by David Beck
EEEEEE!Contributing Editor
Installment 11 -- March 27, 2001
Yet again I must clarify something that is as carved in stone as the sun is hot. I am making this official pronouncement on March 27th, 2001, so no matter when this appears in EEEEEE! it will be firmly established. The future is now and that future is:
The San Francisco Giants will not win the World Series this year.
If for some impossible reason they do, I'll eat my shorts, I'll strip naked atop the flagpole, I'll skin a frog and suck its gonads through my nostrils. But ya know what? I won't have to do any of that. Why? Because at the end of the season, ta-da! (here's a surprise)
The New York Yankees will repeat as World Champions.
In fact, I am absolutely certain they will face the New York Mets again or the Los Angeles Dodgers -- my crystal ball is fuzzy but it is a blue-uniformed team that is naturally not the Cubs.
I question going so far as to reveal the future to those of you privileged to read my prophetic proclamations here, for it will only encourage you to follow the majors that much more fervently just to see me wrong. Go ahead, spend hours and hours following the game with the pretense that it is all exciting and the outcome is always in doubt. But when it's all over, you know you'll be saying, "Wow, that Dave Beck, he was right."
Well, a bit of a correction on that, if I may. You see, it's not Dave Beck will be right, although I'd be happy to take the credit. The real prophet is free agency-dominated baseball.
Know what? I've decided. I'm going to go ahead and give you the key pointers so you can have the same astounding prophetic aptitude. How 'bout that. You not only get to read about the Great Daverino's divination, but here's how you get to do it in your spare time. Answer these questions yourself and see if you can get the hang of it:
Answer: Nobody. In fact, the reason the Giants have won anything in recent regular season action is because of free agent Barry Bonds. The reason they have tanked in postseason is because Bonds has predictably tanked and they don't have the All-Star (read: $$$ Yankees $$$) lineup to support him through extended playoff play. And don't tell me about the old wily vet or young up-'n'-comer we signed. They don't mean diddly in building a high-dollar World Series quality team.
Answer: Mike Mussina, who a number of years ago -- from when I remember anyway -- was probably the best pitcher in the game. He is added to a future Hall-of-Fame pitching staff, the re-signed Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter and the rest of their All-Star supporting lineup.
Answer: He will bat .380 and hit 50 home runs. His team will suck. Joe Fan is so taken by the superstar that he doesn't see the sky past his nose. Derek Jeter is not as good as Alex Rodriguez but is a thousand times more valuable because with the rest of his ultra-high-paid team he will win, and contribute to justifying the humongous big-money media-marketing-merchandising deal the Yankees get.
In fact, the only reason Rodriguez went to the Rangers was because they offered a $100 million more than the next highest bidder, the Mets. Not being in a media market consumer buy-in bonanza in which Jeter thrives by being a Yankee makes the price for Rodriguez that much higher. If the Rangers did not go that high, Rodriguez would be a Met.
What is amazing is that I can foretell all this without the benefit of sight, for you know I never read a sports page, I never watch the sports anymore. Ever. So I'm like one of those blind prophets, like in Ancient Greece days. I'm blind because I can portend all this without seeing a thing. It's all from what I hear, and what I hear is whatever happens to fall in my ears. I'm amazing I tell you, amazing.
But I will admit that I did watch the 60 Minutes piece on March 25. It did a feature on demon-agent Scott Boras, and went through the standard stuff about how everyone hates his guts because he's supposedly ruined baseball. Not much was new in this piece, except for a few interesting and revealing things about what happened with the signing of Alex Rodriguez, things that if you look closely enough you'll see easily build on the open-and-shut case against free agency. Boras is a big-time red herring; the real perpetrator is free agency.
Boras used the Mets as leverage against the Rangers to get the kind of contract Rodriguez got ($252 million over 10 years, for those of you like me who have been in full extended boycott mode but still love the game). Think about that. Using the gargantuan chuggin' free agency machine, Boras craftily worked the system to get that much for Rodriguez. Not only did he know that Rodriguez wanted to play for the Mets but he knew that Joe Fan wanted him to as well.
So to make up for the opportunity cost of lost consumer buy-in by not being a Met, the Rangers had to ante up big -- way bigger than they should have ($100 million more!), indeed way bigger than the market would bear.
That last part is important, because I'm going to flat out tell you -- there is no way the Rangers are going to generate enough revenue to make that contract worth it. Not through ticket sales, not through media, not through merchandising, not through giving every company on the planet naming rights to the ballpark and parking lot and the peanuts and the player's jockstraps.
They certainly won't get it by winning (because they won't).
No way. Absolutely, categorically no way. Dave the Prophet has spoken again.
Okay, all right, Rodriguez could hit 94 homers and go on a 78-game hitting streak -- no, wait, he's not going to do that, so, that thing I said about him not being worth his contract, that thing -- still goes.
Unless...
See, here's the thing. There is one way. There is.
Listen carefully.
The only thing that can generate enough revenue to make that contract pay off is not if the Rangers can do it (which they can't), but if Major League Baseball does.
And do you know the one key to that little circumstance?
Come on, if you've got the Great Daverino touch, it should come to you, come on, you got it in you -- I know you do...
The only way that happens is if the Yankees win.
Remember the saying, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country"? I think you know where I'm going with this.
We now have revenue sharing, luxury taxes, perhaps even a novel idea apparently proposed by Bud Selig to hold some draft in which the "big market" teams must give up some players to the "small market" teams. How retarded is that?
The Yankees just laugh. They love it.
They know they can't be in a league playing baseball all by themselves, and they work very hard to keep from tipping their hand. So they go right along with subsidizing teams they can beat so those teams can continue to appear viable. Joe Fan just doesn't know any better -- he continues to be a big part of the Yankee buy-in.
Talking with Gregg Pearlman I introduced the term fan buy-in to best describe how all this captivates Joe Fan, but he contended that it doesn't account for others less devoted but still paying for the majors in some significant way. He suggested the aforementioned consumer buy-in. Good call, except that "consumer buy-in" isn't specific enough to describe where this is all going, and it is too close in meaning to simple economic demand.
I believe the best way to label it is winner buy-in.
Winner buy-in incorporates all the people who are not necessarily fans who will pour their bucks into the Yankee-dominated major league pot. I don't know how many times I have seen people wearing the attire of a sports team who couldn't care less about being a fan -- they just like how it looks. I've seen so many people wearing Yankee caps I want to puke. Winner buy-in, in and of itself, is not necessarily bad -- everyone wants to win -- but it is of serious concern when it is directed to manipulate fans and the game. I've made this point a number of different ways before: Unchecked free-agency-oriented winner buy-in continues to dramatically displace the pure competitive integrity of the game.
Some may ask here, "How then is winner buy-in any different from just a contrived way to say economic demand?" The difference is that demand implies volitional purchase of a particular product. Winner buy-in involves the entire realm of buying into a name, a style, a feel, a mystique, an entire zeitgeist. It incorporates all the factors that demonstrate where money and power is being delivered, even those factors effective demand cannot measure. It reaches out to the farthest tips of the branches leading from the major leagues -- all the way to that bowl of cereal that is eaten by a Sri Lankan boy because he saw a photo of Sammy Sosa next to a strategically placed ad. Winner buy-in can also be attributed to both buyer and seller. It's a positive "be a part of the winning team" term, and in that sense it has powerful marketing value that goes beyond mere manipulation of demand.
Ultimately winner buy-in is about Joe Fan hypnotically embracing major league baseball by way of the teams that draw that demand, the Yankees, the Mets, the Dodgers, et al. It is about the "circuses" part of "bread and circuses." It'd be just the same to have a ballpark full of fans with their thumbs up.
Winner buy-in does something else, too. It jettisons all the silly arguments that futilely try to define exactly what it is that derives demand in baseball. Is it ticket sales? Ballpark attendance? Luxury boxes? Whether or not a team is "big market"? Media and merchandising? Is it a combination of these factors? It certainly is a combination, but it is much more.
The Powers-That-Be are working more and more to serve winner buy-in. They are the Roman emperors in the Colosseum "luxury boxes" anxiously intuiting the desires of the rabid crowd. One of these years there will certainly be some "underdog," some "Cinderella" team the fans will give the thumbs up, but not without the careful monitoring of the Powers. (A great candidate for the darling team this year is the A's; they always are, only because the Powers-That-Be know I hate 'em....)
Looking more closely at winner buy-in will tell you exactly what is happening in baseball right now. If someone could come up with a quantitative way to measure it I think it would be extraordinarily revealing. I really believe it can be done. Until then, you'll have to rely on the prescient powers of the Great Daverino.
What are some possible indicators for measuring that winner buy-in? One place to look is what recently happened in the NBA: a watershed point.
The Vancouver Grizzlies, sucking nitty nards after the typical initial fan spoodging when they entered the league a few years ago, realize that they need the big bahookas to even think about competing for winner buy-in. To get those bahookas they have decided to seriously consider moving to Memphis.
Memphis? A place that would be the smallest market in the NBA? What is the deal with that?
The deal with that is the deal, the deal the team would make with the corporation that would buy it, Federal Express, which would move the team and rename it the Memphis Express.
There it is. Naming rights for the team. It had to come. There've been naming rights given to the park, the field, the arena, the bowl game, the auto race, the little score they show at the corner of the TV scene.
[Editor's note: The Federal League in 1914 and 1915 sported a team called the Brooklyn Tip Tops, named for the bakery chain belonging to the team owner, so if nothing else, the idea of naming a team after a corporation or product isn't new. Course, this was the Federal League, which barely counts. -- GP]
Teams know that to get winner buy-in now they have to, ahem, well, win. And the only way they can win is to get the big money to buy the players. And these days the only way for a Vancouver Grizzlies to compete with the big boys for the big money is to sign up with an entity that can get them the big money when they simply can't get it any other way.
And that entity is the good ol' big ol' American corporation.
Sure, teams long ago linked up with vested business interests, the Cubs with Wrigley and the Cardinals with Busch for example. And sure, the abuse of this was predicted in movies such as Rollerball back in 1975. But this new corporate butt-in is an altogether new creature. The Grizzlies even have competition as to who gets the FedEx treasure chest; Charlotte is another team angling for it and I've heard there are others.
This, folks, is unheard of. Teams clamoring to get into what would be the smallest market in the league -- all Yankee wannabes, because they will never come even remotely close any other way. They still forget, however, that it's a zero-sum game and that the Powers-That-Be are only going to go with who's got the most thumbs up.
Still we should ask, what are the real ramifications of what will happen in the real-life major leagues should this corporate buy-in thing happen there?
For one, with corporations seriously in play, they will use their vast amounts of investment in their new toys to manipulate the already timorously beholden Powers-That-Be. They will have no compunction about respecting the provincial tradition of team location. Get ready for team free agency movement like there has never been.
With a heads-up from Gregg, anticipate the exorbitant player costs to be passed on to the consumer. No corporation is going to break the bank without finding a way to recoup its costs, so get ready for FedEx to work over the Memphis -- indeed the entire nation's -- consumer base to be part of the "winning team." Consumer buy-in morphing into winner buy-in. I imagine it is good that corporate involvement will take the unwitting taxpayer off not the hook (we assume), but how is Joe Banana-Eater in Seattle going to feel subsidizing Joe Starplayer's contract with the once-Houston Astros-now-Biloxi Chiquitas?
Look for ways the game will be "modified" to make it more "marketable." Perhaps not with profound changes to the game itself, just aspects that will be "modified." Who know what those could be.
With no restraints on the Players' Union, watch salaries to go skyrocketing (as if they haven't been already). Since big corporations are now in the ballgame, look to hear "Let's use the money to get for Joe Superstar what he is really worth." A player getting as much as the market will bear is fine, but this bidding to appease winner buy-in will distort that market so much that the game will be even more seriously damaged.
Unless, of course, that one team is able to stay above the fray and continues to command the lion's share of winner buy-in from Joe Fan.
You know that team is the Yankees. As long as winner buy-in continues goin' good, who cares how much the Washington Generals teams stumble around? Who cares if Alex Rodriguez is on a lousy team, as long as he gets his paycheck and the Yankees can pick up the slack?
Let me make something clear as I close. Admittedly I loathe the Yankees out of principle, but it doesn't matter what team it is. I've said this before. It could even be the Twins or the Brewers or the Pensacola Bellywhackers, any team that is privileged to win because it generates the most winner buy-in and thereafter is bestowed the most benefit from it.
That team is the Yankees.
What's good for the Yankees is good for the major leagues.
Or rather we should soon say, "What's good for the General Motors Yankees is good for the Nokia-Sunmaid-UPS Major Leagues."
It is certainly not good for baseball.
EEEEEE! Contributing Editor David Beck once played the role of Jason in Medea. The coincidence here is that at the Safeway near Gregg's home, one of the cashiers is named Medea. She doesn't look infanticidal, but you never know.
Copyright ©2001 by David Beck
Last updated 4/11/01Gregg Pearlman, gregg@EEEEEEgp.com