Historical Baseball Profits

[Billsrule34]

I am writing a paper for a Sports Law class on Baseballs' exemption from the Anti trust laws. I am having difficulty finding how much profit MLB was making back then (around 1922). Does this information exist or am I just wasting my time looking. A source would be great also if you know of one since I need to cite. Thanks!

[Brian McKenna]

wishful thinking i'd say - but i would love to see the figures - not sure that a private company had to disclose such and the vigilant reporting in this area was years away - i do know that the senators for one paid some nice dividends in the 1920s - $20,000 in 1922, $80,000 in 1924 and 1925 - when they didn't pay dividends it was usually because of park repairs or high talent purchase expenses ($154,500 in 1929 for example) or heavy spring training expenses (exceeding any revenue generated during spring training games) (for example in 1924 spring training expenses = $21,744.32 but the senators only recovered $10,131.02 in revenue) - the money was flowing in the 1920s - best thing to do is use proquest which provides access to newspapers and type in every search word you can think of - i bet you could find scattered info here and there - most of my info provided is through various editions of the washington post

[Ubiquitous]

Take a look at Doug Pappas' site. It has data stretching back that far on profits. In the 50's after the popularity of the Kefauver hearings, everything under the sun got a hearing in front of congress. Including baseball, and in those hearing they prepared documents showing revenue and profit for baseball teams going back decades. For instance I recall that the White Sox had a profit of $155,000 in 1920.

[Brian McKenna]

great site -thanks

[wamby]

Touching Base by Steven Reiss had some figures from around the time of the Black Sox scandal. The Cellar hearings in the 50s (around 1957?) may have revealed some figures also.