Well, perhaps the Giants fans' expectations, as John referred to, were unreasonable. According to the AP and USA Today payroll data that the late, great Doug Pappas had collected at his website, these are the Giants payroll as reported:

1996 - $34.6M
1997 - $44.1M
1998 - $48.5M
1999 - $46.1M
2000 - $54.2M
2001 - $63.3M
2002 - $78.3M
2003 - $82.4M
2004 - $82.0M

So the payroll has increased around 60% from the last year of Candlestick (1999) at $46.1M to 2004's $82.0M ($85M is the figure that Giants management has been saying for 2005 and 2006). The question then becomes what is a reasonable expectation.

According to Forbes data at the same site, revenues have increased from $51.8M in 1996 to $153M in 2003. The Operating profit according to Forbes was -$6.0M in 1996 and $0.7M in 2003. So Giants management has been spending approximately all the revenues that they can, given their revenue stream. And Forbes presumably took care of the funny business stuff that baseball teams sometimes do to cook the books. It must be good, Selig publicly called them "lies!" when they came out one time.

It is not just stadium expenses out there that are new today versus before. There are new expenses today that didn't occur in the past, like the revenue sharing stuff, plus limitations on debt levels which basically prevents teams who finance their own stadiums from borrowing more. They were also paying for the Expos' expenses in previous years before they became the Nationals. Some Giants fans forget about this when they wonder where's all the money the new stadium revenues generates.

Also, it would be nice that if John was going to berate Magowan for not spending enough, that he also acknowledge that the investors did at least run a cash loss of $120M, according to the data he presented in his post , which over a 7 year period (1993-1999) would average around $17M per year. Perhaps they finally just wanted to stop paying in and break even.

Lastly, I think too many Giants fans forget that without Magowan, it would currently be the Tampa Bay Giants with the expansion San Francisco Dungeonous Crabs (instead of Devil Rays) playing right now. Plus he stepped on a lot of big toes and egos in bringing back Barry Bonds to his hometown, where he belongs, Bonds could have been manning LF for the Yankees for the past 12 years instead of here. Those are debts that we owe that always tempers whatever thoughts I may have. But the "honeymoon" for me ends probably soon after Bonds retires.

Jeez, BGF, yiu're following me all the way here ;-)

Thanks for the plug, David.

:-D