CT Blue

I’m a die hard Sox fan, but I’m realistic enough to know that there’s a lot of willful suspension of disbelief necessary to root for any sports team. At the bottom, they are just businesses.

One of my pet peeves is the avidity with which our governments at every level dole out subsidies and outright grants to corporations. On a local level, as I’ve often complained, it’s especially irritating when businesses that really have no ability to engage in the typical pay-us-or-we’ll-leave blackmail demand and get tribute in one form or another. Sports teams are among the worst offenders when it comes to getting undeserved subsidies, and in many cases they can use the blackmail gambit, but in the case of the Sox-not so much. The Sox have the highest average ticket prices in baseball, and are pretty much minting money. Does anyone for a minute think they’ll leave Boston or the friendly confines of Fenway Park? In any rational world they’d have zero leverage to put the squeeze on the fair city of Boston. But this is not a rational world or, at any rate, a rational country, for none of these considerations have stopped the Sox from demanding their fair share of the milk from the public teat or seem likely to prevent Boston from caving to their demands:

Before Fenway games, thousands of Sox fans flock to temporary concession stands outside the gates to buy beer and frankfurters. Meanwhile, scores of attendees take their $165 seats atop the stadium’s iconic left-field wall, the Green Monster.

Both locations — the Yawkey Way food stands and the air space over Lansdowne Street — are owned by the city, but used by the Sox under a 10-year-old licensing agreement.

Since 2003, the team has made tens of millions of dollars on the sales, while paying a tiny fraction in license fees. Now, with the deal set to expire at the end of this season, the club is pushing to make the lucrative arrangement permanent, according to a November letter from the Sox to the Boston Redevelopment Authority that the Globe obtained through a public records request.

In the letter, the Red Sox argue that the low license fee is reasonable because John W. Henry’s ownership group has paid $56.7 million in property, sales, and meals taxes since buying the team in 2002.

So, that’s reasonable. The Sox deserve what I calculate to be a 2500% return on their investment. Their rent is $156,000.00; their revenues about $5,000,000.00. Even if we assume that other expenses bring their costs to a million, that gives them a 400 percent return, something they richly deserve because they pay their taxes, which, barring evidence to the contrary, we must assume are assessed at the same rate as that imposed on the merchants in Kenmore Square that are not benefitting from any subsidy.

But, wait, the fact that they pay taxes is not the only reason the Sox have for demanding that we transfer our money to them:

In the letter, the Red Sox pushed for a permanent extension of the current terms, arguing that a higher fee would represent an “unwarranted, punitive burden” on an ownership group that has never sought public financing for Fenway Park renovations or for a new stadium.

Over the last two decades, Red Sox vice president David S. Friedman noted in the letter to Meade, 22 of 30 Major League clubs have built new ballparks with at least some public dollars.

“In light of the universal practice regarding public support for baseball stadium development, it is certainly appropriate for us to arrive at a permanent extension of our current rights and practices,” Friedman wrote.

We’ve heard a lot about curbing entitlements. Here’s a new one that’s not likely to be the subject of Pete Peterson’s complaints. The Sox are entitled to unwarranted and unneeded public subsidies because other teams have managed to put the squeeze on other cities. It’s enough to make my heart bleed. The owners of my beloved Red Sox are being subjected to a “punitive burden” because they may have to pay a reasonable price for the right to control a public space. Sure, they’ll still be making tons of money, but a few of those tons will go back to the city that is enabling them to make all those other tons of money. John Henry might not be able to get a new yacht this year! How can we subject our rich people to this sort of thing when we have still not wrung the last penny from our elderly, our poor, and our infirm? Is there no justice?