by David Beck, EEEEEE! Contributing Editor
Since when does doing anything in the name of "business" mean that it's acceptable just because it's "business"?
Once again we are called upon to dutifully give our Postmortems at the behest of the great Postmortemist, EEEEEE! Managing Editor Gregg Pearlman ("It's now or never, as always"). [Given that Dave wrote this in November, it was almost "never," which is pretty consistent with the way we've done things lately here in EEEEEE! Plaza Heights Towers. -- GP] But while everyone is submitting Postmortem pieces about the 2001 Giants, mine is the usual:
The vainglorious 2001 season has seen its last vain hurrah, and we can look back and see what has happened that has further led to the majors' sad, tragic ruin. For me, I was a half-an-inning away from getting it right on the money (you can see what I thought back in March at What's Good For The Yankees Is Good For Alex Rodriguez ) but I do recall that my crystal ball was a mite fuzzy in that tiny little area there.
Still, a bad Mariano Rivera throw to second doesn't exactly eradicate the merits of my case against free agency, for yet again all falsely portended that the Yankees were destined to step aside for a younger, fresher team to grab the headlines. The Diamondbacks' win notwithstanding, most everything this year was still about America's Darling New Yorkers.
You challenge this claim? You say that the Mariners garnered the most press? Barry Bonds got the lion's share of attention? The Diamondbacks earned the true accolades? You say I am on the exterior of my pteropsida? For those not so scientifically minded, "out of my tree"?
A pox on this prattle, I say! (Not smallpox mind you, just pox -- don't want to get in bad with Homeland Security now....)
How 'bout we look at the season by getting the skinny on each of the significant players in the drama, the teams who had some measure of impact on the year. The Great Daverino sees all! (Even when I haven't seen all! I do this blindfolded! I'm simply amazing!) Let's begin with the team that stood out for most of the season:
"This team always wins!" I could just barely hear.
I lifted my ear and then heard very clear!
"They don't have a Johnson for batters to fear!"
It started in low, then it started to grow...
"They don't have an A-Rod to put on a show!"
They don't even have Junior or Babe Bobo Loe!
Those free-agent haters are really quite wrong!
They don't know their baseball from a game of poong-pong!"
Yet the Yanks came along and kicked them to Zlong.
Those free agency buffs couldn't keep the Mariners from losing.
THEY LOST!
The young Seattlers were beaten as soon as they came.
Without their free agents they lost just the same.
For those Grinches among you who despise my veridicious Whoville song, take note that the Mariners couldn't get past the Yankees precisely because they lost their big-time players to free agency -- indeed one of them was arguably the most instrumental factor in the Diamondbacks winning, particularly in the postseason.
The superlative irony of SI piece is that the Twins are now a top contender for contraction dissolution.
Many will say, "Hey, that's just doing business," but since when does doing anything in the name of "business" mean that it's acceptable just because it's "business"? No, getting a $20 million loan that no other team gets is the same as giving the Diamondbacks batters an extra strike, their pitchers an extra ball, their runners an extra base on a walk. If that were to really happen, a whole bunch of people would really say, "That's not fair!" How would you feel if I replied, "Hey! Those Diamondback guys, they're just taking care of business!"?
You could do one of two things. You could continue to watch the game as the Diamondbacks win quite a few more games than the other guys, knowing that it is a direct result of the deliberately added advantages, or you could stop going to the games. Just because a $20 million loan is not as noticeable as altering the game rules doesn't change the injustice. You and I both fully know that the $20 million helped the Diamondbacks buy Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling and that they would have done squat without those two pitchers.
Do other teams get loans? I don't know, they probably do, all the time. That is not the point. The point is that the Diamondbacks knew that their fan base was diddly -- a whole bunch of transplanted Arizonans with their own individual brought-from-home rooting interests -- and knew that they'd have to get a boost to sign guys like Johnson and Schilling in order to get into the World Series so they could recoup the losses they would have had by being a winnerrrrrrrrrr.
This and they have to find a way to make up for the baboon-butt ugly uniforms they have. I mean, that was reason enough not to watch a single nanosecond of the Series this year.
What is in store for the Diamondbacks? My crystal ball says that they go the way of the Marlins. What do they do now financially? There is no way they will sustain that winner buy-in. Maybe owner Jerry Colangelo will devise some other way to cheat baseball while no one is looking. That part of my crystal ball is fuzzy.
As it is, we've always called the Padres the Dodgers South. The Diamondbacks, really then, are just the Dodgers East. So justifiably loathsome.
If this isn't enough to get your anti-free agency-blood boiling, I just don't know what will. I'll say right up front, I don't give the tiniest dingle about the Expos, or any of these other teams. I am so with Joe Let-The-Free-Market-Rule on this one.
Contraction was such a certainty, however, that talk of it couldn't be quashed even during the World Series. The owners have voted to kick two teams out, and it has been presumed that along with the Expos, the Twins, Marlins, and Devil Rays are among those also considered for the chopping block.
Everyone wants to give their standard excuses for why this is happening, but I'll give you the one single most pertinent reason:
Free agency.
Have I said this before? Forgive me if I have and I've wasted your time. But if I haven't, let me say it again so it is perfectly clear. This is all happening because of
Free
Agency
While everyone was mesmerized by this allegedly marvelous World Series that was supposed to save baseball, the game was further wilting under its weight. Everyone was too busy partying at the ballpark to care about baseball gasping for its final breaths in a hospice bed across the street.
The major league game simply cannot continue to thrive while the Powers-That-Be, which include owners and players alike, continue to maniacally grab money away from one another because they can't get it legitimately from fans who won't spend it on them. Major league baseball has degenerated into a befuddled brawl for money where there is no money. They keep going to the well under the "multi-sum game deception," and the well is bone dry: the winner buy-in teams like the Yankees have already schlurped up every drop.
I've spoken of this in great detail before, but for baseball to be as healthy as it should be, every team must get to draft, develop, build, and most importantly keep if they damn well want to, the players it wants for as long as it wants. This has been the core argument I have made forever. It has nothing to do with how much the players earn -- could be a gizillion dollars for all I care. Even if the Giants are in the tank year after year after year, I would so much rather say at the end of every season, "Hmm, how about if we fire the guys making the calls and get some smart people running the team?," which is always possible, than saying, "We'd better buy some free agents," which is never possible as long as the Yankees and Dodgers and whatever other P-T-B darlings have the money advantage.
Look at the teams under consideration for contraction dissolution! The Marlins, World Champions a mere four years ago! The Twins, very recent two-time World Champions. Even the A's, a darling team because they are so well-managed -- always young and good (so I hate them now even more), and also generally successful in spite of the low payroll they are forced to keep -- even they are in the slaughterhouse queue.
Of course all this contraction talk could just be a leveraging tactic against the players' union, and there are all kinds of things happening, like U.S. Senators again pushing to revoke the antitrust exemption (a pointless endeavor) and the Florida attorney general seeking to stop the dissolution of Florida teams because the parks they play in are paid for by the public (a reasonably sound case, it seems to me).
In the meantime, let's all get it out of our system, right now, shall we? Just let it go. Are you ready? All together now:
Bud Selig is slime. Dirt. Raw sewage. Roaches are angels compared to this scumbag. He's the devil incarnate bent only on selling out the league to save his Brewers. Feel better? Okay, now that we've had our daily therapy session, let's face the truth.
The man is right.
It blows me away how much everyone's revulsion of Selig clouds their ability to see the plain truth: Most major league teams have no chance even in March of every season. Everyone knows which ones they are, and now we're starting to see exactly how much people know that -- those team's fans aren't going to the ballpark. Selig is just dramatically bringing it to our attention. Joe Sportswriter has been flailing lividly at ways to bolster the fantasy that any team not a P-T-B darling has a chance, and the increased stridency of his plaint further highlights its inadequacy. Maybe they ought to try looking at reality.
Gregg sent me a piece about all this contraction stuff written by Gary Huckabay of the Baseball Prospectus, who scorns all the usual culprits -- you know: poor management, evil owners, Bud "Spawn of Hell" Selig -- but typically says nothing about the simple free-agency-diseased condition of the game itself. After detailing the mental gymnastics trying to figure it all out, he says something extraordinarily profound:
"I can't say I have much hope and faith at this point. And if the behavior of the hardliners in management is enough to make a junkie like me consider just writing off the whole enterprise, imagine what the more casual fan thinks."
A tear came to my eye. Some people are actually getting it. Some people may really, actively join me in my noble cause. (Sniff!)
The disheartening thing, of course, is that it didn't come with a World Championship. When he hit his 71st and 72nd home runs, what I saw most was the 11-10 loss to the Dodgers that knocked us out of the pennant race.
While I knew all along we weren't going to go anywhere, it still hurt. Gregg and I didn't talk much about the Giants over the course of the season, but once he did mention on the phone that this team just has too many holes. He said this in reference to the marvelous playmaking abilities of Edwards Guzman. Ee-yay. We can sure build a title winner around this guy.
I later noticed that the Giants had the second highest attendance in the majors behind the Mariners. I thought, "Wow! Look at us! People liked us!" But then Gregg had to remind me that -- ahem -- it was all for Barry Bonds [and Pac Bell Park -- GP]. Taking nothing away from Bonds -- I am proud as all get-out for his feat -- I'm still under the misapprehension that it is the Giants that are the attraction. Our Boys. Not Bonds and a bunch of other guys in Giants uniforms -- just The Giants.
When Ruth and Maris each had their 60 and 61 home run seasons, their teams went to the World Series. Our guy gets 73 and we finish second. Where would we have finished if Bonds weren't there? I shudder to think. We would have gotten to see this kind of team next season if Bonds had capitulated to an indomitable George Steinbrenner pulling out all the stops to see that he is a Yankee. Gregg even regaled me with the way Bonds schmoozed with his future teammat -- er -- Yankee players after throwing out the first pitch in one of the World Series games.
All we can say at the end of this season and every season is what every other non-big-money team's fans disconsolately say: "We just have to find a way to buy us some o' them free agents!" It isn't fair, but then it hasn't been fair for a long time.
I certainly feel for the Expos or Twins fans who may see their team get blown out -- gone forever. But in some ways I think the contraction plan is doing them a favor. I mean, if free agency is here to stay, and I literally weep over that -- and I do mean literally, I love the game of baseball that much -- then please, why don't they put us all out of our misery? Why stop at two teams? Why don't they just blow out all 20 teams that actually, really, truly have no chance in March?
Let's cut to the chase, Powers-That-Be. Listen up and listen good:
Just leave in the 10 teams that can afford to pay the players to get them the chance to go to the World Series. Have a major leagues with true competitive balance where the fans can honestly invest in a real rooting interest in a team that has a chance. All us fans of the Pirates, the Royals, the Reds, the Tigers, and even the Giants, we all beg you to be merciful to us all and protect us from our juvenile and abjectly hopeless fantasies that some day, some whimsical wonderful day, we will watch Our Boys do the Big Dance on the Mound.
Be serious about it. Do contraction like it should be done.
Or get rid of free agency.
If you were David Beck, you'd be teaching economics and other stuff in Southern California, and, while in college, you would once have had an entire classroom full of broadcasting students, led by the instructor, yelling "Rah! Rah! Sis-boom-bah!" at you while you were reading a copy of the school newspaper, not realizing that class was supposed to have started already.