Malcolm Gladwell at Grantland takes a look at owning a professional sports franchise and ‘psychic benefits’:

The best illustration of psychic benefits is the art market. Art collectors buy paintings for two reasons. They are interested in the painting as an investment — the same way they would view buying stock in General Motors. And they are interested in the painting as a painting — as a beautiful object. In a recent paper in Economics Bulletin, the economists Erdal Atukeren and Aylin Seçkin used a variety of clever ways to figure out just how large the second psychic benefit is, and they put it at 28 percent. In other words, if you pay $100 million for a Van Gogh, $28 million of that is for the joy of looking at it every morning. If that seems like a lot, it shouldn’t. There aren’t many Van Goghs out there, and they are very beautiful. If you care passionately about art, paying that kind of premium makes perfect sense.

Yesterday was baseball’s opening day, so here’s some baseball related stuff:

Yesterday was the start of the 17th consecutive season that Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, and Mariano Rivera have played together. No trio in the history of baseball, basketball, football, or hockey have played that long together.

USA Today has a chart listing the highest paid player at each position. Five of the ten players listed are Yankees. I’m surprised it was only five.

USA Today also has an interactive database of team/player salaries. Alex Rodriguez will be paid $32 million this year. The Kansas City Royals entire team payroll this year will be $36 million.

The Mets will begin paying Bobby Bonilla over $1 million a year for the next 25 years, after releasing him in 2000. That’s more than 16 players on their current roster. The Mets have some other financial problems to deal with.

A shot by Michael Del Zotto of the NY Rangers, ricochets off a defenseman and right into a camera.  I’d say, “What’re the chances?” but a very similar thing happened in the ALCS a few weeks ago.

However, neither comes close to this bat on the what’s-the-chances scale.

On Saturday, Phillies pitcher Roy Halladay pitched the 20th perfect game in MLB history.  Today, the Florida Marlins will sell all unsold tickets from that game.

The announced attendance for the game was 25,086, but something tell us in the future many more people will claim to have been there.

Speaking of awesome baseball movies, the farmhouse where ‘Field of Dreams’ was filmed is for sale. It has 193 acres, 7 buildings, and the home is 2 bedroom/1.5 bath/2400 sq. ft. It comes complete with the baseball field, corn field, and approximately 65,000 visitors per year. It’s a steal at only $5.4 million.

The intangible assets of the property are simply not measurable. The Field of Dreams owners have been honored to be a part of sports history these past 20 years and have played host to a variety of sports celebrities along the way.  Moments of peace and quiet, family togetherness and most of all, magic and wonder have been among their greatest and most cherished memories. It has been a destination for millions of visitors and may continue to be the place many find peace and quiet in our modern day existence.

Ken Burns’ awesome “Baseball” documentary will have a new four-hour installment come September. It will bring the 1994 series up to date with what’s gone on in the past 16 years. Of special note is the Red Sox’ 2004 World Series win:

A coda to Baseball held appeal because of recent events around the game — and, for a long-suffering Sox fan such as Burns, as a way to celebrate the team’s 2004 World Series win. “I admit we would not be doing this had they not won,” Burns says. “But this will sit well with all fans.”

Yeah, that should sit well with Yankees fans.

Forbes has a special report on the business of baseball. Unsurprisingly, the Yankees rank number one in total worth with the Red Sox number two and the Mets number three. However, I am surprised that the Yankees, at $1.6 billion (yes, with a ‘B’), are worth almost twice as much as Boston at $870 million.

In 2009, smack in the middle of the worst economy in seven decades, baseball’s 30 franchises turned in a record-high operating income [...]