Oakland Athletics’ Billy Beane Spends a Ton of Money on… Water?
Well apparently Billy Beane is allowed to spend money on something, but it sure as hell isn’t the Oakland Athletics.
During this past summer, which saw an emergency drought throughout the state of California, Beane used the third highest amount of water consumption, ranking only behind “a retired Chevron executive and a prominent venture capitalist” according to Dennis Cuff of the San Jose Mercury News.
Known for being the face of an organization notorious for not spending a dime more than they have too, Beane was apparently using 5,996 gallons per day, according to public records released Thursday by the East Bay Municipal Utility District. Oh and by the way, the average district customer uses less than 250 gallons a day.
Now understandably, his home in Danville – a very affluent neighborhood – has a very large landscaped yard, but that is just ridiculous. At least one of those ranking ahead of Beane, George Kirkland – who also lives in Danville – admitted his unbelievably high water usage of 12,579 gallons per day was because of a leak in a water line to the 2 acres of vineyard on his 4-acre lot.
Billy, you got no excuse.
He told Cuff, “I certainly pay for it” and I would hope so. Now I’m not going to make assumptions about his life in terms of how many people he lives with, or even his gardening habits – despite the fact I highly doubt he does any of it himself – but at the end of the day, this is just ridiculous.
To put this in perspective, a 3-par, 18-hole golf course uses about 100,000 gallons of water per week. That means it uses about 5.2 million gallons per year whereas if Beane uses nearly 6,000 gallons per day, he uses about 2.5 million gallons of water per year. So, essentially with his current watering habits, the A’s Executive Vice President could just about supply the first nine holes of a golf course with the proper amount of water for an entire year.
Jeez dude.
While he has said that he’s trying to cut back, one has got to think he might be able to try a little harder. It is also difficult to wrap your mind around this when he employs the strategies of recycling and conservations with a professional sports organization. I do recognize it is not his fault, but it does reveal a little about his character.
Maybe Beane at the core is a free spender? Maybe he’s always wanted to be one of the big moneymaking head honchos? Maybe he needs another outlet to go and spend all the money he wishes he could spend on his ballclub?
…Or maybe I’m just reading too much into this.
Either way, I’m sure we all wish Billy Beane could spend as much money on the A’s as much as he apparently does on water usage.