Coulda Been: Ted Williams

So I'm reading Dave Heller's 2013 book, Facing Ted Williams, a collection of dozens of interviews of players who played against Ted. There are some insights, but it is probably an overall mediocre book - but there is one scenario that jumped out at me: How many home runs could Ted have hit?

I've seen some estimations that have Ted challenging for the all-time home run title if he hadn't missed 1943-45 and all but 43 games of '52-53. But former left-handed pitcher Jack Harshman (who actually owned Ted to the tune of a .417 OPS in 38 PAs) proposes a unique number:

If Ted Williams had not had to spend those two periods of time in the service and played his entire career in Detroit, he would have probably hit 1000 home runs. I'm not joking, I'm serious.

The logic behind this is simple: Ted Williams was a dead-pull hitter. Lou Boudreau, managing the Cleveland Indians, invented the shift specifically for Ted (it was called the 'Williams Shift' initially (fun anecdote: Boudreau used to put his outfielders in the right-field bleachers in exhibition games against Boston)) because he always, always pulled the ball into right field. Ted had no problem generating power like this, and he ended up with a .634 career SLG. However, playing at Fenway, where right-center balloons out to 380 feet, likely cost him a number of home runs - and before 1940 when the bullpens were installed, it was actually 403 feet.

Tiger Stadium (Briggs Stadium from 1938-1960), meanwhile, was 370 to right-center, but had none of the 'belly' that Fenway's right field does (it stays out wide, then comes in to 302 feet sharply near the foul line). The following image is the Yankee Stadium dimensions (which have a notoriously short right-field porch of their own) laid over Fenway. The blue line is the RF line at Briggs.

The numbers support this, too. When Ted was healthier, he averaged 148 games a season. Per 148 games, for his career he averaged 31.5 HR at Fenway, and 35.9 HR on the road. At Briggs Stadium, in 169 games, he hit 55 HRs, or 48.2 per 148 games.

So, we need to do two things here, to do what Harshman asked: take Ted out of the Korean and Second World Wars, and make him play for the Tigers.

148 games is 74 home and 74 away games per season, so we add 349 of each for the wartime. This gives us 1476 road games and 1514 at home.

In the road games, Ted averaged 0.242 HR per game, so that's 357 HR on the road. We do need to remove some because he is playing at Fenway instead of Briggs on the road now. That's now 221 games. At a difference of .112 HR/G between Briggs and Fenway, we're losing 25 homers. In total Ted Williams, in our alternate universe, ends up with 327 career away home runs.

At Briggs, though, look out. In 1514 home games, at a rate of .325 HR/G, Ted ends up with 492 homers.

This gives us a total of 819 home runs in a scenario that I daresay is not entirely implausible. In fact, it would probably be more, because the rates I used were for his career, but the years he lost were in his prime.

So a thousand? Probably not. If that had happened, though, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, and Barry Bonds would still be looking up at the greatest hitter who ever lived.

MLB and the Tax Man: A Love Story

"Look, we play The Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us to pay income taxes, too?" -- Bill Veeck

Major League Baseball has a long history of getting along very, very well with the US government. They get away with things that many other companies do not. For instance, following the landmark 1922 case, Federal Baseball Club v. National League, at the tail end of the league wars, baseball was deemed exempt from antitrust laws. Baseball got away with the essentially unconstitutional reserve clause for about 100 years. And, from 1966 until recently, MLB has not had to pay taxes.

Say whaaaaat?

The finances of baseball are very interesting, if one cares to pay attention - and in 2008, this guy did. This tax statement, from MLB's fiscal year of 01/11/2005 - 31/10/2006, shows something very interesting: just one MLB executive, Commissioner Bud Selig, listed his salary ($14.5 MM). The above blogger wondered if MLB filed an incomplete return, and links to an article in which an IRS agent clearly states that non-profit organizations must report the salaries of all executives and officers.

We need to go back to 1966, and for the simplest explanation, I'm going to throw to Patrick Hruby, who outlined this in his interview with Sportsnet's Bob McCown:

... In 1966 there was this large Congressional bill about investment and property depreciation (Bill Suspending the Investment Tax Credit and Accelerated Depreciation Allowance, Pub. L. No. 89-800, 80 Stat. 1508 (Nov. 8, 1966), because I know you were curious), and specific language placing professional football into this special kind of tax-exempt status was tossed into the back end of it. ... I've asked staffers, and ... they assume it was probably just a really smart bit of lobbying on the part of the NFL.

Lobbying the government is something the pro sports does very well. A new publicly-funded stadium opens every year in one of the major North American sports. But, to recap: professional sports have long been covered under section 501(c)6 of the United States Code (Title 26, Chapter 1, Subchapter F, Part I), which classifies them essentially as a business league, or an organization that fosters business - a municipal chamber of commerce is the best example. The difference is that in the above tax return, MLB claimed receipts of over $124 MM.

To mention the above blog one more time, he mentions that the MLB, a tax-exempt organization, did not file a complete tax return, and the IRS agent, Marcus Owens, former director of the IRS' tax-exempt organizations division, claims that the tax code clearly calls for non-profits to list the salaries of all officers and executives. There is one hitch: MLB has forfeited its 501(c)6 status. Here's Hruby again:

... A couple of years ago the IRS tweaked the rule and said that if you're going to qualify ... you have to have much more extensive reporting on what the people who work for you make -- you have to report a lot more of their salaries on your yearly tax reports.

So, rather than disclose the entirety of its salaries, MLB decided to instead pay taxes on a tax bill of, Hruby estimates, north of $150 MM. That number seems plausible considering what they claimed in 2006 and what other leagues report (the NFL, for instance, reported a gross income of $255 MM in 2012, and the PGA claimed $130 MM).

Now, a ton of this is offset by tax-exempt practices, like loans to teams and charitable work. There is a good deal of conversation happening about this topic, especially in these times of budget cuts and wondering where the next federal dollar is going to come from. Some estimates assert that Uncle Sam could bring in upwards of $90 MM by taxing league offices (and remember, MLB is already paying), which is a drop in the ocean, but again, this is a time where we are searching under every rock for new revenue.

To me, however, the glaring question is why does MLB want to pay taxes on $150-200 MM of income instead of telling people how much their executives make? Especially when we already (supposedly) know, from 2005 tax returns, what most of these officers make (Bob DuPuy, for instance, made a shade under $5 MM for that fiscal year, for instance).

In the words of Lew Carroll, it gets curiouser and curiouser.

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One final note, and I see this coming up a lot in blogs while reading up on this topic ("It may seem absurd that a collection of teams (the NFL) that generated at least $9 billion in revenue last season would be given tax-exempt status"): baseball players pay taxes. Owners and teams pay taxes. The GMs, executives, and stadium ushers pay taxes. There is tax payed on almost all of the $7-8 BB in annual revenue that goes through MLB - we are talking strictly about the income that goes to the league office here.

For further reading, I really encourage you to read Patrick Hruby's work at Sports on Earth.