By Joe Mysak
Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Joe Torre is going to return to skipper the New York Yankees in 2008.
The municipal bond market tells me so.
Now, I know the bond market, municipal or otherwise, doesn't speak in anything other than numbers. Also, it tends to mumble. And it is apt to change its mind any minute.
Still, a look at the numbers may give us a clue to the future of the Yankee manager, now that baseball season is over, at least for New Yorkers. The team's top brass is scheduled to meet about Torre today in Tampa, Florida.
Don't let bond analysis scare you. It often comes down to a couple of key numbers, perhaps a sentence or two located somewhere in the wilderness of a bond offering document, or official statement, as they call it.
Regarding Joe Torre and the Yankees, there are three numbers that demand attention.
They are 12; 4,271,083; and 942,555,000. This last number is in dollars.
World Champions
The first number is easy. Torre has been manager of the Yankees for 12 seasons, and in each of them he has managed to get the team into the post-season playoffs.
You can almost stop right there. Even with a roster full of All-Stars, getting to the post-season 12 times is remarkable.
Of course, you don't just have All-Stars. Not with the Yankees. You have All-Stars, oldsters, and head-cases, not to mention a handful of kids, upper management that is meddling at the best of times, and a press corps that is ravenous.
This leads us to the second number: 4,271,083.
That, according to Major League Baseball, is how many fans the Yankees pulled in during the 2007 regular season.
That was first in the American League's Eastern Division, first in the American League over all, and tops in the majors. Nobody else comes close.
In terms of attendance, then, the Yankees won it all in 2007. Their closest competitor, the Los Angeles Dodgers, brought in 3,857,036 fans.
You don't get more than 4 million people to come out to the ballpark if the team is playing bad baseball. In New York especially, where everything is a big deal. It's not as if a New Yorker finds himself in the Bronx one day and says, Well, here I am at 161st Street, let me stop in to the old ballpark.
Luxury Suites
That 4-million plus figure for fans happens to be the most bondy number in the lot. Perhaps the biggest risk in municipal bonds is commodity risk. The commodity involved is people. If you don't have enough of them, your town or your project or your credit rating or your bonds are in trouble.
This leads us to our last number, $942,555,000.
That's the amount of bonds the New York Industrial Development Agency sold to help build a new Yankee Stadium with 50,000 seats and 60 luxury suites. The agency sold the bonds in 2006, and the Yankees repay them with something called ``payments in lieu of taxes.'' The new stadium is slated to open in 2009.
The official statement to the bonds contains a compelling little table on page 62, showing ``tickets sold'' and ``ticket and suite revenue'' from 1997 to 2005, all Torre years.
And just look how the numbers do add up! In 1997, 2,580,839 tickets were sold; ticket and suite revenue amounted to $52.1 million. In 1999, more than 3 million tickets were sold; revenue was $80.2 million. In 2005, a little more than 4 million tickets were sold; revenue was $156.7 million. Up and up and up!
Hot Dog!
You don't bring in those kinds of numbers with a team that is losing, or that goes into a long swoon after the All-Star break and never comes back.
Going to the old ballpark is fun on its own, of course, and when the stands are empty the food vendors pay more attention to you and it is easy to get your doggie and ales. Watching your team lose again and again, however, gets old fast, as the fair- weather friends of the Florida Marlins (2007 attendance: 1,370,511), the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (1,387,603) and even the Baltimore Orioles (2,164,822) can tell you.
On page 28 of the Yankees official statement, ``Annual Debt Service Requirements'' are listed. There is a long column of numbers going out to 2047, when the last bond is scheduled to be retired, and when Joe Torre will be 107, and almost all of them are $51 million.
If I am the boys in Tampa, I am not thinking about firing Joe Torre. I am wondering how long I can get him to run the team.
To contact the writer of this column: Joe Mysak in New York at jmysakjr@bloomberg.net Last Updated: October 16, 2007 00:01 EDT
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