Maybe Frickin' Ted Stepien Wasn't So Bad

At least Ted cared. At least Ted went to church every Sunday before he invited sportswriters over to watch porno at his house. At least Ted was just a frickin' and not a fuckin', as in Fuckin' Larry Dolan. Yeah, Ted was dumb as a post. Yeah, Ted couldn't have found his asshole with a funnel. But at least Ted was trying.

Maybe Larry D just watched Field Of Dreams in reverse and that is how he came up with his, "If you come, I will build it" mantra. I don't know. I'm still trying to figure that one out. The Indians draw two million to watch a team with a payroll on par with Kansas City's, and Larry tells us, "Hey, you want me to spend more money, buy more tickets, you asshole fans."

Ok, I added the part about the asshole fans. That's just Larry's subtext.

It's not just that this makes no sense from a sports perspective; it makes no sense from a business perspective. Any business, large or small, has to outlay something in order to get a return on the investment. Yes, a return on investment requires an actual original investment to get the whole ball rolling.

Weird, huh?

If Larry Dolan were going to start a new soft drink company (Dolan Soda, get it while it's cheap), he'd print up 3,000,000 slips of paper, on credit, of course. When you went to your grocery store, right between the Coke and Pepsi would be little slips of paper. Each piece of paper would cost you a buck, and on it would read the following:

I.O.U. One Dolan Soda---Maybe

Then once he sold those three million slips of paper---and only then---Larry would build a factory, come up with a recipe, and make and ship out his soda.

What a plan, Larry. No wonder you are filthy, stinking rich.

It gets worse. Not only did Larry D cost his fans a rare post season berth by attempting to "contend" (his word, not mine) on a shoestring, he also cost himself a buttload of money. See, that extra 5 or 10 million that he could have spent back in January (or, hell, even in July via trade), that money would have come back to him multiplied thanks to post season gate money, post season $10.00 hot dogs, increased ticket sales for next season, and, oh by the way, all those extra seats sold had the team not started out 9-14 and ended up humping and bumping around until the middle of July. So Larry D isn't just bad at figuring out how baseball works, he can't even get out of his own way in order to make his own damn self a few extra shekels for his retirement fund.

Ahhh, but we Indians fans do have another year of Aaron Boone and Casey Blake striking out and butchering balls hit right at them to look forward to.

So we got that going for us, which is nice.