by David Beck
EEEEEE!Contributing Editor
"Part II" might suggest to you that this article has a predecessor. And you'd be right. If you haven't already, please see Part I. -- GP
An athletic shoe commercial has been airing recently that features a ballplayer saying some goofy things and closing with the words, "Got a problem with baseball? Move to Norway." I've seen it with Mike Piazza and Deion Sanders (two of my favorite ballplayers -- not!), so I'm sure there are similar commercials featuring other "stars."
A couple of things really bother me about this. One is this tendency to pronounce another individual so odd that he or she belongs in another part of the globe, said with the assumption that the other location is populated by people so odd that he or she belongs there. A typical example of this is the standard "toothless backwood hicks of Tennessee," with whom people who are stupid, ignorant bigots belong. Well, I know people who have lived in the "backwoods" of Tennessee and they are bright, decent, caring individuals who have reasonably sound dental work.
So how does the shoe company get off declaring that if you have a problem -- and if you don't like something about baseball you must have a problem -- then you should go to Norway where they do stupid things like curling and fjord-diving or whatever other stupid things that are there. The idea is that if you don't like baseball the way we together, with-it, smart, progressive people do, then you belong where dorks live. I wonder if people in Norway have seen this commercial?
The second thing that gets me is the assumption that because I am a reserve clause proponent, that because I don't like whining, greedy ballplayers, that because I loathe with a passion the new advanced wave-of-the-future form of professional sports prosperity: free agency, then I must have a problem with baseball.
I found it necessary to write a follow-up to my first piece after receiving several responses, both positive and negative. I discovered that several of my points were misunderstood and my sentiments misinterpreted. I'm writing this to clarify and more plainly illustrate why I feel that free agency is the worst thing to ever happen to professional sports, especially to baseball.
I fully understand that most individuals do not hold a derision that is even close to the kind I hold. I understand that. Gregg Pearlman, Editor-in-Chief of EEEEEE!, has expressed his displeasure with not as much free agency but how it has been handled and what that mishandling has done. Most people share this view, and it is reasonable. With my reflections here I only intend to provide observations and insights that will never be noted by the mainstream media, and I hope perhaps to get people to see -- if only a little more clearly -- what it is exactly that free agency has done to mess with baseball, which in and of itself I very much haven't the tiniest of problems with.
To start, I will say that I do not believe the fans are as ignorant as some have thought I claimed in my first essay. I simply think most fans do not understand all of the financial aspects that go into the business of baseball, whether you're talking about players, owners, or whoever. By no means am I an expert myself, and as strident as I may seem, I only put forth my arguments for the reader's consideration. In my passion I may sound like I'm trying to bang you over the head with The Facts, but again, my only intention is for you to perhaps see something -- whether it is factual or outrageously whimsical -- that will ultimately lead to The Game of Baseball being better, through whatever little ways you and I, the fans, can make it.
I admitted in my last piece that the demand for major league baseball that the Powers-That-Be are working so valiantly to keep high still is very high. (And remember, the "Powers-That-Be" are not only the owners, but all who profit handsomely from the success of major league baseball: media people, TV execs, advertisers, community business and political leaders, and indeed the major league ballplayers themselves.) One thing I do see happening is that many fans are choosing to stay away from the ballpark. I also see that demand will never keep up with what is expected, especially when players will keep asking for more and more.
Many teams in the majors are having fewer fans come to the ballpark than in pre-strike years. Standard big-market teams like the Dodgers and Yankees still draw, but even teams that are winning, such as the Giants and Angels, have seen no increase (or at least no substantial increase). TV ratings are down, this summer's All-Star Game had its lowest ratings ever. In a piece about the Hall of Fame ceremonies this year, I read that the number of visitors to the Cooperstown attraction have fallen dramatically.
I don't think there is any question that a lot of people have simply said (in so many words), "Screw this noise." I know people who have enough resolve to stand up and say "Forget it. I don't need this. Those crybabies can have their way if they want but I won't help 'em to my wallet." On the other hand, I also have very good friends -- Gregg included -- who shake their heads when I tell them I will never go a ballgame again unless something dramatically changes, and then they head on out to the ballpark. I don't berate them and shout that the world will end as I grab them around the ankles and plead to stop them from going. I say "Have a great time!" They also know how I feel and they respect that, and they also, to a man, do feel the same way I do about how the game has been screwed up.
Most fans who have this sentiment will blame both players and owners. Please note too that I don't necessarily blame either one, I simply blame free agency. More times than not, this means I will side with the owners, because I firmly believe that as those who run the "business," they should be the ones who decide what to pay a player based on the principles of the free market. No matter how little, no matter how much.
So with that in mind, I'll address more of those things we hear all the time in this ongoing discourse, beginning with one of the more common claims:
"The ballplayer should be able to get what ever he can get, no matter how high that figure is."
When the strike occurred in 1994, I'd listen to sports radio shows occasionally, and once in a while I'd work really hard to keep from retching and listen to XTRA's Jim Rome. After about three or four really moronic things he or his callers would say, which usually occurred no more than about two minutes into my dialing in, I'd be compelled to shut him off, but I caught a few of the times he'd interact with a caller about the strike and it would almost always go something like this:
Rome's response would always be one of two things:
To be fair to Jim Rome, he is just spitting up the sentiment of many people who think they are sports experts.
About the first claim, as much as we all want to know how much the owners really make, the fact is that this is not the issue. I don't understand why we all need to look at how much money the baseball club makes to determine what the owners must pay to ballplayers. Where did this standard of judgment come from? First of all, why are the players never asked to open their books to see if they really need the money? It is precisely because it is irrelevant. By the same token, it doesn't matter if Joe Teamowner earned ten billion dollars in profits from his team last year, he is going to pay him what he is going to pay him. That's his choice.
It is also the player's choice to say, "No dice. Won't play for that much." Great! Terrific! Then he does not have to play baseball. He can work somewhere else. In fact, if he does not like what they pay him in the major leagues, then he can play the game in another baseball league -- there are lots of baseball leagues in the United States. He can even join other players and create his own league. No one is preventing him from taking his services and using them where he so chooses.
With free agency, there is this idea that the ballplayer has to play, in the major leagues, for X amount of money. In a truly free market, Joe Ballplayer will get his market value, and as I pointed out in Part I, he did. He got paid tons of money, before free agency. Even with the reserve clause in full effect before the mid-1970s, the owners knew that their baseball product was in high demand and that the players should get paid higher than normal salaries, and they were paid accordingly. They did this simply to keep the player happy in their major leagues, and also because they knew that the players were a big part of the attraction.
There is always the claim that before free agency salaries were kept artificially low. I claim that with free agency, salaries are made artificially high.
Baseball is indeed different from other businesses. In most cases it would be unthinkable for someone to walk up to his boss and say, "Open your books. If you're making too much money, I will demand more."
In 1996 McDonald's took in $10.6 billion in revenue and earned $1.5 billion in profit. Imagine Joe Burgerflipper going to the Joe CEO of McDonald's and saying, "Goodness gracious, look at how much money you made. Gimme what I'm worth or I'm suing for restraint of trade and filing with a federal arbitrator to be granted free agency. I'm indispensable: without me, no one gets hamburgers to eat."
Joe CEO's laughter alone would blow this clown right out of his office. Of course I know that the market values hamburger flippers differently from ballplayers. And the argument has always been brought up, "Teachers are much more valuable to society than ballplayers. So why don't they get paid more?"
Now, I am a teacher, and I think I'm at least a decent teacher, but this argument has never bothered me. Good ballplayers are much more scarce, are in much higher demand and therefore can command a higher pay. That is no big deal. Nor will I argue against the ballplayers performing a valuable service, because they very much do. There are days when I just get great enjoyment -- perhaps too much enjoyment for my own good -- when a Giants ballplayer unexpectedly does something extraordinary to win a big game. Indeed there is always the metaphor about how baseball is a reflection of real life and its ups and downs and how "life springs eternal" and all that syrupy stuff. Point is, baseball players provide a tremendously valuable service.
Since when, however, did they think that they were indispensable? On the cover of a recent Sports Illustrated was a picture of Ivan "Pudgy Wallet" (sorry, I just couldn't resist) Rodriguez, and underneath was the claim, "Baseball's Most Indispensable Player." This kind of crap helps with this misconception that we are somehow commanded to contribute to this chucklehead's bloated paycheck. I have nothing against Ivan Rodriguez, he may be a wonderful individual, but I seethe every time I hear that a team like the Texas Rangers offers a player like Rodriguez a gidzillion dollars and he responds in what I always imagine is that smug, really annoying high voice, "Nope. Nuh-uh. Not enough for mee-ee" (with the "me" starting in that unbearably high pitch then dropping abruptly at the end to denote that puke-making haughtiness.) That Rodriguez caved in after pressure from respected baseball people and took it instead of being happy with it to begin with does not necessarily make it all better. (In fact, it has been reported that in finally accepting the Rangers' offer, Rodriguez ignored the advice of the Players' Union.)
(The article in the magazine, by the way, does nothing to support the "baseball's most indispensable player" claim. It talks about how much of a cannon his arm is, as if that was news, and how much worse a catcher's offensive stats are after 900 games in the bigs (roughly seven grueling years), which Rodriguez is close to approaching. It also fails to note that the Rangers, with the services of their indispensable player, are a dozen games back, light years under .500 and falling like a rock.)
This all leads to the second of those responses, the claim that, essentially, "Baseball is Joe Starplayer. So pay him."
I can guarantee you that this is not always the case. People go to the ballpark for hundreds of other reasons, many of which don't involve the players at all. Do you know how many times I have gone to the park with people who haven't the teensiest idea who the people on the field are, much less even care? I honestly think most people go just to do this relatively fun social thing. And if I were to pick the one most common reason selected for going to the game, it would be so dad (or mom for that matter) can take his (or her) kid to see a baseball game.
When they go, they go to see whatever talent happens to be there. Whoever it is. At one time it was in the form of Mickey Mantle or Bob Feller. Another time is a Ken Griffey Jr. or a Greg Maddux, or even a Herb Crittle. Herb Crittle? Yeah, Herb Crittle, who in 1997 would be chasing Williams with a .414 average and Maris with 53 homers so far.
If he were ever born.
Of course, there is no Herb Crittle, as far as we know, but how many youngsters refuse an offer to go to a ball game because there is no Herb Crittle out there to excite them?
"Say Eddie, wanna go to the ball game tonight?"
"Dad, that'd be great except, nah, Herb Crittle is not out there. You know -- Herb Crittle, the one who is really worthy of your hard-earned money to help pay his $20 million-a-year salary because he is good enough to merit it but doesn't exist.... So I'd rather not go."
The point is that Eddie will just go to see whoever is out there. Sure, he will want to see Mark McGwire or Randy Johnson or whoever is in the poster on the wall of his bedroom. But if they were gone tomorrow, Eddie would not stop going to ballgames.
The players simply have a distorted idea of how indispensable they are.
So what then is it?
What is the measure of how players should be paid?
While it is true that there is really no objective standard, and as much as we'd like to have one there never will really be one, we can still go by the one determinant that operates in a market economy, and that is simply by what the market will bear. It is basic business administration in a market economy that determines how much a player will be paid based on how much of a draw he is.
The player's man will say, "Great! Then don't begrudge them their cash...." And I too will claim to my dying breath that a player should make as much money as the market will provide. Call me an evil capitalist before you call me a good communist.
But while the player's man will also say that the reserve clause made salaries too low, I claim that free agency has made them too high. (What is even more astounding is that players get a road per-diem in addition to their salaries, meaning that their basic living expenses are pretty much paid for, and many get even more from endorsement contracts, baseball card fees, etc.)
It seems everyone is set in their "pay the best players the most" mentality, and I fiercely challenge that. Here's why:
People think that it is the Barry Bondses and the Frank Thomases that win ballgames. They contribute a great deal, but what people do not realize is that baseball is not football or basketball. A Brett Favre or a Michael Jordan can control a game because they can be given the ball on every play. But Barry Bonds comes up only once every nine batters, and he could have a 10-foot-wide glove in left field, but if the batter hits the game-winning homer to right, Bonds' glove does his team no good. If the Giants decided to pay Bonds $30 million a year and get a bunch of bush leaguers to play around him, the game the fan pays for will be worthless. Bonds will always be stranded at second, he'll always watch the pitcher serve up gopher balls, he'll always pick up grounders the shortstop doesn't field.
Where did the fans get this idea that Bonds' worth, in monetary terms, is worth one hundred times that of the shortstop who's got to make that play in the field and get that occasional clutch hit just as much as Bonds does? Certainly we expect a little more from Bonds, but a hundred times more?
I personally think we should be paying the "lower" ballplayers more and the "stars" less. To show you graphically what I mean, look at how the average major league salary distribution was this year. It looked something like this, a little more for teams like the Yankees and Braves, much less for teams like the Pirates and A's. Each salary listed is a gross approximation, but it is close enough to make the point.
Players listed Yearly salary
1 to 10 $300,000 each (total: $3 million)
11 to 15 $400,000 each (total: $2 million)
16 to 21 $1,000,000 each (total: $6 million)
22 $2,000,000
23 $3,000,000
24 $5,000,000
25 $8,000,000
Total: $29 million
If I remember, that total is pretty close to a standard team payroll.
The noteworthy thing is the disparity between the Greg Maddux
figure and the shortstop's. It is simply too great. Some will
say, "Come on, baseball is entertainment and we want to see Greg
Maddux strike guys out!" Then that means we don't want to see
that shortstop make the play behind Maddux when he gets the ground
ball? We don't want to see the left fielder get that crucial hit?
What should the payroll figures really look like, if we valued players more equally?
Players listed Yearly salary
1 to 15 $400,000 each (total: $6 million)
16 to 20 $800,000 each (total: $4 million)
21 to 23 $1,000,000 each (total: $3 million)
24 to 25 $2,000,000 each (total: $4 million)
Total: $17 million
In making the salaries more fitting to the contribution of each
player, I've not only made it much more sensible but I have chopped
off $12 million and still rewarded the "better" players with significantly
more income than the "lower" ones.
It can be asked, "Who are you to say what salaries should be?"
I'm not. Never said I was. I'm simply looking at the market. What I've shared is reasonable. I didn't say the range should be no lower that $2 and not higher than $2.50, nor did I say money means nothing and let's-just-all-pay-'em-each-$10-million-what-a-nice-guy-I-am.
I am saying that salaries as they are now are way too high and have an adverse effect on The Game of Baseball.
Because they are too high, the question then must be, in what ways then do we suffer because of those salaries? A lot of people bemoan the direction that baseball is going, and some of it is the result of the owners having to deal with this free agency idiocy and seek to increase revenue and keep demand for baseball high. We'll go into all of that in detail. First, however, let's look at a some more of the crucial things we need to know about the economics of what the owners actually do in running their teams.
First, baseball teams are piddly operations compared to what real corporate powers are. For whatever money they make or don't make, no baseball team is in operation to make a whole lot of money for a whole heck of a lot of people, except for the players who are out there basically to entertain. That is, a baseball team is not a corporate giant like General Motors or AT&T or IBM, operations that get revenues in the tens of billions and must do so in order to generate incomes for millions of people who work for them. Sure, your average baseball club has front office people and ticket takers and vendors, but baseball's Powers-That-Be are not out to build the team as a business. They are certainly there to maintain it and try to clear something in the way of profit. But let's cut to the chase...
Professional sports teams are rich people's play toys.
If any owner in the bigs so wanted, he could pay the richest player ten times what he gets now. Peter Magowan, owner of the Giants, runs Safeway, which took in $460 million in profit last year. (And as a percentage of revenue, by standards of the corporate big boys, that was piddle. Yeah, I'd like to have such piddle.) Anyway, Magowan could make an executive decision, take a nice chunk of that profit and out of the goodness of his own heart give Barry Bonds a raise from his $11 mil to, oh, $50 mil a year. A drop in the bucket, really.
So why doesn't he do that if he wants to lock up his marquee player? In fact, why stop there? Why not sign all the great players in the big leagues for buttloads more and have a real kickin'-A team?
The reason is simple. It is because there is still a general consensus out there that salaries be kept at a reasonable level -- as if "reasonable" is still a consideration -- and that ballplayers are paid based on revenue generated by the club, based on how many tickets are sold, how much of the TV pie they get, merchandising, concessions, and whatever else. Should Peter Magowan spend $50 million a year on Barry Bonds, then Frank Thomas will see and Alex Rodriguez will see and Mike Piazza will see and consider that their team's owner could pay them that much too. Should Magowan do that, it would be tremendously stupid business practice. There is also the idea that the majors is indeed a natural monopoly; this idea is not lost on the owners.
With this in mind, there is always then this question, probably the most talked about question all summer:
"Why in the world did Jerry Reinsdorf pay Albert Belle $11 million?"
People scream about how much of a lying, two-faced, jerk Reinsorf was, although I've heard him described much more colorfully than I just did.
Addressing the whole White Sox situation this year would bring a lot of light on what free agency is doing to baseball, in this instance what it is very destructively doing to the White Sox.
Yes, I blame free agency, not Jerry Reinsdorf. Now trust me, I am not campaigning to be his patron saint or anything, nor am I even defending the guy.
I'm just ripping free agency.
Besides the Belle signing fiasco, the White Sox situation also involves the idea that they'd quit after being only 3-1/2 games out of first at the end of July. They traded three of their best pitchers to the Giants for six nominal minor leaguers. It was reported that the Sox clubhouse was like a morgue afterwards, with nonplused players and fans alike expressing abject disappointment.
(Remember several years ago when Padre owner Tom Werner did this? He traded away Fred McGriff and Gary Sheffield, and the fans and the media people had a core meltdown of epic proportions. Werner was merely making his statement against free agency by trading for a young team who he anticipated would win while he could be fiscally responsible also. He was practically hanged, eviscerated, stomped on, chewed up and spit out in effigy, and there was a shockingly huge celebration when he later gave up his ownership in the team. Why was I not smart enough to know that -- with free agency soaring out of control -- this would happen again...?)
Look a little more closely at Reinsdorf's thinking. I am being speculative here, so you be your own judge. First, the Belle signing.
Reinsdorf made this obscene investment because of two things he was counting on for it to pay dividends. One, he expected to Belle to chase Maris, essentially, and two, he expected fans to come to the park to see him do it. He needed both to happen -- both, not just one or the other because naturally it was anticipated that each would affect the other.
Neither happened. Belle has had stretches of good play, but he has not come through as expected, so much so that the Sox were considering trading him to the Yankees. The fans also stayed away, certainly in large part because of Belle's own poor abilities to market himself. To put it less delicately: nobody likes the guy.
So Reinsdorf blames the fans. Of course, the fans take great offense, as they should. But to Reinsdorf's credit, here is basically what he is saying: "You, the fans, want a winner. You don't seem to get bent out of shape about how much we pay -- better yet: how much you pay -- these guys to give you a winner, so I'm going to give you one of the best home run hitters in the game a gidzillion dollars to help our team win. Now come to the ballpark to show how much you mean it."
What is it that Reinsdorf is doing wrong here? I can't see it. He is certainly being sincere. "Fans, you want a winner, here's what free agency means I have to do to get one," he says. Belle then goes in the tank both on and off the field and Reinsorf actually considers trading him. Why not? When an investment goes bad, you try to sell!
After the trade with the Giants, Sox General Manager Ron Schueler was just as straightforward. "Hey!" he said -- I'm paraphrasing here, "We didn't want to hassle with the same kind of thing that happened with Alex Fernandez last year. These guys we traded were going to be free agents next year, and this time we got something for them now."
Look at what is happening here: Trades are not made because of the team, they are made to deal with what free agency has brought about. Players are traded because they may not get signed, so the objective is to get something for them. That is crap. It always has been.
(Some have speculated that Reinsdorf did it to cut the Sox payroll so he could afford Jordan and Pippen of his NBA Bulls. Whether or not this is the case, it further points out how the duplicity of free agency in all sports has thoroughly jerked us around.)
And the Giants? What about their part? Are they simply out to brazenly take advantage of the White Sox generosity? As a Giants fan I'm ecstatic about the deal. To hear Dodger fans moan and groan gives me bountiful glee. (Of course whether or not it actually does pay off at season's end remains to be seen. Bear in mind also that if the Giants do lose all three new pitchers to free agency after the season, they'll get, I believe, two draft picks per lost free agent -- which is no less of a crapshoot than the minor leaguers they just coughed up.)
But the point is that the Giants are in a position to win now, not necessarily because they are more noble than the Sox but because they themselves are thinking in fiscal terms, having to sell beaucoup number of luxury boxes or seat licenses or whatever it is they must sell to make their new Pac Bell Park project succeed. If they win now, then they may get what they need for the future in the way of fans getting their rear ends into paying for the team.
The Giants' mentality? Get the fans interested by winning.
Sounds good to me.
The problem is that this is not a new idea. And it is another one of those stupid things that I always hear from people who simply don't carefully think through what they are saying:
"Winning teams draw. So just win and you'll get enough to support your team."
What people who say this don't take into account is that baseball is a zero-sum game. When one team wins, the other team loses. Every time, all the time. Zero-sum: a +1 in the standings for the winner is a -1 for another team for a total overall gain of zero.
It is true that in history teams who have consistently done poorly either in the standings or in their front office operations have been forced to drop out. Professional leagues are littered with wreckages of failed franchises. This was partly behind my point about not really caring one way or the other about expansion teams. I don't personally have any extreme dislike of the Expos or the Rangers or even the Pirates or the Red Sox. I do have a bit more affinity for the more traditional teams, but it should be noted that my own personal rooting interests in the American League are the Angels and the Royals. I'm just saying that if any team but my teams can't cut it and must fold, I just don't care a whole heck of a lot. This is my own personal, perhaps even selfish sentiment, I know, but everyone has it regarding their own rooting interest. No one wants their team to be the one that can't cut it.
I also recognize that for a major league to function, it must have a number of teams that can operate at some kind of successful level, whether they win or not. As much as I abhor the Dodgers, they must be around for me to get great pleasure from beating the pants off them. A whole bunch of other teams need to be there to for me enjoy whomping on them. Fans of whatever team get their own enjoyment from the hope they'll kick butt against all the other teams. I just don't think, then, that people want to see a major leagues that feature only the Dodgers, the Yankees, the Orioles, the Braves, the Marlins, and the Blue Jays.
For major league baseball to flourish, there has to be a way that well-managed clubs (and certainly some are better managed than others) can continue to participate without having to rely on whether or not they win every year. Of course we all want our teams to be dedicated to winning. They all are. Many will claim that Reinsdorf was not, but what happened to him was just the way the game of baseball works. The other team's gidzillion-dollar guy beat his gidzillion-dollar guy. Which is one more reason why free agency is so monumentally stupid: fans screaming about their gidzillion-dollar guy not coming through for him: "We paid this bozo a jillion dollars to come see him strike out?"
Sorry folks. It's a zero-sum game. Either Albert Belle is going to win or Roger Clemens is. This leads to a variation of this, another astoundingly stupid thing I hear all the time:
"Joe Starplayer doesn't really care about the money. He just wants to play for a winner."
What caw-caw. When Joe Starplayer says, "It's not about money," it makes me want to hurl my lungs. Why doesn't he put his money where his mouth is and sign for major league minimum? (It's not that it is, in large part, about money; it's that they pretend it isn't, and expect us to buy it.)
People who make this boneheaded remark about some "good player getting to play for a winner" still don't realize that it is a zero-sum game. A winner one day may be a loser the next. People may say that the Braves are winners, while a team like the Phillies is a loser. Really? Are the Phillies losers? Are the players on that team losers? Is each Phillies player less of a man? What blows me away is that a fan will just as soon belittle a losing team before they realize that (a) the players on that team suit up and work their tails off just as much as the next guy, and (b) not one of them would ever dare go up to any player on that team and say to his face, "You are a bunch of losers." (Oh, sure, some drunken idiot with box seats may scream and holler at players on a bad team returning to the dugout, but how daring is that? Especially when they look away just as a player looks them in the eye.)
And Joe Starplayer is just as guilty of this every time he signs with a supposedly "winning" team and announces to the world, "Thank you, I'm glad I've got a chance to play for a winning team now." Not only is this a slap in the face to the team he came from, but he's only admitting that he himself is not as much of a man to deal with losing as a man, and furthermore is not confident enough in his own abilities to help a bad team become a winner.
With all this in mind, we embark on the inventory of all the things that I hear are wrong with baseball. I fully intend to make it as exhaustive as I can, so bear with me if I leave something out. This inventory has no particular order, and included with each is an explanation about how free agency has had an impact on that particular item:
This is really not a problem. It really isn't, unless -- of course -- it leads to any of the other wrong things. That is where I have a problem with it....
Always a complaint by those who don't understand how hog-tied the owners are because of free agency. Owners are manipulated by the system to overpay for underachieving players. Even though the Florida Marlins are playing winning baseball and -- if they keep it up -- on their way to playoffs, owner Wayne Huizenga is selling the team because he admitted that he did a poor job of fiscally managing his team.
One of the most astute businessmen in Florida? Did a poor job? Not even. What he's saying here is that winning team or not, he paid too damn much money for the players and doesn't want to mess with that anymore. What he's revealing here is that this thing with baseball -- this free agency thing -- is full of it because it does not work. It is a constricting artifice that destroys the resourceful edge that a true market system brings.
So you're right. The owners are paying the players too damn much money.
So get rid of free agency.
Only a consequence of free agency in that rain-outs are money-losers. Anything that can bring in the very last dime is now maximized. A classic example of this mentality is in the answer to this question: "When was the last time you saw a scheduled doubleheader? I'm talking a scheduled doubleheader."
There was actually one in the Giants' schedule this year, against the Pirates last month. Needless to say I was amazed. Twenty-five years ago they were put in the schedule all the time. Nowadays, why should they be? For each twin-bill, that's one game's worth of revenue down the toilet.
Otherwise the only real reason I don't like domed stadiums is because of...
Artificial turf.
Artificial turf is used mostly for the same reason there are domed stadiums: to prevent rain-outs. The idea is that it drains easier so it would be more likely to allow games to be played during rainy times.
Get those games in! Otherwise it's lost revenue!>
New advances in drainage systems have allowed teams to put grass back in where there was once artificial turf, so that is good. Of course there must still be artificial turf in domed stadiums because grass won't grow indoors. [The good news is that the ballpark housing the Arizona Diamondbacks is expected to have natural turf; a sufficiently hardy strain of grass -- it is hoped -- is in the process of being developed. How's that for passive voice, huh, writing teachers? -- GP]
The whole retractable roof thing is a terrific innovation. We should see more of it in places where rain is a factor in April and September.
Not a real major factor, I only bring it up because fences are moved in -- or home plate moved out, whichever is more cost effective -- in order to give the fans more of what they supposedly want -- home runs. The idea is that if homers are what the fans want, then let's give 'em more so they'll be more likely to come to the ballpark.
I personally don't like this mentality at all. I tend to think it even insults the fans by assuming all they want to see is balls fly out of the park. It doesn't take into account the value of watching lots of running: outfielders chasing down deep fly balls (sometimes making spectacular catches) and batters and runners streaking around the bases. This to me is much more exciting than watching an outfielder turn and watch a 280-foot home run sail out of the park. (After which the MCI "Tale-of-the-Tape" measures it at 458 feet.)
The thought is that when the batter keeps stepping out of the box and the pitcher takes 10 minutes between each pitch, then the game drags.
I dunno. It doesn't bother me too much. If it is excessive, yeah, it can be a pain. But the pace of baseball is one of the unique things about the game.
And again, hey, if people keep showin' up, what difference does it make?
Put into effect in the American League just a year or two before real free agency got rolling, certainly one of the purposes of the DH was to increase fan interest by putting another good bat in the lineup. Many traditionalists complain that it takes away the strategy aspect of what will happen when the pitcher comes up in a crucial situation. The more brazen DH-haters will fittingly claim that "You're either out there on the field or not. If you can't play a position, you're a weenie."
I really don't care one way or the other. While I kind of like the idea of plugging that guy into the lineup, I'm definitely more of a traditionalist in the sense that, if they do this DH thing, what much more stupid thing will come next?
Aluminum bats? (This could be a category all to itself but at least no one foresees it happening in the near future. We all hope....)
Seriously now, who gives a damn?
[Well, Pete.... -- GP]
Not a bad thing to most people. Most really like the idea of seeing new teams, having "new blood," so to speak, in the majors. This is especially desirable to those in those expansion cities.
My problem is with the dilution of talent. I find it ridiculous to assume that you can stick in a bunch of minor leaguers and instantly call it major-league-caliber ball. The counter-argument to this is the theoretical idea that the quality of play will always rise to its own level. The idea is that anyone who is in the majors will play his heart out, and the good players will stay and be good enough to be major leaguers while the ones who aren't won't be around. The thought also occurs that no matter how big the major leagues are, there are plenty of minor-league ballplayers who are good enough to be major leaguers.
The free agency impact is merely in the idea that expansion franchises are attractive because of all the money that is supposedly in baseball.
An important note I should make here regards the connection of free agency with the two newest expansion teams, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Arizona Diamondbacks, and the signing of their top prospects, Matt White and Travis Lee.
Drafted out of high school by the Giants and White Sox, respectively, White and Lee were made free agents because neither team made them an offer within a certain time period. Now, I don't know all the details of how this all works, but if that was all that it was, there is no way it could have happened like that. I'm sorry but, even if it is the Giants, who've been known to do some really stupid things -- believe me, I know -- no team can be so stupid as to fail to offer a contract to their just drafted-in-the-first-round prospect. Even if just to MAKE THE OFFER.
"We, the San Francisco Giants, do hereby officially tender the forthwith offer of two dollars and zero cents per year upon Matthew Tiberius White, first round draft pick from Millard Fleener High School." Okay, it's official. Now we can negotiate from there.
I mean, what is the deal with this? Did they not understand the nature of this technicality which caused them to lose their high pick? Now, again, I don't know all of exactly what happened, maybe it was the Giants who just did not care enough to keep him. But I don't think so.
What I think happened was that the Giants lost White because they did not offer him some kind of expected preprogrammed or prearranged kind of contract. That really galls me. That reeks of more free-agency-oriented garbage.
Meanwhile, White and Lee went on to sign with the two new expansion teams, White going to the Devil Rays and Lee going to the Diamondbacks, and they were each signed to outrageous contracts with millions of dollars in bonuses, apparently because the two teams had more money in their spending pool to afford to pay them that much. Naturally everyone starts screaming about how that move just jacked the going rate for good ballplayers even higher, and I'm sure it did.
We won't hear the last of that; indeed, no sooner did this all transpire when another of those thorns in baseball's side became much more irritable, a thorn that many think is the main problem with the economics of pro sports....
One particular thorn is Scott Boras, super-agent who has made some super enemies because of his rigidly intolerant hard-line tactics. Boras saw what happened in the White-Lee situation and, representing J.D. Drew, a prospect drafted by the Phillies, said to himself, "Hmmm. If I just hold out long enough, stubbornly enough, in fact I'll hold out so stiffly that the Phillies won't even effectively be able to contact me, then they will never be able to make Drew an offer and he will be declared a -- ohh, ooo, uhhh, AAAHH! -- A FREE AGENT!!!" (You can calm down now, Scott....)
(Evidently the problem stemmed in part from the fact that the Phillies supposedly sent the contract to the wrong address and didn't correct the error until it was too late. How easy it must've been for Boras to attempt to drive up Drew's pricetag by giving the Phillies the wrong address.) Boras even went so far as to sign Drew up with some independent minor league team in Minnesota or someplace. Was this to further get across the idea that he had no idea that the Phillies even drafted him? The last I heard was that Drew was officially declared not a free agent, so Boras still must deal with the Phillies.
What, then, is the real deal with agents, besides the fact that if their condition was ever really diagnosed there would be an overwhelming demand placed on organ banks for hearts?
As much as people disdainfully equate player agents with free agency, I really don't think they are that much of a big deal. I really don't. A player is free to do whatever he wants, and if he seeks professional legal or financial help, then why begrudge him that? Ultimately the player is responsible for his own decisions, anyway. The agent is only going to do what the player wants. The final say is the player's.
When it starts to get to where the conniving agent is instructing -- sometimes just short of brainwashing -- a young, impressionable, unwitting player, then it becomes a question of ethics. Many believe that Boras is doing precisely this to Drew, a kid who probably just doesn't know any better, and who is being told he's the next coming of Ruth-Williams-Mays. In a sense Boras is so over-blowing it that he is really screwing with Drew's baseball career. When that happens, then that is when I see agents as being dangerous.
Otherwise, if an agent can get a player a reasonable income, however lucrative, then great. More power to him.
One of the bastard children of free agency -- along with the salary cap/luxury tax lunacy. If you want to see how much the owners are constricted by free agency, just look at the basic reason that arbitration is even in existence.
It is because the owners found they could not even pay the going rate for a player, were always forced to pay more, so they agreed to institute this as a desperate attempt to get judgments in their favor. Wow, did they ever find out how stupid this was. The players somehow finagled them into getting it by claiming that since there was no total free agency, then the not-quite free agents should be able to have some judge decide what they should get paid. The player can really never lose because no matter what happens, he ends up being awarded some ungodly sum; the owner can only anticipate two possible outcomes: losing or losing worse.
The way it works is this: After the owner offers a player an obscene amount of money and the player replies in that whiny voice, "Not enough," they both jaunt off to the arbitrator. He decides. Sounds like proper healthy market economics at work here.
In his case for free agency, Curt Flood liked to use the argument that went something like, "Say you were an accountant. You were laid off. The company could not rightly control you, they could not keep you from going to work for another company as an accountant."
Thing is, an accountant also cannot say to his boss, "Won't give me a raise? Hhrump. Well, I'll just go see about that," and go get a hearing from an arbitrator without being laughed off the face of the earth.
Where in the world do players think they should get this privilege that no one else has, especially when they claim they are "just like an accountant" and should reap the benefits of the market system?
What caw-caw.
Believe it or not, free agency has an impact on this.
I will begin by saying, however, that I hear way too much bitching and moaning about umpire calls. The fans take an umpire's impact way out of proportion, and I know that a lot of times we hear a player complain about this call or that call. It's really all part of the show.
Almost every time I've heard a player asked about a call that we, the fans, may think was bad, he replies very sagely that all the calls even out and that he'd have been much more of a factor if he'd gotten that hit or he'd made the pitch. That's really the right attitude to have. I myself have played in city league basketball games in which the officiating stank, but my attitude -- and the attitude I ask my team to have -- is that if we aren't good enough to win with bad officiating, then we aren't good enough to win, period. That ideal just makes us work harder to be better, and for the most part the pros adopt it, too, because they know that you just can't do anything about officiating.
Now, Gregg has brought up the idea that since the John Hirschbeck/Roberto Alomar spitting incident last year, the umpires have been carrying around this huge grudge. I don't really know how this affects how they call a game, except with the thought that they are tired of "rich spoiled brat" ballplayers getting their way -- as it appeared Alomar did -- and getting paid a enormous chunk of the baseball pie while the umpires are getting chicken scratch. So if they make a bad call, it's "big f---in' deal" to them. Instead of working that much harder at maintaining the integrity of the game, they've just become that much more brazenly intolerant of whining players and coaches.
[They have also violated major league directives to call the strike zone as it is put forth in the rulebook; they deliberately bait players into -- as the umpires would put it -- "ejecting themselves"; they have also violated MLB's policy of waiting 2 minutes and 25 seconds between half-innings, which is why radio and TV broadcasts so frequently rejoin games "already in progress." They do all this because they are bulletproof, and they know it. But that's a separate issue. -- GP]
Wait a minute.... Who put that in there? Oh well.
The one thing I will grant the players is that they do work their tails off and are under a tremendous amount of pressure, even if it does relate to whether or not he spanks a little white ball with a stick.
But in a real sense it is almost as if their blessed free agency has come back to whack them in the rear end. There is the consideration -- the players would certainly tell you this -- that they feel the burden to do much more in their role as ballplayers because of the big money they are getting. Some can't handle it and respond with calls to be role models with the pleasant sentiment, "Bite me. I'm just here to hit baseballs." A lot of people gasp at that, but they have a point.
With the realignment of '94 and interleague play, the travel schedule has been a nightmare for teams. Way too many two-game series and the additional interleague games mean much more traveling. Off-days are not frequent enough, getaway games are scheduled at night, and there is even that stupid "Hall-of-Fame Game" in Cooperstown in the middle of August. (This year's game had to be played by the Dodgers, so I was definitely not displeased. Many, many more worthless tiring innings for them to endure.)
Not really a problem in and of itself. For the most part I have been pleased to see TV coverage getting better as far as overall production value goes.
A couple of years ago a lot of people had a problem with the "Baseball Night in America" concept in which many crucial playoff games were not shown in several parts of the country. That bombed, to the joy of practically everyone. The reason they tried this experiment was actually because of a problem that still has no solution: How can a sport that has most of its interest focused regionally be made more attractive to a national audience? (Read: How can we make more $$$?) Satellite technology and cable has certainly had some effect on broadening coverage.
One thing the networks are doing is selling the "big-draw teams." I heard an ad on the radio the other day for a game -- I think it was on Fox -- featuring the Yankees and the Brewers. Think they were selling the Brewers? Doubt it. You can find a game all the time for the Yankees-anybody or the Dodgers-anybody or the Braves-anybody, but how often can you get the Brewers-Twins? The Expos-Pirates?
Big market-small market demographics have an colossally profound impact on the economics of the game, and a lot of that is related directly to TV. Television economics has an incredibly powerful influence on free agency and vice-versa. I don't care for beans if the players get a nice chunk of the TV pie, but I do care about what the nature of television's power has on the game. And it is making bigger and bigger noise in this next item....
I've put all three of these items together because they all have something to do with the schedule and playoffs and matchups and all that stuff. It is also one of the most talked about topics in the game today; as I write this very moment, the owners are meeting to consider a dramatic realignment plan. This whole subject is also the one that gives the baseball traditionalists the highest volume of gag reflexes.
A little history first.
When the major leagues got going through this century, the teams in the National and American Leagues were just sort of glopped together in their respective leagues. However many teams there were, they were all just part of one big "division."
Then in 1969 the Powers-That-Be decided to have two divisions per league. At the time the traditionalists had a cow, but because of television and all that untapped $$$, it was implemented to provide more interest in the game. It really turned out to be not-any-big deal, except for in years like 1973 when the Mets got into the World Series -- even taking the A's to seven games -- with a record barely over .500.
This format was in effect until 1994 when the Powers-That-Be decided to have three divisions per league and add a wild-card team to the playoffs. Adding another round of playoffs would generate more revenue, of course. The problem with this idea is that it increased the chances that a real stinker of a division winner could get into the playoffs -- this year, as late as July, no team in the NL Central had a winning record. The wild-card entry means that a non-division champion could win the World Series, and many traditionalists retch over that idea. To me, I don't know -- I'm of the philosophy that you win when you gotta, and any chance you got, you take, whatever your record is.
In 1997 the Powers-That-Be allowed interleague games to be put into the schedule. Why did they do such a patently sacrilegious thing? What else: Increase fan interest in hopes of getting more $$$. This is where the purists and traditionalists alike began raising their voices. This, they claimed, was a definite breach of the integrity of the game. So they, like everybody else, sat back and watched. Interleague play came and went (and yet is still to come), and nobody thought it was such a horrible thing. And you know? It really wasn't. In my traditionalist sentimentalities, I'm not crazy about it, but it didn't wreck the game. They haven't gone bananas and done a bunch of dumb things with it -- yet. I've heard that most people actually liked it, if anything for its novelty, certainly.
Here is where those diligent purists and traditionalists begin their rumblings...
"What's next?"
And here it is. (So soon? Hey, gotta pay the big boys....)
Complete realignment of the major leagues to bring about more interest through regional rivalries, more interest in newly arranged pennant race possibilities, and more -- well, more -- mmmm -- moneeeeey, yeah, that's it. (Surprise surprise....)
Here's the proposal, just to whet your appetite (mm-mm, can't beat the taste of sloshy chunky just-disgorged bits of brunch):
AL East AL Central Baltimore Atlanta Boston Cincinnati Montreal Cleveland New York (NL*) Mets Detroit Florida Pittsburgh New York (AL*) Yankees Tampa Bay Philadelphia Toronto NL West** NL Central Anaheim Chicago Cubs Arizona Chicago White Sox Colorado Houston Los Angeles Kansas City Oakland Milwaukee San Diego Minnesota San Francisco St. Louis Seattle Texas * Whoops, can't do that any more. ** Looks so far like an Arena Football division.
According to Bud Selig, a poll declares that 75% of the fans want realignment along these lines. Again, anybody can make a poll or statistics say what they want. I mean, the polling question may have read something like, "Would you favor major league realignment if it meant a better game, more disposable income for you, and better sex with your spouse?" (What then were the other 25% thinking?) It has also been asked, "Which fans were they asking?" (My guess: people named "Selig.") I've heard all kinds of different polls, some stating results diametrically opposed from each other.
Just off the top of my head, I'd say that of all the reasonably serious fans, maybe 75% are purists, those who have a particular vision of what is "pure" about baseball -- sometimes to an obsessive degree, while 65% are traditionalists, those who have more of a vision about how the game is organized as the major leagues and so forth. (Obviously there's some overlap between the two.) Many, obviously, are both purists and traditionalists, and each to a varying degree. Of those more nominal fans who only go every once in a while and follow the game only occasionally, I'd say only 20% are purists and maybe 30% are traditionalists. The rest pretty much just go with the flow, thinking the major leagues can do no wrong no matter how much they screw up things, or as fans they think they can do nothing about whatever the majors does, or perhaps they just don't care enough. I'm not saying one or the other is good or bad, I'm just giving my thoughts and speculating about what I see. I don't know for sure -- I'm just giving my guesstimate. I imagine we'd need a poll to find out, but even then, what would the polling definitions of "purist" and "traditionalist" be? And how reliable would the polls be?
Many purists are looking at realignment as perhaps a positive thing for "baseball," that is, it doesn't totally screw with the game, so it may not be so horrible. The traditionalists, however, are heaving gobs by the barrel over this realignment thing.
[Wait a minute. Purists are okay with realignment? I've thought of purists as those who believe, say, that if man were meant to fly, he'd have wings. -- GP]
For my traditionalist sentimentalities, I myself am resistant to the change, but I am also not violently opposed to it. I actually even see merit in it.
For one thing, it gets rid of that third division. Sorry, but I think a third division stinks. I dread the possibility of having a fourth division just so there can be four four-team divisions. It just increases the likelihood of there being a really lousy division in which all four teams stink, are way below .500, and come playoff time a losing team gets a shot at the World Series. Yes, I did say earlier "Ya gotta win when ya got the chance," but I'm just pointing out how much this cheapens the regular season.
Will there be a wild-card team in the radical new format? Or, I imagine, two wild card teams? I'm sure there will be. Eh, not crazy about it, but that is progress. I don't think it is horrible, but what will be horrible is if they decide they want more playoff revenue and add a fourth round of playoffs, a la NBA basketball or NHL hockey.
That would be disastrous. Here's why.
Let's take a look at this season, for example.
Right now in the American League, four playoff spots are up for grabs and there are seven teams who have very good shots at them and are fighting it out tooth and nail to get them: the Angels, Mariners, Indians, White Sox, Brewers, Orioles, and Yankees. All are playing hard knowing that nothing is guaranteed, and it is tremendously exciting to follow.
Add four more playoff teams, and what happens to this excitement? It rips it out like a starved bear ripping out the contents of a hiker's lunch pack (not to mention the contents of the hiker).
What you would then have is all seven of these teams already in the playoffs, for all intents and purposes, and four teams, Texas, Boston, Toronto, and Detroit fighting it out for the eighth playoff spot. (Chicago and Milwaukee have similar records as these teams but they have a legitimate shot at their division title in the current format.)
Either you have the intense interest in seven good teams clashing like champions, or you have barely a glance at four way-below-.500 teams stumbling around for a chance to eventually get blasted in the playoffs anyway -- or, worse yet, go all the way.
This is what happens in the NBA every single season. The second half of the regular season is complete waste of time. If eight teams from each conference go into the playoffs, then they should just seed the best teams after 20 games or so and get on with the postseason. And even then, the worst of the eight teams (namely the Warriors, when they make the playoffs) are always blown out in three games anyway.
This is what would happen in the major leagues. If you, as a fan, are going to protest anything, go out of your way to scream, holler, shout, wail, do whatever you can to convince the Powers-That-Be not to add more than four playoff teams per league.
Another thing that must happen in any new realignment, radical or not, is intradivisional games must be featured as the prominent -- if not flat-out exclusive -- part of every team's schedule in September and October. For all the talk about how wonderful interleague play is, no one has had anything nice to say about the fact that as late as the first week of September we're still piddling around with it when teams should be playing the other teams in their division. Granted, this three-division nonsense makes this difficult to achieve, but the "new" alignment as noted above, for all its potential wretchedness, can facilitate exclusive intradivisional play late in the season.
Another thing to consider -- along with the thousands of questions that must be answered with radical realignment -- is what is going to be the deal with the DH? This is where my purist sentimentalities taste something really rancid -- if the Reds and Phillies go into the American League, do they just start using the DH, while Kansas City and Seattle pink-slip theirs?
Does free agency have anything to do with this mess? It has everything to do with it: Gotta find a way to pay the big boys....
For cryin' out loud, let's be honest, if the Powers-That-Be discovered they could make a dime more by having 20 divisions, by putting all the teams in the playoffs, or by putting the DH into effect every third day, they'd do it. Because of free agency, maintaining the vital integrity with the way the highest levels of the game are established has been replaced with the higher principle of getting that extra dollar.
In the ongoing impassioned discourse about this whole realignment thing, I've found that the resolute traditionalists -- fervently attached to the conventional idea of the AL and NL and the identity of each team therein -- are essentially asking the question, "Would the game really be that much worse if we just left things the way they were? Is the change really worth it? Will making such a dramatic change bring world peace, total enlightenment, and better sex?" They are simply crying that if it doesn't, then don't mess with it. It is just not worth it.
And I do agree with them, but not because of the realignment plan itself, but because of the whole "money is the highest principle" thing, which then leads to that premonition, you know the feeling, the anxious waiting for the alarming answers to that one question...
"What's next?..."
In my last piece I mentioned that Joe Mainstream-Media-Guy will say whatever Joe Starplayer wants him to say, and a respondent thought I said Joe Mainstream-Media-Guy likes Joe Starplayer and he rather vented about how much Joe Mainstream-Media-Guy, in the guise of Joe Sportswriter, actually hates Joe Starplayer and spends a great deal of time writing about what a jerk he is.
It's all show.
Joe Sportswriter couldn't care less about Joe Starplayer unless Joe Starplayer is going to make him look good and sell television shows or newspapers. Many times it takes the form of fawning sycophantic behavior, to the extent that whenever Joe Starplayer says, "Ah'm worth $10 million, dats all ah'm saying," Joe Mainstream-Media-Guy says, "Right you are, J.J," just so he can sell his schtick.
Other times we see Joe Starplayer stiff Joe Sportswriter, and Joe Sportswriter then does a rip-job on him. It is still just part of the show.
Joe Mainstream-Media-Guy will also think nothing of sticking it to someone like Albert Belle because it's the socially acceptable thing. At one time it almost became an art, the latest sportswriting challenge, until it was finally discovered Belle was so dull that they stopped. When was the last time you read or heard any Belle-bashing?
Look at Dennis Rodman -- just to use the example, and it is a good one. The media gets a feel for what the public thinks about Rodman and they discover that he is about as free game as anyone. So Joe Mainstream-Media-Guy and his buddies go to town. They have every kind of take on him, ranging from "What a whacko!" to "The guy is about freedom of expression." Heaven forbid that Rodman should get religion, dye his hair black, remove his tattoos, toss out his rings, and don a shirt, tie and slacks!
Point is that whether it is clean-cut Cal Ripken or party-down Dennis Rodman, the media will praise, deride, glorify, ridicule, or say whatever it is that will sell papers or get viewers to tune in. Most of the time, that is simply what the public wants to hear to begin with.
How do the players feel about that? Oscar Wilde once said, "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." Therefore whatever Joe Mainstream-media-guy says about Joe Starplayer is okay with him. As long as everyone cashes in.
In the ongoing discussion of this whole free agency thing, it is always asked, "If the owners want us to understand their point of view about the excessiveness of the player's demands, why then haven't they kept salaries down by just not meeting those player's demands???"
The answer lies with the collusion ruling of the late 1980s.
In 1986 several free agent players went out onto the market and expected to be offered contracts worth X million dollars. When those offers did not come in, they sued the owners, charging them with collusion -- conspiring to keep free agents from being signed in order for them to be re-signed by their current team's owners at the salaries the owners wanted to pay.
A couple years later a judgment was rendered favoring the players and the owners were asked to pay damages of several million dollars to the players bringing the action.
At the time, what the owners did was spoken of with such disdain, with sentiments along the lines of, "My goodness, how could the owners do such an illegal thing!" The illegality of it certainly relates to a violation of labor laws with reference to the bargaining agreement that the owners themselves signed, and I admit fully that this is wrong.
What I can't figure out is, what is the deal with collusion being wrong in the first place?
Somebody explain to me why people cannot get together and talk about what they want to pay an employee? [I can only tell you that the people who determined my "salary" said that they constantly watch what employees make in other, similar places and pay these employees in "comparable" fashion to employees with similar duties in these similar companies. -- GP] Don't the players regularly look over and see what Joe Starplayer is making and use that as a gauge to make an estimate of their demands? Isn't this a form of player "collusion," to see "what the market price is"? Can't the owners look for that price, too? Remember, I am asking this as one who sees players working for "The Major Leagues" and not "The Reds" or "The Cubs" or "The Tigers."
The upshot of this is that when the owners all decide that they want to limit the astronomically excessive amount of pay that ballplayers are demanding, the ballplayers turn around and say, for all intents and purposes, "Nuh-uh. You got to pay us what we want. Otherwise you're getting sued."
The collusion ruling effectively was the gun put to the owners head. After the collusion ruling -- legality of it all aside -- it became apparent that the owners could not fiscally manage their own teams -- indeed, "The Major Leagues" -- the way they wanted. I am so sick of hearing anyone say, in that screeching, whiny voice, "It's the owners' fault because they're paying them the money." Every time I hear this from someone I want to grab him by the throat, shake him so fiercely that his brain cells lock into the correct positions, scream, "WILL -- YOU -- GET -- A -- CLUE?!" and then watch there appear on his face a very distinct comes-the-dawn look as he admits, softly but in a most thoroughly convinced fashion, "Oh, yeah...."
What'll happen if the owners all decide to fiscally manage their teams in a proper, responsible way and pay their players reasonable salaries and not more than that? Salaries that would still provide a wonderful living, an even extraordinarily wealthy living? Salaries that would clear the market perfectly well but aren't allowed to because of the artificial impediment of free agency?
What'll happen is the owners will be accused of collusion. This is exactly why owners like Wayne Huizenga, who want to employ sound management practices, are getting out.
The example has been brought to my attention in terms of Steve Avery contesting this argument about collusion: after Avery asked for X million dollars and only got Y million, he couldn't cry about collusion. Therefore, collusion isn't a factor.
No, the reason Avery didn't get his cash is because he doesn't deserve it. The market does work in some instances in the majors. I will say, however, that the Avery example is typical of major league payroll economics, as I detailed earlier. Avery is simply being clumped in with all the "lower" players making chicken scratch (relatively speaking, of course; many of us would happily walk a whole bunch of batters for much less than Avery is getting paid.)
Even with Avery getting paid his piddly little million and a half, or whatever it is -- in fact the Avery example helps support the following point -- the economic situation in the major leagues is still very much like this:
You want to be a hardware store owner. (If Curt Flood can analogize with his accountant, I can do it with the hardware store guy.) You get into the business, but you're told that you must "meet the demands" for buying your inventory, or you'll get sued. You must pay $40 for a $5 socket wrench. You must pay $500 for a $70 electric saw. And so forth. So you meet these incredible demands, and you hope and pray real hard that people come in to buy your astoundingly expensive tools. Maybe some actually do buy the tools (perhaps people think that if they cost so much, then they are worth more), but you continue to sweat it out, and if you complained, you'd be seen as "not really losing any money," or "you actually could afford it because you're so rich anyway."
No other business owner has the constrictions major league owners do.