This Old House

Last week, the Giants asked the city assessor's office to reassess the Ballpark at 24 Willie Mays Plaza for tax purposes. The point being the Giants are claiming that their four year old park is already starting to get a little less shiny and a little less new and therefore the Giants should pay less money in taxes. Currently, the Giants pay $4 million a year in property taxes plus another $6 million or so in payroll, parking and other taxes, but those rates are based on rates established when the park was brand spanking new. For those of you who are able to actually buy something here, you'll know that reassessing property is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. Economists can also vouch for the fact that stadiums often depreciate in price, as they get older, although four years of a state-of-the-art ballpark might be pushing it. Also pushing it is the idea that any property in California can depreciate since there's no such thing as property values going down.

As we said, there's nothing legitimately wrong in what the Giants are doing, and as die-hard supporters of the Orange & Black we're okay with the Giants searching through the sofas looking for spare change, as it were, if it’s able to bring us a pennant. We have to say, however, that it's not a really smart P.R. move right now. Giants fans have been squawking since Spezio went deep about the team's inability to sign any major free agents, or at least free agents who aren't close to 40, and the Giants' cries of poverty aren’t gaining many believers in light of a constantly sold-out stadium. You add in the fact that 49ers are sucking right now due to a penny-pinching owner and the A's just traded two of their Big Three due to a penny-pinching owner and you have a fan base a little sensitive to any dint of pennies being pitched. The bigger question, however, has to be whether this private financing thing is actually working. After all, if the team manages to sell out most of their games, plus make extra money from all the non-baseball events that take place there, yet still not be able to make money, maybe there’s something a little bit wrong with the business plan. Or maybe there’s something a little bit wrong with the ownership group (we were going to get into a lengthy discussion of baseball financing and what's true or not but frankly it’s all too confusing and financial numbers too nebulous as the people who do accounting in baseball would people the Enron people to shame). Either way, if the Giants make it to the playoffs again and proceed farther than a crushing first-round exit, it’ll go a long way from stopping the squawking.