More from the Commish:

Some teams lost money in 2009, baseball commissioner Bud Selig said Thursday after the final owners meeting of the year.

"There was no question about that," Selig said. "I don't think the concerns have been ameliorated at all. I think the concerns are still there because all these people have their own economists."

Selig said final figures for this year are still being calculated and everyone is living in the most difficult economic times since the Great Depression. He declined to identify the teams.

"I think of all the heartache that's in the world," Selig said. "We live in this environment. We don't live in a bubble. And so, I think the clubs in some areas have been hit a lot harder than others."

No, baseball's owners don't live in a bubble. That long walk from the chauffeured Town Car to the private jet can be terribly stressful.

OK, I know what Selig means. He's saying that baseball doesn't operate in a vacuum. When the economy's hurting, so are MLB's revenues. I wouldn't be shocked to learn that a few teams really did lose money this year. But let's say an owner pays himself $5 million, his wife $2 million, and his ne'er-do-well son $1 million. Let's say he also assigns parking revenues to a wholly separate entity, with a $6 million profit. OK, that's $14 million just sort of floating around with no real connection to the operation of the franchise. Our owner tells the Commissioner's Office that he lost $4 million.

Well, technically speaking that might be perfectly true, and the Commissioner is perfectly within his rights to include this franchise among those that lost money.

But was any money lost, really? Of course not. Everybody's fat and happy, and we haven't even mentioned franchises that own their own TV networks (not to mention all the other ways that teams hide revenues).

I don't trust any of them. As long as he doesn't have to name specific teams, it is to the Commissioner's advantage to claim that teams are losing money. As long as the agents don't have complete access to all the books, they can reasonably claim that MLB is raking in millions in profits.

The truth? Most of us can't know. However, I would simply look at behavior. When teams are spending big money, we can at least guess that they've got extra money to spend. When they're cutting back, we can at least guess that they're feeling a bit of a pinch, financially.

Major League Baseball is far from a perfect market. Generally, though, owners do want to win and they will spend what money they've got. I think agent Scott Boras might reasonably argue that owners aren't spending everything they have because every team's not trying to win 90 games per season -- which is smart, since they all can't win 90 games per season -- and the result is that a hefty percentage of the revenues are staying in house.

There's an easy way to address that "problem" ... an NBA- or NFL-style salary cap, which mandates that the players must receive a set percentage of the revenues. Do you think the Players Association will be arguing for a salary cap in 2011?