Stuck in Second

Learning
to live with the dissolution of a prime element of the Red Sox ethos
– the mantle of the noble loser
– has not been easy this off-season. Like a person suffering from bi-polar
disorder, who finally finds the magic ingredients and equalizing dosages
of a pharmaceutical cocktail, and who understands that this new steady-state
existence is a good thing, a chance to leave the bad craziness behind,
yet somehow misses the intoxicating highs and lows, Red Sox fans are
growing nostalgic for their disease.

Fortunately, there are still plenty of areas in which
the Sox find themselves in distant second place, eating the dust of the
evil empire in pinstripes. Finance, for example. Scott Van Voorhis, in
today’s
Boston Herald Business section, covers an article
in Forbes Magazine on the market value of professional sports
teams in America. Guess what – despite
the
first Boston world championship in 86 years, the Yankees are worth almost
twice what the Sox are. Even in the bottom line,
the
Yankees dwarf the hapless Beantown Nine; while the owners of the Red
Sox lost $11.3 million dollars last year, George Steinbrenner lost a
whopping $37 million.  No wonder taking a family of four to a Sox
or Yankee game costs more than the total annual income of a quarter of
the planet’s
population…

The Sox are worth a handsome $563 million – not bad
when the New York Mets,
even
with Pedro,
are priced
at $505
million and Hub business executive Frank McCourt’s Dodgers trail
at a disTant $424 million.

But that’s before George Steinbrenner’s gold-plated Yankees weigh
in at No. 1 with a stunning value of $950 million, Forbes reports.
Will the Sox ever catch up?

While the Sox are world champs, they still wound up
losing $11.3 million last year, Forbes reports. Meanwhile, the Yankees,
who were one game shy of the World Series, lost a whopping $37.1 million

from The Boston Herald

original article from Forbes, "The
Business of Baseball" with a ton of features, including Historical
Team Valuations and a cost-per-victory analysis