The ownership of the Tampa Bay Rays complains bitterly about the attendance problem at Tropicana Field where the Rays play their home games. Major League Baseball sympathizes and subsidizes the Rays with money collected from the franchises that go over their salary caps, like the Yankees. Which of course brings more money into the pockets of the Rays' corporate stockholders. Sounds like a good system if you're part of the Rays' family, which instead cries about their situation so loudly that they are currently planning to share their home games with Montreal. Canada. They simply have to make more money.
But Forbes Magazine has just announced the value of baseball franchises, and lo and behold, the poor Rays are worth $1.05 billion. That's a 4% increase over last year, about 2 1/2 percentage points more than I make on my latest CDs. The Rays investors are making more money than the U.S. mint.
Point is: why don't they quit bellyachin' and settle in for the long term in a town that loves them?
