Joe Quixote and the 600-Ton Weight

Let me put this as delicately as possible.

The San Francisco Giants have absolutely no chance of winning the World Series this year.

None. Nada. Zilch-a-roo.

Yeah, sure it is easy to say this now, in July, barely halfway through the season. But I certainly could've said it with as much, well, delicacy before the very first pitch of the season was thrown. I didn't then because, even with all the facts dropped on top of me like a 600-ton weight, I shamelessly admit I have still harbored the teensiest of hapless longing that Our Boys may just buck reality and do something marvelous.

Here, I'm just flat out letting you know. Letting you know of the facts -- of the 600-ton weight. While that weight crushes my every cell, it does the same to everyone else too, and all respond to this "misfortune" in one of two ways.

One way is to know that while the facts may, just may, have actually flattened every smidgen of success possibilities his team has, he continues to let fly unabated his rooting commitment because in his heart he loves His Boys and the Game of Baseball. I'm a hopeless Joe Team Devotee. Utterly hopeless. As my entrails, squished out from the 600-ton weight, lie there, festering and sort of seeping back to sop my flattened head, I plaintively spit, "C'mon, Marvin, get on base, you [gurgle-schputtle]...."

The other crushee could give the tiniest of rips about genuine integrity in level of competition, and if the Yankees and Dodgers are meeting every year -- legitimacy of achievement be damned -- so be it. "Get me entertained" Joe Fan bellows. Should a team like the -- oh my -- Royals or the -- ee-gads -- Marlins get in, it's off to watch Dharma and Greg.

Point is, both are leveled by the 600-ton weight. Joe Devotee has been numbed to it. Joe Fan masochistically snarls, "Derek Jeterrrrrrr! You are Goddddd!" (Which sort of spittles out from under the weight as, "Dnmfllrl-yddpldd....")

The facts have risen their ugly head again recently, and I've decided that I don't like experiencing the pain of the weight all alone. So I'm going to share it with you. "Feel my pain" -- thank you very much. This Joe Devotee is a sadist.

Besides the Giants not having the tiniest of chances, (I'll try real hard to be gentle with you) neither do the Twins, the Brewers, the Rangers, the Pirates, the Expos, the Tigers, the Mariners, the Cardinals, the Marlins, the Devil Rays, the Padres, the Reds, the Royals, the A's, the Cubs, the Angels, the Phillies, the White Sox, the Blue Jays, the Astros, or the Rockies. (Oh my, I was a bit forward, wasn't I?)

The only teams who have any chance to win in the World Series, and only because they have spent the big bahookas and are the exalted media darlings for the specific purpose of bringing in the big bahookas are the Indians, the Orioles, the Red Sox, the Braves, the Mets, the Diamondbacks, and of course, the Yankees and the Dodgers (who, by the way, are still distinct contenders in light of the massive suspensions for their fan-storming revelry a few months ago).

Now, I am doing all this psychically, because I have not looked at a sports page or looked at any baseball standings for well over a year. I only get any baseball news whatsoever from EEEEEE! and even at that pay little attention to standings oriented items. I certainly don't trust my own psychic abilities here. I may be way off with some of these claims. The Reds may be more contenders this year than say, the Orioles. The sure-fire way to straighten them out so they'll be right on the money -- oh, did someone say money? -- is to look at the salary rankings. The top six or seven teams will be the contenders. The rest of the teams -- well....

Facts is facts.

And the fact is, as much as EEEEEE! Editor GreggPearlman asserts how it gets under my skin when he himself joins many Giants fans in crying, "Unless we spend some money, we're toast," every single one of the fans of those not-a-chance teams are whimpering exactly the same thing. What is the message here? Have so many been so fully splatted by that weight that it is just impossible to see?

That message, for those who like supporting 600-ton weights with their crumply glop of flesh, bones, and mush:

Having money is what gets wins.

That's the fact.

What has inspired me to write yet another installment of "The Call" are a number of things that have stirred up lots of stuff banging around in my head and it won't stop until I get it on paper, or at least on this here computer screen.

Those items:

1. The apparent frequent reference to me as a communist because of my ideas.
2. A recent Sports Illustrated article about how Joe Fan is being gouged at the park.
3. Bob Costas' new book Fair Ball and Rob Neyer's comments about it.

The first item:

Gregg has more than a few times mentioned that a recurring sentiment from readers about my ideas is that they are communist, Stalinist, or some other similar complimentary attribution. I can understand how I may be perceived, as admittedly I wholly champion a centralized organization of the financial capital of major league baseball. Without going into a primer about what Marxism truly is and how truly it has wrecked half of the world, let me set the record straight about who the real communist is if we apply its precepts to the major league baseball world.

1. It doesn't matter how much any baseball player earns -- he can earn eighty trillion dollars a year for all I care -- as long as that figure is determined by real demand derived in the free market economy and doesn't bulldoze the integrity of The Game. The player's union has abjectly manipulated that market to distort wages. Unions at their worst -- and the major league players union is unquestionably one of the worst -- are all about collectivizing human capital and trashing free market principles.

Who's the communist?

2. I don't care how much an owner earns as a reward for hisrisk and for his resourcefulness in putting together a team -- he has as much right to earn eighty trillion dollars a year as the player does. The derived result for success in a sports league, however, must be based on his wisdom, insight, character, leadership, and management, and not on how much money he has. Indeed, these are the most instrumental factors for success in any business endeavor, and if he uses them well he should get as much money as the market will bear.

Who's the communist?

3. The public good is baseball. The players (and yes, owners for that matter) are free to support it or not. Because of their petulance and our enabling of it, they have been allowed to disregard that good with impunity. This public good must be nurtured in special ways. The class-envy-based free-agency-dominated salary racket that the player's union runs has destroyed baseball.

Who's the communist?

4. Remember that picture that appeared in the newspaper about once every year during the May Day Soviet troop review? Five or six old crusty burly politburo types, all wearing the same gray hat and overcoat, lined up behind the Kremlin wall stoically watching the proceedings. Sorry, guys, but the way the major leagues are today? You've got General Secretary Steinbrennerov, and Premier Murdochski, and Prime Minister Turnereskov... the whole lot living in their comfy Sevastopol mansions while the rest of the dregs of Soviet life braid snow for twelve hours a day before they go home to their cement slabs. They don't have a chance.

Who's the communist?

(If the Soviet metaphor is lost on you, let me know and I'll explain it to you. I can understand, though. 600-ton weights can have a certain mentally debilitating effect on a guy...)

5. Revenue sharing. Need I say more?

(A brief note about the Dodger fan-storming incident at Wrigley. It would be easy for me to further demonize Joe Fan and Joe Ballplayer here. In fact, I just recently heard about how Dodger fans mooned John Rocker -- now there's a classy bunch: Dodger fans and John Rocker. Anyway, I know that these people don't represent all fans or ballplayers. I don't think of Joe Fan and Joe Ballplayer as having any volitional criminal intent; they are just sadly misled.)

The second item:

Sports Illustrated ran an issue (May 15) that featured on the cover a picture of a family of four (Dad, Mom, Junior, Missy) in shock over the price of the pro sports event they were attending. "Ouch!" they cried, and the magazine introduced the idea that maybe the price of going to such events has gotten a little steep for the poor ol' Joneses. (Click here to see that article.)

I had to see what it was about, and sure enough it was a classic propaganda piece for the Joe Sportswriter ideology -- exalt Joe Ballplayer, coddle Joe Fan, revile Joe Owner. For review, the simple reasoning behind this ideology is that Joe Sportswriter gets his paycheck from convincing Joe Fan that Joe Ballplayer is a star. Joe Owner is the equivalent of a slime puddle on Neptune as far as Joe Sportswriter is concerned. Don't holler how Joe Sportswriter gives Joe Ballplayer the what-for often enough. Not even. He doesn't do it nearly enough, and never for making more income than he should. When it is done, for whatever reason, it's all a ruse anyway.

The only substance to the SI piece was its constantly belabored examples of how much prices have gone higher. On and on it went, finally closing with a point about how tickets may begin to be marketed on the Internet. Now that's a stroke of genius -- as if changing the way the fan gets his overpriced tickets will make it better.

There was the most scant real analysis and the most profuse bias against owners. Indeed the article began with a drawing of a bloated, smirking, cigar-chomping owner (I mean, for goodness sake, is there any other kind?), plopped in a stadium next to a screaming heading along the lines of "Prices are too high, Joe Owner's wallet is getting fatter off you, and fans are being driven from the parks."

The whole idea of the piece was, "Prices for attending major pro sports games are too high on poor Joe Fan [the article itself even used the term "Joe Fan"] and it is mostly because Joe Owner is too greedy and is spending too much energy ingratiating himself with his rich luxury box buds."

In and around this were a few quotes from selected economists who claimed that, contrary to what we've all been led to believe, prices are rising not because of inflated player salaries but because of increased demand.

Excuse me?

Think about this for a moment.

The article is saying that Joe Fan cries about prices being too high, and then they say that demand is driving the increased prices. Um, do you see something wrong with this picture? If demand were indeed high enough, then there'd be no complaint about prices because demand would meet it. Happily and joyfully so, if demand were really what they say it is. This is the most basic of economics, but I can bet you the SI people and all the ballplayer sycophants among the Powers-That-Be know that half this country is made up of economic illiterates, so they can all get away with getting expert sounding economists for shills in order to propagate this garbage.

How about they get a quote from this here economist? Listen up...

Flat out:

The reason ticket prices have gone through the roof is precisely because of inflated player salaries.

I am not saying demand is not a factor. It may very well be.

But again -- yet again -- there is no way in the world owners would be selling out the game to advertising interests at the rancidly vast extent that they have, or toadying to such lengths with the political powers-that-be for extra privileges like, well, $$$ (i.e. taxpayer's $$$), or schmoozing with the big-$$$ dudes and dudettes to fill their luxury boxes. No way in the world all this would be happening if it was just regular plain ol' demand that went up.

Allow me to share with you a modified version of the supply and demand graph I put in the last installment, adjusted to include the expectations of Joe Fan were he to get what he wants -- a price ceiling on his ticket prices. After all, if he thinks he's getting the shaft at the ticket window -- and we all know he simply has to attend the ballgame -- why not make a price ceiling? Sounds fair.

So here it is. The graph. Joe Ballplayer and Joe Fan. Joe Ballplayer getting what he wants, and Joe Fan paying what he wants. The joy!

But drat it all, there are those pesky laws of economics. Why can't we all just be like Bugs Bunny standing there in mid-air and simply assert, "I know this violates the law of gravity, but then again, I never studied law!"

Well, this is not a cartoon, it is the real world of baseball economics. There it is. The players earning more and the fans paying less than demand truly dictates. Who takes the hit? It's not too tough to figure out.

What say we just shift those unreasonable expectations to where they should be? Get rid of those price floors and ceilings, bring them to the true equilibrium and just let market forces do their thing. (Oh but wait, I forgot, I'm a communist....)

When Joe Ballplayer and Joe Fan have a meltdown, we can thankfully rely on good ol' fixer-upper people like Sports Illustrated to come to the rescue and set things straight. After their brilliant polemic against the eeeeeevils of major league baseball ownership, we can go back to our favorite pasttime, root root rooting for the home team and taking a big smelly hefty dump on Joe Owner whose fault it is for everything bad in life.

Oh the joy!

The third item:

Recently Bob Costas published his treatise on fixing the game, Fair Ball. Costas is one of the few pundits who actually has a decent take on this stuff. While he can astutely articulate the problems, he still fails to give them the radical treatment they require. Like every other pundit, he diagnoses the malignant cancer and recommends aspirin.

ESPN.com columnist Rob Neyer (May 11) wrote about the book and he broke it down into four major points that stood out:

1. Revenue Sharing
2. Salary Cap/Floor
3. Realignment/Scheduling
4. Postseason Format

Neyer accurately observes, "Baseball's biggest problem, as I hope we can all agree, is the jarring revenue disparities between rich and poor. And redressing that problem must begin and end with revenue sharing. It's the bedrock, the foundation on which any true solution to the current inequities must be built. And Bob has a simple solution. Or, rather, he has a simple, multi-layered solution. One, every team contributes half it's local TV revenues to a common pool, which is then split equally among all 30 teams.

"Two, the visiting team receives 30 percent of all gate receipts. According to Bob's math, these two changes would result in the Yankees out-earning the Expos by only (yeah, 'only') about $60 million per season, rather than the current $100 million."

Thinking that maybe, just maybe this would be the beginning of some really smart elucidation, we get another ultimately pointless effort. That last tiny little fact about the Yankees and Expos really blows this sucker all to heck. I am giving Costas some measure of credit for actually getting up and saying something in response to the problem, and he's getting closer. But it still won't work, by miles. Free agency is a huge mound of rhino crap the size of Connecticut, and we're all trying to clean it up with an old tattered dishcloth. You could say Costas is at least applying some Mr. Clean to the rag.

Neyer attempts to add a bit of Windex to the rag by claiming that revenue sharing wouldn't work without a salary cap and a salary floor. (Salary floor? In case Neyer didn't notice, there is already a salary floor. It's called the major league minimum.) Errgh. More jerking the free market. Interestingly, after he espouses his own pet theories, Neyer says something that sounds very familiar.

"If the sport succeeds, everyone benefits."

Whoa. Whoa-ho-ho-there. Brilliant. A brilliant thing said. Somebody understands this!

For those of you who didn't catch that, it was, "If the sport succeeds, everyone benefits." Not if the Yankees succeed, or if Mark McGwire succeeds, but if the sport succeeds.

Ahhhhh....

Neyer then goes on to address Costas' realignment and postseason thinking, both of which are really more affected by the former salary/team disparity stuff than these guys will admit. Again, if Joe Fan and his $$$ is allowed to dictate what happens in The Game, then it will be screwed and it won't make a difference how much we cry about how undeniably retarded this stuff is. If baseball dictates it, then we wouldn't even be having the discussion about realignment and postseason lunacy.

If baseball people say, "Here's the game, take it or leave it," and Joe Fan likes it, he'll respond with his $$$ that will make up demand. If $$$-minded people think baseball is not good enough, they'll diddle with it as much as they can get away with until eventually it is like Arena Baseball, WWF Baseball or some other absurdity. They already have gone so far. Neyer very briefly mentions in passing that there is some concern about the excessive number of runs being scored these days.

Neyer concludes that Costas' ideas will not work, much less be attempted. "Bob's arguments," he writes, "while brief, are nonetheless compelling. But will anyone listen? Or is Costas baseball's Don Quixote, merely tilting at windmills? Look, the problem is not that every owner and player is a thoughtless jerk, set upon destroying this game we love so deeply. The problem is that when they act in groups, their hearts and heads become sublimated to the one overwhelming quality, a sickening greed that knows no apparent bounds. And frankly, no book that Bob Costas or anyone else writes will change that."

Don Quixote.

Neat.

I once thought I was Orpheus, boldly venturing into the underworld to rescue my Eurydice, only this time resolutely refusing to look back so she'd be wholly redeemed and fully in my embrace.

Now I'm an old forlorn dude pathetically defying a windmill.

Let me close by briefly elaborating on that nature of that 600-ton weight that has flattened each of us. Again, it is the fact: Your team has no chance unless it is one of Joe Fan's beloveds. Four-fifths of the major's teams have not the nariest of chances from Day One.

In its article on ballgame prices, SI surveyed fans to identify what exactly keeps them from getting out to the park. Predictably they cited high ticket prices as the top reason. I'd like to address those other reasons and detail much more about why I am personally distancing myself from sports stuff, but that is for another "The Call" installment.

For now, I will tell you this. The main reason I myself don't go to the ballpark was not among the reasons on that SI list. Very simply, my number one reason for staying miles from the ball park is...

My team has no chance.

What once kept me involved was the chance, even the smallest chance, my team had to win the World Series. Now that is completely gone.

Note that I am saying nothing about whether or not my team has any ability. My team may suck rat nards. What I am saying is that other teams are so favored in a situation rife with free agency manipulation that my team has zero chance. This is not sour grapes or fatalistic resignation.

It is just the fact.

Think for a moment about all the teams that before this current era have supposed had little ability but had a chance. A few from my relatively limited recollection: The '69 Mets, the '79 Pirates, the '88 Dodgers, the '90 Reds and then right after that the '91 Twins. Don't forget the early-'70s Oakland A's were just before that the about-as-close-to-no-chance-as-you-can-get late-'60s Kansas City A's. You may think of many more such teams from before the era when I followed the game.

All these teams had nothing at one point, but they had a chance. Each one also captured the hearts and imaginations of true devoted fans, and none needed the machinations of free agency to succeed for their distinctive bright seasons. (A case may be made for the Dodgers benefiting from the signing of Kirk Gibson, but Gibson was not really what made them successful that year, despite winning a wholly undeserved MVP. It was much more its pitching and unbelievably clutch (i.e., incredibly lucky) play.)

As I think about it, having a chance has always been a hallmark of a real, vital, capitalist, free-market system at work. Every single individual with a chance.

Who's the communist?

Joe Fan and Joe Ballplayer oughta take a good look in the mirror; 600-ton weights are not difficult to see, especially if they're on top of you. If I'm going to be flattened, I'd still much rather be Joe Quixote.

EEEEEE! Contributing Editor David Beck could get his toenails fixed so they wouldn't look so weird, but it'd probably damage his kidneys. Or is it his liver?

Copyright ©2000 by David Beck

Gregg Pearlman, EEEEEEgp@EEEEEEgp.com

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