Game Thread 160: Orioles at Twins

First pitch: 7:10 Central

Weather: Very nice, starting temperature 77°

Opponent’s SB side: Camden Chat

TV: BS North, free MLB Game of the Day (where available). Radio: Just as annoyed as you

The Orioles will start rookie pitcher Cade Povich, who will not reveal his guests’ paternity tests. He’s left-handed and gets about one bad start per month.

The Twins are starting Pablo López, who wasn’t good in his last outing.

Since Minnesota takes exactly 3GB of Detroit and Kansas City’s Wild Card spots, only one series win by the Twins combined with three losses by any of those other teams will earn a playoff spot.

Kansas City plays Atlanta, which is fighting for its own playoff spot. Detroit plays the White Sox, who are fighting over who hates Jerry Reinsdorf the most.

We’re wrapping up this year’s Friday coverage with a pesky little story about how billionaire gifts work.

So the Orioles wanted over half a billion to “renovate” Camden Yards, which, as you can imagine, is in no danger of collapsing. Maryland Governor Wes Moore was willing to give them that money. Until it was announced that the team was negotiating to sell to a new owner.

So Orioles CEO John Angelos called Governor Moore to assure him that the team would not sell. Governor Moore believed him; and the team received a zillion dollars in public money.

Then it was promptly announced that they were selling.

(That said, the governor was made a fool of, but that’s his problem and that of his constituents.)

What is particularly annoying is that the team is not being sold all at once. It will now be partially sold and fully sold once aging team owner Peter Angelos passes away. Why is that?

It is a completely legal tax evasion.

See, Peter Angelos bought the team before Camden Yards opened. This means that if he sells it now, he will have to pay taxes on the increased value of the team. That would be a lot of taxes.

However, after his death, the taxable value of the team is not what Peter Angelos paid for it, but rather what the team is worth when his children inherit it. AKA, the team’s value resets to today. You can then sell it and pay NO capital gains tax.

They will have to pay some other taxes, but they will evade about $300 million. And that’s just federal. You will also avoid state tax. Everything completely legal.

What is the moral of this story? There really isn’t one. Since the teams are constantly demanding more and more public money, municipalities and states should negotiate better. The Pohlads, for example, cannot sell the Twins before 2040 without owing Hennepin County the team’s increased value through Target Field. (That would mean a fun legal battle, and no one wants that.)

Since this is the last Friday preview of the year, I’ll leave you with a song that reflects how I feel about baseball right now:

There’s a line in Jim Bouton Foul ball (on trying to save a historic minor league stadium); “Baseball is like religion – a great game with shitty owners.”

What I enjoy is separate from the annoying things behind the scenes; It involves things like reading box scores or listening to games on the radio (even though Atteberry is an idiot sometimes).

It’s less about who wins and who loses, except that it makes what’s going on at any given moment more interesting.

No, it’s the game itself and the often strange but likeable guys who play it.

And that will probably take at least a while.

So if this site is still around next year, you’ll probably see me again to write about weird baseball characters. And if not, maybe our paths will cross again somewhere else.

It was fun – even if these owners can be frustrating at times!

And to make it less of a shame that sports owners dodge taxes, here’s a fun FanGraphs article by Michael Baumann about foreign soccer players visiting American sports stadiums, including Camden Yards. Here, a player from a women’s team who actually knows baseball is seen trying to explain it to her European teammates:

Hey, I made that face when explaining baseball to people who didn’t grow up with it…and come to think of it, I introduced that face to the Twins on the radio this month!