July 8, 2002

THE LAMENT OF A STUMBLING AND BUMBLING LEADER

      In a recent interview with The Sporting News a defiant Bud Selig took to his pulpit and attempted to elucidate his position.  With harsh words and a fervent stance the embattled commissioner practically dared the players association to test the owners’ resolve.       

      “We just can’t afford the status quo,” he stated…”In the last seven World Series not one game has been won by a team that wasn’t in the top quartile of payroll.  Not one game.  We need to deal with this.”

      The question is…what is Bud Selig dealing with?

     Their thinking has always been shortsighted.   Bud even admitted it.   “We did it in ’76, in ’80, in ’81…In 1990, the same thing.  Had a wonderful opportunity to address the problem.  Didn’t.  In ’94, we know what that was—clubs attempting to change the system.  So here we are today.”

      Yes, here we are.  So many years have passed, so many disputes, and yet we stand firmly entrenched in the very same spot, not having moved an inch.  The adversarial approach that the owners have continuously taken has taken them nowhere; and in ’02 we’re hearing the commissioner talk about the baseball war to end all wars.   Isn’t this where foolish men spouting foolish ideas are slapped across the face and made to understand the actual folly of their words?  

      Will they ever learn?

      In his book A Whole Different Ballgame initial players association leader Marvin Miller wrote about the profligate owners as they conspired to keep him from being nominated, and then get him ousted after the players nominated him anyway.   In the book Miller described the control the owners once had over the game.  “In 1966 major league baseball was as lawless, in its own way, as Dodge City in 1876.  Antitrust laws, laws against discrimination, health and safety laws, simply didn’t apply, because they weren’t enforced by the courts or by federal, state, or local authorities.  Was it any wonder that the buttoned-down baseball establishment was arrogant?  If no one holds you accountable, you think that no one can.”

      In 1966 the players association began to hold them accountable.  But the owners never admitted the error of their ways; they just continued to run the game by the seat of their pants.  To this day they continue to try to regain that control.  The players repeatedly took the owners to court to complain of poor business practices, and each time the players won.  Instead of changing their tactics and trying to meet the players halfway the owners just grew angrier.  And more vengeful.

       Baseball was once an intimate version of indentured servitude.  Master and servant.  Miller wrote about the negotiations being conducted between the Minnesota Twins and their superstar ballplayer, and soon to be hall-of-famer, Rod Carew.  Owner Calvin Griffith, in a public speech, bragged about how little he would have to pay his superstar and said that Carew was too dumb to know any better.  Carew signed with the California Angels and said about the Twins’ owner, “I don’t want to be a nigger on that man’s plantation.”

      Most of America grew out of the “your worker is your slave” mentality, but baseball owners want a return to those ignominious times.  It was a time of glory for them.  The players, though, continue to win the battles as the owners continue to think that this is the 1900’s and that they are running their own plantations.  Like punch-drunk fighters they stand in their corner, bloodied and battered, and think that they are on the verge of victory.       

      Will they ever learn?

      Instead of taking their cue from the NBA and looking to form a partnership with their players, major league baseball prefers to look at the NFL as the beacon of sports business.  In the NFL the owners reap heavy profits and the franchise fees are astronomical.  “If I had told you 10 years ago that the Washington redskins would be worth $200 million more than the New York Yankees, you guys would have laughed at me.”  Unfortunately, Bud doesn’t realize that we are laughing at him, though for a different reason. The economics of the NFL cannot be duplicated by any other sport.  The NFL is able to spread the television wealth around evenly because the teams play once a week, and a national network televises that game.  There are no local deals—deals that give George Steinbrenner the money to field the most expensive team.             

       “The Yankees have $252 million and Kansas City and Pittsburgh sit with $50 million to $60 million,” Selig was quoted.   “You could bring back the smartest baseball people ever…and it’s not going to work if they have to work with that disadvantage.”

      So take some of George’s television millions and give it to Kansas City and Pittsburgh.  George will always have the most money—but it’s about time he’s convinced that the game wasn’t invented simply for his pleasure, and for his club to constantly win.   It’s desperation time for the owners.  The arrow illustrating baseball’s economics is nearly pointing straight down; there are fewer heavy pocketed white men willing to join their league.  Selig noted in the article that the ‘greater fool theory’ is over. 

      “The Anaheim Angels have been for sale for a couple of years now…It took us seven years to sell the Kansas City Royals”  Selig also noted that San Diego, Oakland, Houston and Minneapolis have been for sale for three months now and nobody has stepped forward to purchase those teams.   “This idea that there are people stacked up all over is wrong…We’re on the horns of an intense dilemma.”

     The implication is clear.  The (other) owners are in line with his thinking.  They realize that the business of baseball is dying.  Baseball cannot put off the inevitable change to its economic structure.  In effect, Selig is stating that if this battle leads to baseball Armageddon, then so be it.  Players beware.  We are ready.  The time has come.

     It’s the same sort of rhetoric the owners have been spouting since the players grew a collective backbone.  If you take an adversarial approach it is only natural for the other side to take one as well.  Very little positive can be accomplished when one side wants everything (the owners) and the other side wants nothing (the players) and neither side is willing to budge.  ’76, ’80, ’81, ’90, ’94.  Now ’02.  The two sides will fight over every penny until there is only one penny left.    

      “Maybe people will understand when, God forbid, teams can’t make their payrolls.”

      The weather is always foreboding whenever Selig talks.  The most telling part of the interview is when Bud explains that the idea of revenue sharing, long thought to be baseball’s salvation, can’t be instituted because the players have to agree to it, and they won’t.   “Revenue sharing is now a subject of bargaining with the players association… We’re nowhere on revenue sharing…The difference is that I have the votes for revenue sharing.  The problem is at the table.  They’re very protective of the big market clubs.”     

      If the owners have a plan for revenue sharing then they need to merely prove to the players, and to the richer owners, that the shared revenue will be applied to the product on the field.  If so then baseball will be spending the same amount on player salaries as it does now, but the wealth will be spread around a little.  If the players are not agreeing with this idea then there must be something very suspicious in the owners offer.  And isn’t that what this decades long battle has been about—suspicion.

      The commissioner should know that the ‘greater fools’ theory does indeed exist.  The greater fools, though, are not looking to get into the baseball business--they are already there.       

      Partnership.  Not control.     

      Will they ever learn?