At A Hotel In Chicago

At A Hotel In Chicago Yesterday. . . Major League Baseball Owners met to ratify the labor agreement they came to, in order to avoid a baseball strike last week. The vote was 29-1 (or 28, if you don't count the Expos, who are owned by all the teams and controlled for voting purposes by Commissioner Bud Selig), with George Steinbrenner and the Yankees alone in the "no" column.

Reports have indicated that the new luxury tax is going to cost the Yankees $50 million next season alone. Now, if the Yankees were a publicly traded company, and it was announced that a change in the tax law was going to knock $50 million off of next year's revenue numbers, I think it's a safe bet the stock would go down in recognition of a drop in the company's value.

We already know that Steinbrenner has retained the services of Microsoft/Gore Campaign uber-lawyer, David Boies. And, as I have noted before, all Steinbrenner needs to do to throw baseball back into labor chaos is for him to hold a press conference announcing a suit against the rest of the Major League franchises.

What would the basis of such a suit be? I'll leave that to the lawyers, but something tells me a good one could find a rational basis for a suit inside the labor agreement rather easily. The question is this: does George Steinbrenner want to become the Al Davis of Major League Baseball. Something tells me he wouldn't mind at all.

UPDATE: Bob Klapisch has a great little piece on the future financial situation of the Yankees and Mets over at ESPN.com. And while the future might look difficult for the defending American League champs, it's downright bleak for their crosstown rivals in Queens.

Eric 10:35 AM

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