A MINOR LEAGUE BUDGET?

SPORTSBIZ Don’t tell DR. GERALD W.SCULLY that yougotta have heart. Scully, author of The Business of Major League Baseball and professor of economics at The University of Texas at Dallas, says that to produce a winning team, you gotta have cash. And spend it. Scully points out that the Rangers’ average salary of only $229,700 during the Eighties ranked them 25th of the 26 major league teams, just ahead of the frugal Seattle Mariners.

Of course, neither team has ever come within a long fly ball of a championship-and if you’re wondering, Scully says the two facts are intimately connnected. The economist, who pioneered studies that led to (he establishment of free agency in 1975, has now delved into the impact of player and managerial talent on baseball revenues, almost as if the national pastime were, well, a business.

As for Dallas’s favorite pipe dream, moving the Rangers into a downtown stadium, Scully warns us to hold onto our wallets. The Rangers will have to show they can draw a consistent attendance of 2.5 million a year or so to justify the cost of a new stadium. Then they’ll trot out the infamous “regional impact multipliers” to argue that every dollar spent on the Rangers will magically turn to ten new dollars in the community. If a loser can generate that kind of dough, what might a winner bring?