Well, if we're going to keep going back and forth on this, I'll allow this purely from the horse's mouth, professor zimbalist:

 

TSwift25 10/02/07 5:47 PM >>>

Professor Zimbalist,

 

Regarding your wonderful book May the Best Team Win, and I must compliment you on a clear, eloquent look at the inner machinations of Major League Baseball.

 

I must ask one follow up question regarding your research:

 

Is the 50% amortization you outline in Chapter 4 still applicable under MLB standards and practices? I ask this as a resident of Florida and a fan of the Florida Marlins. Given the financial outlooks of the state following the 2004 hurricanes, I am reluctant to throw my support behind the team in their quest for public funding knowing that they are grossly misrepresenting their finances to an increasingly bankrupt state.

 

Again, thank you very much for the work you put into the book and I anxiously await your reply,

 

Trent

 

if you mean the tax shelter, it is now even richer. check out my new baseball book, In the Best Interests of Baseball? Thanks for your kind words.

 

***********************************************

Andrew Zimbalist

Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics

Smith College

Northampton, Ma. 01063

 

:whistle

Except you asked the wrong question which is often your problem and posed the wrong hypothetical while tipping your hand that you really aren't a Marlins fan at all.

 

The question is - What value is there for franchise purchase generated player contract depreciation over the five year depreciation period if the team is losing money during that period?

 

Garbage in - garbage out.

 

BTW, I ordered a Supreme...I'll let you know when it arrives.

And here we go yet again, personal insults.

 

Why am I not a Marlin fan? What exactly doesn't make me a fan? Is it the fact that I spend over $15,000 on my season tickets? Does that bring my loyalty into question? Is it that I see more road games than most do home-games?

 

What relevance does that have to anything at all, aside from ducking the issue, yet again, that MLB's position has not changed for the worse as you'd like to paint.

 

And, honestly, personal insults are so becoming of a divorced lonely adult who sits at home with only a cheap pizza to console him. Wonderful shocker there.

The amount of passion you two muster to argue with one another astounds me.

 

Cheers, fellas.

Actually tonight is great, for two nights a week I have some time for myself, and the pizza was $16.00.

 

And frankly before you accuse anyone of hurling insults you may want to rethink some of your own behavior in this thread and just about every thread you participate in. What were you calling someone in another thread last night? Oh, I remember, the word was "ignorant" because he didn't accept your BS as fact.

 

The bottomline is you're wrong, I'm right and it's driving you crazy. If Forbes' number are correct, or at least as definitive as you have said here so many times they are, then I win this hands down. I don't know if Zimbalist is anything more than a guest on Forbes tv and oft-quoted, or whether he oversees in any way the implementation of these numbers, although now that I think about it, might be a conflict, but I was just watching him interviewed on their internet tv broadcast the other day so he has some tie to Forbes.

 

Operational losses are not improved by write-offs for interest and depreciation. Obviously if you lose money there are no taxes.

 

You lose, plain and simple, and since this depreciation allowance has clock on it - five years - 2002-2006 and they have now expired worthless except for approximately $4 million they sheltered.

How exactly do I lose if all I asked for was you to clarify your representation of Zimbalist being an effective rebuttal to the Hard Ball Times piece.

 

Which he isn't. And which you haven't.

 

If you truly believe the Marlins to not be making money hand over fist, that's your own foolish choice. The writing is on the wall on that one. If Forbes numbers are correct (as I take it you pray they are) you no longer have a leg to stand on in your oft regurgitated stance that the Marlins are not profitable.

 

You lose plain and simple. You lose because you need personal insults to make your stance stronger. You lose because you have yet to substantively rebut anything grounded in fact, like Zimbalist's book.

 

So, I guess, in a round-about-way, you lose because you chose to start a debate that you had no way of finishing. This all spiraled out of your Zimbalist allegations, none of which have been substantiated, BY HIM, as I was promised. Even upon my asking the author himself for clarification, he categorically denied your claim that MLB's tax stance is weakening. You are a liar and you owe Spike an apology.