Baseball’s Elite Hit Hard in Debut of Luxury Tax

For the New York Yankees, the tax man came early this year.

They must pay $4,431,180 or nearly 40% of the money in the first year of baseball’s luxury tax, according to documents sent to teams Tuesday by the owners’ Player Relations Committee.

Four other teams will have to pay tax to the commissioner’s office by Jan. 31: Baltimore ($4,030,228), Cleveland ($2,065,496), Atlanta ($1,299,957) and Florida ($139,607).

The luxury tax, which became the center of the fight between players and owners during collective bargaining, was designed to prevent high-revenue teams from even higher payroll escalation.

Including $5,100,715 per team for benefits, the Yankees had the highest payroll at $68,267,435, followed by Baltimore ($67,121,858), Cleveland ($61,508,337), Atlanta ($59,321,083) and Florida ($56,005,799). The top five teams all advanced to postseason play.

While the tax originally was to be levied on 35% of the amount of payrolls above $51 million, the union insisted on a clause limiting it to only the teams with the five-highest payrolls. Because of that, the threshold rose from the $51 million originally envisioned in the agreement to $55,606,921.

As a result, the 1998 threshold will be a minimum of $59.9 million rather than $55 million, and the 1999 threshold will be at least $64.2 million instead of $58.9 million.

Thirteen teams had payrolls above $51 million in 1997.

In all, the tax generated nearly $12 million this year, of which $10 million will be used to cover the 1997 shortfall in the teams’ revenue sharing plan. The remainder will go to the five American League teams that had the lowest net local revenue in 1996.

The top four teams remained unchanged from the PRC’s opening day projection, but the Yankees’ tax bill wound up $600,000 more than the April estimate. The Chicago White Sox, originally projected to have the fifth-highest payroll, dropped when they traded pitchers Wilson Alvarez, Roberto Hernandez and Danny Darwin to the San Francisco Giants on July 31 and wound up at $55.2 million, nearly $800,000 below the World Series champion Marlins.

Pittsburgh had the lowest payroll at $16.6 million. Detroit was 27th at $21.3 million.

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If bringing major league baseball to North Carolina means more taxes, many people in the state say they don’t want it.

Six in 10 Mecklenburg County residents would vote against using tax money to build a stadium in downtown Charlotte, according to the poll done for the Charlotte Observer and WCNC-TV.

More than two-thirds wouldn’t drive about 80 miles to see a game near Greensboro, where businessman Don Beaver wants to move the Minnesota Twins if baseball owners let him.

Boxing

The death of Zambian boxer Felix Bwalya in Lusaka, Zambia, has prompted an investigation into the circumstances under which he won the Commonwealth light-welterweight title.

Minister of Sport William Harrington suspended the Professional Boxing Board of Control and appointed a committee to investigate. The committee is to report to Harrington by Jan. 15.

The 26-year-old boxer died Tuesday. He was knocked down three times by champion Paul Burke in the last three rounds of their Dec. 14 bout and was on the canvas when the final bell sounded. He was admitted to Lusaka Teaching Hospital on Dec. 16 after complaining of headaches and later slipped into a coma.

Hilary Matyola, head of the Boxing Board of Control, was suspended by Harrington along with the rest of the board. Members were asked to make themselves available for the investigation.

Matyola said last week that board officials were discussing whether referee Hugo Mulenga should have stopped the 12-round bout. Bwalya was declared the winner on points by Mulenga.

Miscellany

Police officers in Kings Mountain, N.C., took custody of the 2-year-old boy at the center of a dispute between the Portland Trail Blazers’ Rasheed Wallace and the boy’s mother, but the woman was not arrested, police said.

Wallace, a former North Carolina star, and the mother, Chiquita Lynette Bryant, have been involved in custody battles for more than a year over Ishmiel Shaeed. A judge ruled more than six months ago that the child’s mother was intentionally preventing Wallace from seeing the boy.

Wallace and his mother claimed the boy and returned to Philadelphia, where Wallace was raised.

Right wing Marian Cisar, who was chosen by the Kings in the second round of the 1996 entry draft, scored three goals as Slovakia defeated the United States, 6-3, in the opening game of the world junior championships at Helsinki. The U.S. continues preliminary round play today against Kazakhstan.