say.
It takes a few minutes, but I wait patiently and soon enough I’m sipping a glass of cold Champagne. I toast my good fortune. I’m not really a fan of either team, or of baseball, for that matter, but I do enjoy food, drink and afternoons of mindless entertainment. I am in lust, not love. A guy in front of me orders sushi. I feel closer to my agrarian roots already.
Hell, yeah. Take me out to the old ballgame.”
But here’s the indictment, something Congress should look into pretty quick, because this reeks of corruption:
“Inevitably, one group of equity traders — they worked at Fidelity — got caught. The thing that finally brought the whole thing to a close was a 2003 bachelor party for one of the traders. Everyone heard about it: private jets to Miami, a yacht, a bag of Ecstasy, a warren of rooms at the uber-exclusive Delano Hotel, some hookers, some strippers, some red meat, medium-rare. Oh, and one midget, named Danny Black, to toss off the boat. All told, $160,000 for a weekend at the beach.
“It wasn’t like a three-ring circus,” groused the father of the groom, Thomas Bruderman Sr., to the tabloids at the time. “It was a nice party. There was only one dwarf.”
When the Securities and Exchange Commission looked into the midget, the hookers, the drugs, they found something less hilarious but more pervasive: the corrupt culture around tickets. This is how it works: A broker wants to sell something, but the trader doesn’t want to buy it. So, as happened in May 2002, a broker sends an e-mail: Are you aware of a guy who delivers Yankee tix to your desk faster than me? Seller of good size CSCO [CISCO Systems].
In exchange for tickets, the trader orders whatever the broker is selling. Everybody wins. The broker gets his sale. The trader gets his seat behind the dugout. Well, almost everybody. You, I’m afraid, get screwed with your pants on. Wall Street was not only trifling with our financial future but also driving up ticket prices.”
So there it is: Your portfolio decisions were made for you because of the fringe benefits to your broker. Everyone take a long hard look at your man and see if you can walk 360 degrees around him and see if there’s no dark side. That”s the only way to run a business and the only way to run a sports league as well…which brings me to Tim Finchem, but that’s for tomorrow morning.
