A Pretty Penny.

The luxury taxman cometh and he taketh away $3.4 million this year.

Cliche #1: Baseball is a business.

They say that point of owning a business is to turn a profit. They (the Grand Poobahs of sayings) are wrong but it's what they say. Any accountant will tell you that profits are taxable (and taxes are bad) and that it would be so much better to show a loss (which could be netted against previous or subsequent profits) for the year. No, the real point of owning any business is to invest in it wisely, grow the business, and then turn around and sell it for more than you paid for it.

But maybe baseball is different.

As is evidenced by the death grip with which the Wilpons continue to cling to the Mets, there's an emotional element to owning a sports team. There's a kind of vanity that comes from owning the team you grew up rooting for. If John Henry could have purchased the Cardinals, wouldn't he have jumped at the chance?

I think that it might be good for the game to have that emotional attachment. (Unless, of course, you're Peter Angelos; then in which case: No. No, it's not good for the game.) It seems important that the owner should care more about the team and its success than about the profit/loss statement at the end of the year. There should come a point for every franchise when the owner tells his general manager, "Go nuts. This is our year."

But if baseball a different kind of business (one which falls closer to a hobby of the insanely wealthy than simply a way of making money), then should owners care about the luxury tax? Isn't it just a cost of doing business?

Cliche #2: Baseball is a marathon, not a sprint.

The other argument to make is: the baseball season is long. The Patriots (conceding that I know very little about football) can get by with a terrible defense because they play sixteen games in a season. A baseball team plays sixteen games in a couple of weeks; they play sixteen games ten times over during the regular season. If there's a flaw in the make up of your roster, it's going to come out. There's nowhere to hide in a 162 game season.

If you buy better players (thereby increasing wage expense and reducing net income), you should see more success on the field; which would appeal to the vanity of the owners. Theoretically (it doesn't always happen, ask the Rays), success on the field would lead to increased ticket revenue and would consequently lead to higher expenses to keep the business growing. Cycle complete.

The question becomes: is it worth it? Does being called into the principal's office, where Bud Selig scowls, shakes his finger at you, and reprimands you by saying, "You've spent too much" offset the potential ego boost of being the owner of a World Series Championship team?

Obviously, John Henry's extra $3.4 million investment in his team didn't pay off this past season (I suspect that there was no one more pissed off at them than he was.) but I doubt that it changes anything.