It’s always a session in baseball education when we spend time with venerable MLB reporter Barry Bloom of Sportico, who joins Nestor to discuss this Yankees and Orioles stretch run and the future of revenue strategies in small markets for Rob Manfred and every David Rubenstein.
Barry Bloom of Sportico joins …ue strategies in small markets
Tue, Sep 03, 2024 5:00PM • 34:49
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
year, yankees, orioles, team, dodgers, astros, baseball, revenue, money, market, win, diamondbacks, game, baltimore, put, hockey, oysters, franchise, owners, people
8
SPEAKERS
Barry Bloom, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W N, S T, tousled. Baltimore. Am 1570 Baltimore positive. We celebrating our 26th year. I’ve got a crab and an oyster. We’re gonna be doing 26 oysters in 26 days, beginning on Thursday. We’re gonna be doing a lot of baseball, a lot of football, a lot of oysters. Five crab cake tours this month, all of them brought to you by the Maryland I have the gold rush, seven stubblers as well as the Raven scratch offs to give away. And of course, our oyster tour, 26 oysters, 26 ways, 26 days, all around the bay, brought to you by our friends at Liberty. Pure solutions. They keep your well water clean. They can help you with your plumbing. And much like the oysters, oxygenating the bay and bringing the crabs to life, they’ll make sure that your water is crystal clear, just like it is in my glass right now. This guy has filled my glass with baseball cheer since I was a very young man. I think I read his work at the baseball digest and the long time Associated Press, and he decided to wear his Yankees hat, and there’s no cheering in the press box, even though I’m not allowed in the press box. Barry bloom joins us. He is boomsky. He is at an Arizona these days, but spent a long time on the East Coast, West Coast. What’s going on? How are you happy? Um, pennant race to you. It’s a September pennant race in Baltimore. I know it’s shocking for you to be here after all these years, but there
Barry Bloom 01:11
are pennant races all over the place. It’s it’s good, well, for the
Nestor Aparicio 01:15
8Orioles and the Yankees, and you’ve decided to wear your Yankee hat and haze me. I think you said F the Orioles before we came on the air. That’s fine. Every Yankee Finch feel that way. We’re that way. We’re in the way now. It’s almost like Elaine Bennis and Jerry Seinfeld, you know, like we’re in the way all of a sudden. But I’ll say this, the Orioles unbelievably diminished since the last time you and I got together in the spring, just in regard to how many players they’ve lost, where they currently are right now, and all that being said, Damn falter. They’re still there. And this is going to be interesting as dude gets the buy in
Barry Bloom 01:43
October. Well, yeah, and I’m a firm believer, having watched what happened with the Dodgers in Atlanta the last couple of years, that the Yankees might be better off getting the buy and hosting a first round series to stay sharp. Now they can always get upset, because the Yankees can do things like that, but, you know, I think Baltimore, I’d rather have Baltimore sit around for a week and let the and the and that, let the Yankees stay sharp and keep their pitching sharp. The Dodgers are going to wind up in the same position this year too, with really much diminished. Talk about much diminished, mean, every team has got huge amount of injuries, and it’s just who’s going to be healthy and what’s going to happen, you know, once you get to the playoffs. Barry,
Nestor Aparicio 02:25
I’m now an old guy. I’m 55 and I collected baseball cards back in your day. And give me a break all of my lifetime, um, until maybe the last 10 years, you would get a baseball card, and on the back of it, the players stats, they be there. They wouldn’t be missing years unless they went to war like Ted Williams or something like that. And it was pretty consistent that pitchers, hitters, guys, arms, fell off. We were Steve dalkowski here in Baltimore, right? So we’ve seen these things. But whatever this is from an injury standpoint, not just the pitchers, but position players as well. This has been an unbelievable thing for when I see Jim Palmer every night, you know, doing games here and all the starts and the complete games and the innings and all that, and they have all of this science now, and you try all of this training and the spin rate and the launching at what’s going on, this is a crazy time for baseball, especially for guys a little older than me, like you
Barry Bloom 03:23
Yeah, there’s like, a billion dollars worth of players right now on the injured list. And, you know, if you look, talk about the baseball cards, just two examples. I mean, you know, Mike Trout haven’t played a full season since before the pandemic. And and Fernando totiz has never played one. You know, he’s basically either been injured, suspended for drugs, in and out of surgery. This year, it was a fractured, a fracture in his upper leg, toward a blow his knee. Now, he just came back yesterday. I mean, you can’t. You’re investing so much money in these people, and then suddenly, you know, you can’t keep them in the lineup. Now, I do think, and I had a discussion with this over dinner table, with Joe Garagiola, Bob nightingale, and a couple of other people the other day here at Chase Chase Field. And you know, one of the things I think, is that, first of all, obviously, you get paid all this money, and essentially, if you’re going to have a little hour, you’re going to sit out, you’re not going to pressure yourself, and you’ve got guaranteed money so that, whether it’s
8Nestor Aparicio 04:37
just a regular season game, it’s just July, Right, like literally, right, right, exactly, or like load management for basketball players, right, right,
Barry Bloom 04:45
pretty much, you know. And then on the other side, you know, the when you look at the problem with Tommy John surgery and freeing elbow. Those there are so much higher interest in information by each of the teams, they don’t want to pull that information together to get a study put together to make sure that they can cope with this problem and maybe find an answer to it. Every team is is out on its own trying to figure out a way to do it. And so consequently, you wind up putting together pitching staffs with guys who’ve had maybe one, if not two Tommy John surgeries. And you know that person is, he’s going to sign up to a bunch of money and they’re going to break down again. Look at the Dodgers. I mean, Tyler glass now, Clayton, Kershaw, Bueller’s had to, you know, they’re all, you know, they’ve all broken down.
Nestor Aparicio 05:49
Well, Strasburg would have been Roger Clemens, right? I mean, should have been Roger Clemens, but it won’t be,
Barry Bloom 05:54
8no. And the amazing thing to me is that, you know, Paul schemes has made it pretty well through the season unscathed, throwing at the impact that he’s throwing. And he just might be an anomaly, although I see Nolan Ryan was for 30 years, right? Although I see, you know, surgery, I don’t see how he avoids it sometime in the immediate future, but he has made it through a whole season, and he has thrown 100 miles an hour regularly, you know, it’s a, you know, I think it’s a league wide problem that really needs to be addressed by the greatest doctors and by pulled information. And so until you do that, you’re going to have this scattered approach to, you know, how what the problem is?
Nestor Aparicio 06:40
Well, it’s also kids in Little League having this problem, right? My wife’s friend has a kid who’s a 16 year old pitcher blew his arm out this year. Tommy John surge at 60, and it’s almost like badge of honor when you’re 16, huh? I’ll get the surgery. I’ll get fixed, because that’s what sort of the legend is. And we certainly didn’t see that with John. Means here, I don’t know if we’re going to see that with Bradish. I mean, I we have a whole, you know, starting rotation full of guys getting Tommy John this year, not to mention Batista for the Orioles and for this race. And by the way, Barry Bloom is at sportico these days. You can follow him out there. I’ll make sure we get links and all that stuff to the website. Your Yankees guy life for Yankees are always there. Lots of years was the Red Sox. Lots of years it was the race, this Oriole thing the last couple of years, with new ownership, with mass and falling apart, and really the whole business of cable television and regional sports networks. I mean, every time I put Masten on, there’s either sumo wrestling, if I wake up at one in the morning and fall asleep, there’s harness racing, or there’s highlight. And I know you miss highlight not being down in Miami as often anymore. The TV things over with I don’t know where the revenue is coming from. When a guy like Rubenstein and Eric Getty come and they put their billion eight down, they get rid of the Angelos. They’re gonna come in, they’re gonna do whatever they’re gonna do. But we’re still small market. People aren’t just forking over hundreds of 1000s of dollars for club seats or sponsorships. We’re not that kind of city. The revenue part of this for baseball. Does Rob Manford know what he’s doing? Does anybody really know what they’re doing so that they can afford to pay Adley rutschman or gunner Henderson or Jackson holiday $50 million a year six years
Barry Bloom 08:17
from now? You know, I don’t think that has had anything to do with Manfred. I think you just have a or you have a a system that is out of control. I mean, really, you look at the Al east, you know, you got the Yankees, the Red Sox, they own their own networks. They’re going to be set apart by from the television problems that everybody else is having
Nestor Aparicio 08:41
the Blue Jays are owned by the network. Right, literally, right. You add the Blue Jays
8Barry Bloom 08:45
to that list too. So now you have the other two teams that are, you know, but basically you have Tampa has has a decent television contract, and they get good numbers down there. You know, the Orioles are a mess. Go out west where, you know, the the Dodgers have Guggenheim money. I just wrote about this today. Guggenheim money, $7 billion cable contract and their own network, which has been monetized for a while already. You know, the the Padres and the Diamondbacks both lost their their contracts this year, there’s they’re not getting $60 million in money from television, and they’re being run by MLB and and they’re through a streaming subscriber network with 20 to 40,000 viewers. And with the way they’re getting paid is that the sub money, which we usually go to the middle man, is now going directly to the team, but it’s not going to be in any way a chance to offset that 60 million. So you have to, like, build up. It’s really
Nestor Aparicio 09:50
it if the fans have to pay for it, if people have to actually pay for it. And they were found as that with the NFL this week with where’s my peacock and where’s my like, I. I’m just not gonna watch the game. I’m not giving them money for apple plus to watch a Friday night baseball. I mean, the decisions that they’ve made in regard to look the original sin of you and I back in 1993 94 and strikes that they decided that the Yankees and Dodgers were gonna have all this money. They were gonna do this tax system. And then everybody built the tax system, and then the cable money just fell out at the beginning of the century, and Angelos got his when he got the the Nationals deal, and took all the money. But it just feels to me like if they it’s like hockey, and you know, you’re big hockey fan, it’s like hockey, if they actually have to make this off of old school congestion skate receipts, sponsors, sweat equity. I don’t know how small market baseball teams are going to generate $200 million worth of revenue. I don’t even know how that’s going to be possible.
Barry Bloom 10:48
To do is look at the disparity in revenue. And sport of code does a great job. We’ve got a guy, Kurt Payton, has it?
Nestor Aparicio 10:55
8Kurt came on last month and gave me hell. He was great. Yeah. And
Barry Bloom 10:59
it basically, you know, you look at the Orioles revenue in a year, and you look at the Dodgers revenue, or Yankees revenue in the year, there’s no way they can compete. I mean, the Dodgers revenue is almost $700 million and half of their payroll, half of that pays for their payroll, which is about three 50 million. You know, the Orioles are probably down around half of that. And there’s no way they can compete in the market. There’s not unless, you know, the big, deep pocket owners want to go in and spend their own money, but that doesn’t work. You know that eventually they get tired of it, and they go, What am I doing here? All you’re doing is you’re increasing your franchise value as time goes on. Then I’ll can, you know, contest you on the original sin. I think the original sin happened in the 1960s when Major League Baseball could have done what Pete Rozelle did with the NFL, and they basically could have bought market areas up from the 16 original teams codified that for all expansion time, though, they could have given a million or two for each of the markets, and they would have given up their television markets, you know, willingly, because most owners at that time didn’t even want to put their games on TV, and thought it would cut into their gate receipts
Nestor Aparicio 12:14
always. I mean, if the game was on TV, nobody was going to go to
Barry Bloom 12:19
the game, right? Washington Senators. Here’s $2 million New York Yankees even, you know, and then then it comes under the shell its revenue shared, no matter how it develops over the course of the years, all that money goes into the pot for Major League Baseball, and it’s equally shared, kind of like what they did with mlb.com when that was developed in 2001 now you had all the big market teams who have, you know, voted against it because they wanted to keep their own internet and their own, you know, streaming rights, but they were voted down by 75 5% and actually mlb.com I’ve had guys like Jerry Ryan stuff who voted against it at the time, say they were wrong. It’s been the biggest pie grab for MLB owners from top to bottom in the league’s history, and they could have done the same thing with with with the regional sports networks. All that money could have been shared, and you wouldn’t be in this situation right now. So what’s coming is there’s a movement among some of these small market owners that you’re talking about, like, like your guys in Baltimore, who are looking this and going, you know, I can’t compete. You know, I had this conversation,
8Nestor Aparicio 13:31
by the way, Steve mastiti, 20 years ago, when he bought the team, he used to talk to me. Then, before he took my press credential, I remember having a chat with him about why he didn’t buy a baseball team, because he was rumored to buy the Florida Marlins at one point. Yeah, he wanted to buy a team. That’s what he wanted to do. He almost bought the Minnesota Vikings at one point, and he said, I wouldn’t want to own the Orioles. He’s like, you can’t compete. You know, how would I would never be able to beat the Yankees. That was 20 years that’s the way any rich person would look at this. And I look at Rubenstein, these guys in
Barry Bloom 13:59
the situation where, you know, if they don’t find a way to generate more revenue, and you interrupted me in the middle of what I was trying to tell you that there is a movement among those small market owners to basically split the revenue evenly, but I don’t think they have 75% of the vote to get that passed. There’s enough teams in baseball, whether you go through San Francisco, LA, New York, Boston, Chicago, now both have their own. You know, cable networks, regional networks, there’s enough that there, all you need is seven or eight to block it. And I think there are seven eight. We’re not going to share their revenue. So this is now stuck time immemorial, and the Orioles are going to have to figure away. How does the Orioles in Kansas City or having decent years this year after rebuilding from within, how, when you get to the end of the six year free agent period, do you actually keep your players and keep the. Happy and they don’t go out into the open market and get flush contracts from the from the big market teams.
Nestor Aparicio 15:07
What would you want to know about David Rubenstein if he were here? What would you ask him in regard to what he thinks this business is? And I keep thinking to myself, you bought it for 1,000,000,008 you get $600 million in free money. It’s as Kurt Baden hasn’t said, it was a depressed asset. It was literally, you know, like, bottom, bottom of the so he’s in. They got a good team, they got good players. They’re going to make the playoffs. There’s going to be a little bit of that kind of revenue. They’re going to fix the stadium up and have an all star games. They think there’s some revenue and all that. But I live here, and I know every baseball fan there’s ever been and that, and they don’t create new ones. We have a lacrosse problem in our marketplace as well, with kids playing that sport instead of baseball. I just wonder. He’s 74 years old, this Arrogate guy who really likes himself a lot, and he’s a younger guy. I keep thinking myself, the game here is to come in, go nose on nose, have a good time. Don’t lose any money, but whatever it generates, yeah, you know, I don’t need to make a whole lot of money, because they’re making 5060, $80 million a year in if they flip it. So if they go to flip this five years from now, it’s probably three and a half billion dollar product at that point, if they can figure out how to do it and do it the right way. And
Barry Bloom 16:18
8that’s the whole issue, that’s the game you you know, how much you money you lose, and how much you lose on the field, during the or the rink or whatever, during that period of time the basketball court. Once you sell it, it’s going to be at such a phenomenal, you know, increased price from what you bought it, that it’s going to be worth the time that you put into it. And if you’re 74 years old, and there’s estate planning, you know, to answer your question, I would ask him, you know, from the first blush, is this, you know, what do you think about the future? Where’s your growth Do you have like growth plans. Do you have, like, a two year, one year, a two year, five year a 10 year? How do you see this happening? When you look at the finances of Major League Baseball and the finances the market, what you know? What’s your plan over time? You don’t come in and do it with a scatter approach like the Miami Marlins did and they came in. This guy bought the team from Luria. The team was, you know, was pretty much scattered. I don’t know how many times by Luria, in the end, it was like they had the outfield of Stanton, Asuna and, you know, Ilitch, and they all went to the wind. And, you know, then this new guy bought over and Derek Jeter tried to start rebuilding it. And, you know, when it got to the point where Jeter wanted to spend some money, they jettisoned Kim, they jettisoned, you know, Jeter, you know, and they’re treading water in a ballpark where they’re drawing, like, 3000 people. Now, for that matter, I mean, Baltimore is a great stadium. They’re drawing again, you know, look the Diamondbacks I keep answering, you know, adding them because, you know, they went out, they spent 150,000 million more dollars on payroll in the offseason, even though they lost their television contract. I think the best thing for them, for the short term was actually losing the contract, because they knew that the only way they could survive was to put fans in the seats so they could buy tickets, concessions, parking, that’s the only place that they’re going to go to make money, and they’re
Nestor Aparicio 18:30
the Orioles, a lot of these teams, it’s like, I don’t know where the upside is when you don’t have half million dollar sponsors lining up to really get that number together, or Skybox owners, or even people who want to buy 81 games. 81 games. There are no season ticket people anymore.
Barry Bloom 18:45
Yeah, well, they do. You know, it’s like, if you make it, make the team palatable and entertaining, and you know, like the Diamondbacks, attendance, I think, is, is up 300 $300,000 300,000 people this year. It’s a it’s the second highest in the league, and it’s because they came off the World Series and they invested, and the team is exciting and maybe better than last year, and they have a chance of making the Playhouse again. And so that’s where the investors come in. That’s where the marketing comes in. You pay, you know, like you have equity partners that come in and buy the team, pieces of the team. You know, the Diamondbacks went in the reverse of that. They when they were in financial trouble, they sold off ten million shares of the club to 10,000,010 investors. And now Kendrick and those guys have been buying them all back. When they want to sell them, they buy them. They’ve been absorbed back into the franchise. And the franchise was a was an expansion franchise for 200 million in 1998 and now it’s worth like a billion and a half. So it’s like when and Kendrick is in his 80s, so when their survivor rates, or the minority partners or the rest of the majority partners take over. Or there’s going to be, you know, some reckoning. But you know, that’s just the way the whole cycle goes with these things. So essentially, really, where the Orioles are right now is that you have a window, you’re in this window, and you better damn well win now, because that window is going to shut on you pretty quick.
Nestor Aparicio 20:19
The also the window of geniuses, whether it’s Billy Beane or whether it’s Theo Epstein or who whatever the mike Elias thing here, and the way it’s turned out, especially in the Astros cheating side of things, and people leaving torch bridges behind them and coming here to a job that not a lot of people wanted. In the Angelos family, taking this thing over and saying, I’ll have no money, I’ll have lots of draft picks. We’ll have maybe a little bit of money to go down to the Caribbean and put an academy in or, you know, do those kinds of things, once the old man started to falter. Um, but elias’s role here in being the genius that prop this thing up really is kind of amazing. With the draft picks that they they have beared fruit so far.
8Barry Bloom 21:00
Well, I mean, he comes up the, you know, Luna tree, and Luna and maybe Mike Rizzo are like, we’re the best at, you know, especially in the early days of the national franchise, you know, they were struggling. And every year they had the number one pick or number and they were number two pick, and they were like, you know Harper’s, you know Strasburg, you know Zimmerman. I mean, you go down the list, Rendon. I mean, they, they, they parlayed their draft picks and the same thing with with the Astros under Luna and Alex, you know, it’s like Elias. They, they basically, you know, Bergman, out to they, they, they struggled for five or six years and amassed enough draft picks and they had the money that they were making in the stadium. You know, they’re a medium market team. They had a big television contract problem down there, but they’ve been able of all the teams you look at. I mean, the Orioles, if they go to the AFC, the the A LCS again this year. I mean, it’s like the eighth or ninth year in a row. It’s unheard of. I don’t know maybe it’s the seventh, but it’s really they’ve been there. They’ve been to the World Series. And I’m not, you know, I had this discussion with a Dodger friend, a fan friend of mine the other day. I’m not one of these guys. I don’t think you know the 2017 Astros beat the Yankees and beat the Dodgers in the playoffs. In the world cheers because
Nestor Aparicio 22:33
they cheated. They absolutely cheated. Yeah. I mean, I’ll never but
Barry Bloom 22:37
they still had to win the games. They still had to hit the ball, and they went to Dodger Stadium, and darvish lost five one in game seven, and they didn’t have signs in in Los Angeles, and they didn’t have signs at Yankee Stadium. You know, Yankees were just not good enough. The Astros have beaten and you know, I wear the Yankee hat today because I grew up in the Bronx, and I’ve been going to Yankee games since 1960 with my father, when my father took me, but I’m harder on them than anybody, and I’m like the Yankees have not found a way of beating the Astros, and in all their history, there’s not one team that has owned the Yankees like the Astros have owned the Yankees. It’s absolutely incredible that it goes back to a wild card game in 2016 that they lost, and they can’t beat them, they can’t solve it, and they can’t solve the problem. And the Astros, after a lousy start, they’re right there again, and they’re going to win and probably go to the World Series again for
Nestor Aparicio 23:37
8the Orioles and their pathway and all of these injuries, and what Elias has tried to do, cobbling together the bullpen, the deals, not all the deals work out. I mean, the kid from Miami, Rogers, they’re gonna figure him out for next couple years, but Evelyn’s been a lifesaver for them. The deal for burns back in January, when they sort of knew Bradish wasn’t going to be right, Suarez, my Venezuelan brother, has come to life. I mean, the Orioles are formidable, and if they can just get Rodriguez healthy and can figure out Westburn get him healthy, I really do feel like four weeks from now, they could put their best foot forward in October and be the kind of team that can pitch enough but hit a lot and hit home runs, which traditionally winning in October, you have to hit the ball, and this team has the capability of doing that, maybe more so than some Seattle Mariners type the soft hit teams. This is a team that, once the bats get together in October, if they get hot, they can win the World Series. And you talk about Arizona and Texas, they weren’t, they didn’t look like the World Series September Labor Day last year. They just look like teams. Yeah.
Barry Bloom 24:47
I mean, look at as I wrote today. I mean, it’s obvious now that, except for the anomalies like the Orioles and Kansas City this year, that you have to basically. They invest big money over the course of the regular season to win the regular season in the top six spending teams this year are all leading divisions right now, and by by a lot. Or, you know, they’re in the playoff hunt. Like like the Mets, who have making are making a great run at it right now, you know? And they could edge out any one of Atlanta padres, the Diamondbacks, depending on how the last 24 games of the season go. So, I mean, you get to the end of the season, and because of this convoluted playoff format that they figured out it’s it’s any team can get into it and get hot and then beat the teams with the high payrolls, because, as Billy Beane once said, what he does with small payroll and analytics to win the regular season doesn’t work in the post season, in the sample size of a short series, anything can happen. And look what happened to the Dodgers the last two years, the Padres and Diamondbacks shut down Mookie Betts and first Freddie Freeman at the top of the lineup, they’ve added like a collective 200 and the Dodgers won one game in two, two in the last two. Nlds. Now this year, they’ve got Otani, which is going to make a big difference. But if they go in with the pitching that they’ve got right now, and the injuries you think the Orioles have injuries. I mean, right now the Dodgers have, have nothing. I mean, they’re playing up. You know, pitching last year going in, you know, was Kershaw, Bill Miller, and you know, a veteran pitcher who lit up four home runs in an inning in San Diego and Arizona when they lost that game. So it’s like now they, you know, Bueller’s coming back. They’re hoping he’s going to be healthy. You know, Kershaw is probably done for his career at this point. The last now is on the disabled list. You know, Yamamoto, they spent 320, 5 million on him. He’s still on the disabled list, and has been since June 15, Tony will pitch for them, right? One day next year. Next year pitch for them. You know, he will replace Kershaw next year. They that Doc told me that Dave Roberts told me that the other day, and I wrote it the other day. He’s done. He he is back to pitching next year. So, you know. But for this year, they can be plucked out, even when they win their 11th division in 12 years, Yankees can be plucked out easily, whether they win the division or not. You know, the Astros somehow seem to sustain. They win the division, sit around for five days and still have no problems going into the into the ALDs and winning and going to the championship series, and then every other year or so, going to the world sir, win or lose. You know, it’s, it’s a, it’s a complete crap shoot under this, you know, system. And certainly the Orioles, if they can win a game in the playoffs this year, which they didn’t last year, it’ll be, you know, incumbent on them, and they could get hot and sure, you can wind up with them. You could wind up with with the Orioles against Arizona in the playoffs, or, you know, with the Cubs, could squeak through you just, you just don’t know at this point, and it’s not going to come down till it’s going to come down to the end of the season, into the first round. Padres win
Nestor Aparicio 28:21
the World Series. You’re gonna finish his book finally. Barry,
Barry Bloom 28:26
well, not this year. It’s a 40th anniversary. Yeah, I know I wanted to finish it this year, but, you know, I’ve been lagging. That’s all right.
8Nestor Aparicio 28:36
You know, you’re allowed to lag out there in Arizona. I have to take my cheap shot at you. So you finally moved to Arizona, and the hockey team leaves you. That’s the one thing with baseball. We’ll move to Sacramento. We’ll move to Salt Lake City. We’ll do whatever we want. The you know, the hockey thing in your market is specifically what I’m speaking about, when you can’t generate money. And Oakland trying not to generate money, in some cases, the whole ownership thing at the bottom, because there’s no relegation. These poor teams have to figure it out. Well,
Barry Bloom 29:08
you know, look, having covered the coyotes for every year the 28 years seasons they were here, and through a myriad of like the worst owners in hockey history. I mean, this is a team that lost $35 billion at its best times every year. You know When? When? When the NHL on the team to keep it here? And they asked Ken Kendrick to to evaluate it and buy it. Kendrick did his due diligence on the books, and he basically said to me that if they won the Stanley Cup and sold out every game in Glendale, they’d still lose $35 million I mean, hockey is a sport where there’s no national money. So I mean, if you don’t generate local dollars, you can’t you have no shot at it whatsoever, because the money coming out of the out of the league, off of television. Contracts and and all that stuff is like nebbish, as we would say. So Kylie’s never had a chance. They never had a chance with a good owner. They didn’t have a good owner. The last guy was God’s worst gift to ownership I’ve ever met, worse than Donald Sterling. I’ve covered two prizes, and both of them are right. You’ve
Nestor Aparicio 30:19
been in a room with Angelos once or twice too. So it’s that, come on now, Angeles,
Barry Bloom 30:23
8it was a prize in comparison to Alex Morello. So I mean, it’s like how they wasted the asset here and and had alienated everybody in the community. So when push came to shove, nobody wanted to help them to build an arena here. It’s textbook stuff so screwed up. Wayne Gretzky, how
Nestor Aparicio 30:43
did they do that? Because
Barry Bloom 30:44
he can’t manage and he can’t coach, and he’s not a general manager. He’s a great player. That’s he’s a nice guy, and he’s a nice guy. This hockey operations that they put into place was probably the best they’ve had outside when you know the Maloney was running the team for the NHL and had them go as far as the conference final, where they lost to the kings that year, I remember that these guys are taking a great team to Utah. They with a good nucleus and oodles of salary cap space. I mean, they had like, $40 million of CAP spaces spent so, and they’re just starting to spend it. So, I mean, they’re going to be a very competitive team in Utah. And I think of ultimately, we may get the coyotes back here. You know, if the guy who owns the sun’s Matt ishpiah and I wrote the story about a month ago, if he, you know, decides that he wants to build a new arena, ultimately, in downtown Phoenix, and within the next five years or so, wants to, wants to procure the coyotes as an expansion franchise. You know, they can start off fresh. They get, they have whatever the cap space is. And they, go from zero to the cap to build just like Las Vegas did Seattle. Did? You know, you can build a team, a very competitive team, very quickly, and you and you have the market and a stable arena and a stable owner and a stable franchise, which this team never had. So ishpea told me, you know, he’d like to help get the the team back air. You know, let’s see what he does in the next couple of years. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 32:23
they’ll never steal the waste management open from you out there in Phoenix. Barry Bloom is here. He is. Boomsky, he covers all things sports and baseball and hockey and some businesses sports out from the desert. He’s been covering baseball for 50 years, a long, long time, but it’s still been a long time since the Yankees have won the Orioles and the Yankees maybe playing some playoff games next month, certainly playing a couple big games two weeks from now, up at Yankee Stadium in the fight for the American League East. Who do you expect to win the World Series? You Houston. You’re you always seem bullets on Houston when you talk to talk to
8Barry Bloom 32:54
you. Yeah, I don’t see the Dodgers doing don’t see the Yankees doing it. You know, it’s like a process of elimination at this point. You know, I don’t see the lesser teams like Baltimore, Kansas City, getting through, I think, you know, the Diamondbacks were a one shot thing. They’re going to come in, you know, and they’re going to trip up somewhere along the way. Going going through Texas is not repeating. They might, probably, they’re not going to even make the playoffs. So, you know, it’s a it’s a crapshoot. So for the process of elimination, you know, I probably would go with the Astros. I
Nestor Aparicio 33:28
spent a half an hour with you, and it feels like 10 seconds. I appreciate you. You stay healthy out there. I need you around to wear my Oriole hat the day after game six, when the Orioles pile dive here Camden Yards in late October. And we’ll have a little bit of fun together. Love talking. Together. Love talking baseball with you, and the new ownership thing is, really, I’ve been on the air 33 years here. It’s a new thing. It’s something that’s certainly fresh and different. New team president. So you know, for all these years I’ve known you there, there is some fresh air here in Baltimore, and not to mention the $600 million it feels nice that I can talk baseball with lifelong baseball people with you and have some semblance of like, hey, this thing’s getting better, and it might still get even better, which it never could feel that way before. It really did.
Barry Bloom 34:10
It’s a good place to be, yeah. Well, I
Nestor Aparicio 34:12
appreciate you take that Yankee hat off when they get eliminated a couple weeks from now. Barry bloom joining us here. You can find him out on the internet. He is boom ski. He is also added sportico and is a good partner. Kurt badenhausen joined us last month. If you want to know anything about money and Rubenstein and Angelos and all that stuff, we did 40 minutes on, on on franchise values. It was an awesome piece. Terrific. He was fantastic. All right, we’re taking a break. It’s still football season here. I promise. Luke’s covering the game. Luke’s the Camden Yards. I’m Nestor. Baltimore, got a little hockey in this one. I like that. Baltimore positive. Stay with us.
