May 18, 2002

BASEBALL REACHING ITS CROSSROAD

     The fall of 1994 was supposed to have been the bottom of the baseball barrel.  The wounds to the business, and to the game, were supposedly so severe that everyone involved spouted the same refrain—that another such occurrence could inflict a wound deep enough to actually kill the sport.  But the business, and the game, is run by a completely oblivious and seemingly indestructible band of keystone cops that try to run even though they always trip over themselves while simply walking.  This time they will run straight into a brick wall and there won’t be anyone left to watch their antics and be amused. 

      This is the crossroad.  Will baseball survive?  Or will this latest error prove to be its last? 

      These days we hear the standard threats.  The owners shout… LOCKOUT!  The players shout back…STRIKE!  Once bitten, twice shy…but eight times?  Even baseball icon Steve Howe lost his audience after the seventh time.  Another slowdown?  There isn’t going to be enough business left to slow down. The best decision may be to close the whole thing down for good before it explodes and sends its shrapnel flying, hurting innocent bystanders. 

      The report that attendance is down across the majors is not surprising, considering the cloud hanging over baseball.  That anyone who doesn’t reside in the few major U.S. markets has any desire to attend a game is definitely surprising.  Each year fans living in the other baseball markets are sold false promises and false dreams.  Baseball fans are an easily seduced consumer; each year millions are drawn to the ballpark with the hope of enjoying an entertaining and competitive game.  But, for the majority of baseball fans that hope has been extinguished.  Baseball can’t continue to hold up surprise teams like the Oakland A’s and the Minnesota Twins, and claim that small market teams can compete--can entertain.  These surges, by exceptionally fortunate teams, inevitably come up short, and then they disappear after providing a brief challenge to the top teams.  Going to the ballpark has become a very occasional event for most--without hope there can’t be seduction.  Why attach yourself to a player or to a team when you know that the player will soon leave and that the lifespan of that particular team is very brief.  That’s not how the human heart functions.  It is the main reason such strong animosity is shown by the fans to former home team favourites.  When that animosity dissipates and the emotions dissolve then apathy appears; baseball is suffering from a continent wide plague of apathy.

      In their pursuit of the almighty dollar baseball has lost one generation, and is well on its way to losing another.  Their most important games are being decided well after midnight--and with basketball, football, and hockey playoffs being played in either the afternoon or in the early evening younger fans have tuned out baseball and have turned their attention to the other sports.  As a multi-billion dollar business continues to dicker over mere millions, completely disregarding the feelings of its customers, baseball is quickly alienating its existing audience as well.  Soon only those desperately clinging to thin shards of hope will be left behind, sitting on hard wooden benches, watching amateurs, and pining for the days of Bonds and Griffey and McGwire.

      To understand the reasons the game has fallen to such a cataclysmic state is to understand the history of a game where the owners ruled with an iron fist for nearly a century.  It was only when the players…(shh…you have to whisper his name, Marvin Miller)…finally dug in their heels and stood against the totalitarian state did the bargaining table begin to turn.  The players have grown to enjoy the procedure; it’s like a game to them.  But then they’re just taking advantage of the old axiom, which states that smart businessmen turn into complete buffoons when involved with sport.  The players now rule and the owners can only shake very charred fists in their direction. 

     It’s Sidewinder Economics.  The owners attempt to wrest the control back by using such highly renown tactics as lying, treachery, intimidation, and coercion, and those tactics continue to not only fail them, but strengthen the players resolve.  The owners also use sidewinder tactics when dealing with each other.  The strong eat the weak, and will continue to feed until the weak are gone.  Then the strong owners would have little choice but to turn against each other and feed until there is only one survivor.  That owner would eventually die of starvation.  Again, it may be better for baseball to kill itself quickly, and not torture us for years to come. 

      Unfortunately, it’s not about baseball anymore.  The game is secondary.  It’s about control; the control of the business of baseball, and that business fight is destroying the game.  Like children pulling at sticks of candy each side attempts to seize the larger piece.  But, can the players be blamed for taking an adversarial approach when faced with a very adversarial, and, fortunately for them, very clumsy opponent.  The owners insist that the business is dying but whenever an idea forms that could help it stay alive one of those cold-hearted, iron-fisted children crawl away from the group and attempts to devour the biggest stick of candy.  Minnesota Twin owner Carl Pohlad would rather kill his team than lose the forty million dollar difference between the proposed 160 million dollars he would net from contraction, and the anticipated 120 million dollars he would garner from a sale.  The team is worth more dead than alive.

     One of these days, the owners believe, they will regain control, and when that day comes they will immediately institute the law they think is the absolute cure for all their evils—the player salary cap.   

     “Sorry guys, we know that we’ve used and abused you for decades, and we know that you’ve kicked our butts each and every time at the bargaining table, but we think the answer to the game’s woes is still for you to give us money.  We realize that, technically, the money is ours…but we obviously don’t know what to do with the money…that’s why we keep giving it to you.  So, if you wouldn’t mind…to save the game, you know…could you kick us back a little.  We promise we won’t lock you out… this year.”

     Malleable versions of salary caps may work in the NBA and in the NFL (the NHL is desperately trying to reach the malleable stage) but those are stronger business structures.  Baseball works backwards, the cart actually pulls the donkey.  Because of their power any mention of a cap--any mention of anything that could even be possibly related to a cap-- is immediately cast aside by the players, leaving the owners with their heads in the hands, again.  The owners have done it to themselves.  How is it possible for one player to be worth more, in his contract with a team, than the actual worth of the team itself?    Who is the owner?  It’s mind- boggling.  Isn’t it against the rules for a player to own his own team?  But then, in baseball, anything goes.  Everything’s within their rules--drugs, handguns, wife beating…they’re okay.  Ask Mark McGwire how quickly his body broke down after he stopped using Androstenedione.  Ask Jose Canseco how many players take steroids.  In baseball, steroids are okay.  Everything’s okay.  Everything, except gambling.  Ask Pete Rose if he dies a little every day, the way Shoeless Joe did until the day he did die.

      The owners conclude that severe action is needed so they decide that a hit man (who goes by the name of Poor Bud) should eliminate its two weakest teams.  It is a threat that, they believe, will shake the impervious resolve of their opponent.  But, the players laugh…and laugh.. and laugh.  And then the players take the owners to court where the judge laughs…and laughs…and laughs.  But baseball, with its lynchpin mentality, wants to have a hanging or two. 

      Montreal was the easy first choice.  Its passing will not be mourned by many.  The owner had longed to be part of baseball (what a shmuck) he just didn’t want Montreal.  He was much more anxious to drive an American car.  The second choice was much more difficult.  Baseball needed to gas two teams; the unevenness in the scheduling would be too large of a headache for them.  Luckily, the league’s longest serving robber-baron owner his billion-dollar hearse up to baseball’s door and offered his team neatly wrapped inside a gold and mahogany casket.       

      Its unfortunate that the players are ultimately going to have to capitulate and, for the greater good of the game, give these toothless barking dogs something on which they can chew, or at least gum. 

      A salary cap is too large of a bone for the players to offer, and the mistrust is so deep that a system similar to that of the NBA, where owners and players wisely share the basketball wealth, could not work.  Neither side would ever be satisfied that they were in receipt of a fair share.  And if Bud’s pronouncement is valid, that baseball suffers an annual deficit of one half billion-dollars, then why would the players be willing to give back their share, a share that, to them, is all profit?  The owners want the players to listen to their plight.  The players are willing to listen but they need to hear honest evidence to understand.  But, if the owners are in possession of such honest evidence they are entirely unwilling to provide it.  They want the players to help them with their losses, even though they aren’t about to divulge the reasons for those losses.  Mind-boggling.

      There are possible solutions.  To think that all of baseball’s ills can be cured with one injection of sanity is insane.  But each journey begins with a single step.  It should be easy to pass the resolution that, during the term of this agreement, no contract can be larger than the one signed by Alex Rodriguez.  Certainly a quarter of a billion dollars is enough of a ceiling to make any player happy.  The next step is to have one special option, open to both the player and the owner, in each contract—the right to terminate the contract halfway through its term.  This would eliminate a lot of the excess baggage being carried by teams—and would certainly be an incentive to those apathetic players comfortably secure within expensive long-term deals.  This tremendous gift by the players could be the start of baseball’s healing process.  With that mistrust, however, it is certain that some parameters for this idea would have to be negotiated.  There likely would be quite a few codicils added revolving around player production—the player would be able to keep the contract if he produces certain results.  For their part, the owners would offer an agreeable sharing of the local television packages—it would be nice for George to give some of the $120 million he receives every year to the teams that play against his Yankees.  (How many would pay to see a Yankee intra-squad game?)  The owners would also agree to larger shares of the gate receipts; the money given to the Commissioner’s Office, which would, hopefully, distribute it fairly among the weaker teams.  The weaker teams would then agree to put all this extra money into the product and not into their pockets.   And everyone would actually live up to each part of the bargain. 

      Sell the Twins…Move the Expos…MLB keeps 30 teams…Fifty jobs are saved…No more threats…And we can finally begin to see a light at the end of the tunnel, and recapture that hope once again. 

      The history of baseball begs respect. 

      On behalf of those who still care I ask all those involved to please, PLEASE, RESPECT THE GAME.