Book cover of Pay Dirt

Book description

Why would a Japanese millionaire want to buy the Seattle Mariners baseball team, when he has admitted that he has never played in or even seen a baseball game? Cash is the answer: major league baseball, like professional football, basketball, and hockey, is now big business with the potential to…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Pay Dirt as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This is an awesome book diving into financial valuations, operating expenses, and business data for professional sports leagues through 1991. I loved the abundance of graphs profiling historical attendance figures, league revenues, player salaries, expansion, and other data points. I also appreciated the quality of business acumen and rhetoric about free agency, collective bargaining, tax sheltering, anti-trust violations, and other areas.

The book's historical nature was comprehensive and a reminder of the powerful landscape of professional sports and their cantankerous owners, who played a role in driving economic value through the decades before the mid-1990s. This concept prevails in…

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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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