Because You Never Asked

MUDVILLE REVISITED, PART II

            Almost everyone interested in this issue is having a tough time taking sides. They are fed up. They are angry. They see no good guys. Everyone is wrong . players, owners . everyone. Greed, selfishness, crybabies, spoiled brats . why should we care? Although neither players nor owners can be said to have truly won the public relations battle, the players and their seven figure incomes seem to be taking a bit more of the anger. I am about to take issue with this attitude.
            In the context of what just about all baseball fans (i.e., Americans) hold sacred, the owners are dead
            wrong.
            Let's start with a socio-political profile of the average owner, be such an individual or corporate entity: they are very likely to be Republican types who preach the gospel of free market capitalism, of individual initiative, of entrepreneurship and the ambition and creativity spurred on by such a philosophy. To a man, every one of these owners consider themselves shining examples of the intelligent businessman who has built his fortune with the use of his brilliant commercial instincts and personal ambition. Undoubtedly, he rues such concepts as socialism and other such initiative deadening, creativity killing, lazy good-for-nothingness. Nobody should ever get something for nothing. If you want success, get off your ass and make something of yourself (or inherit it, ha, ha). If you fail, you have no one to blame but yourself. and oh, I almost forgot, don't over tax me for my success. It's not ethical and will discourage my instinctive risk taking personality, which is the motor of American success and the primary reason we can beat the snot out of all those goddamn Talibans and turban heads whenever we want to.
            OK, first point to make: nobody took a gun to anyone's head and said, "hey, you have to buy this baseball team". All of these "shrewd" businessmen looked at their options, sniffed out the commercial climate, haggled over price, and decided to buy their teams. There was no extortion, no undue pressure, no arm-twisting. And now, the unsuccessful ones, in direct opposition to what they supposedly hold sacred, are trying to blame everyone else for their failures. "It's not my fault. We can't compete." They then go on to demand more revenue sharing from the successful clubs who have so much more money to spend on players. They want welfare, a hand out, socialism. Their main device for such an egalitarian society (are you listening Karl Marx?) is a "luxury tax" on payrolls above certain limits. They want to tax the rich! They want to penalize them for their success. In this way they hope to hold down salaries (the players' main bitch) or get some money from the big spenders so that their poor, humble, down trodden, small market teams can compete; the same teams they bought with the use of their entrepreneurial expertise and personal ambition and intelligence.

             The Wicked Witch of the East in this saga is George Steinbrenner, owner of those heartless, relentlessly evil New York Yankees. They have so much money. They trample the opposition without mercy . all those poor little guys, the meek and humble of the Earth, trying so hard to succeed in the face of such tyrannical oppression. "Let them eat cake", says King George, as he watches the World Series from his luxury box in Yankee Stadium.
            I remind both the fans and the unsuccessful crybaby owners, that George Steinbrenner paid a heck of a lot more for his team than the poverty stricken guy who bought the Kansas City Royals. He might have paid 3, 4, or 5 times more. In spite of the elevated price, he still considered it a good investment. He was right. With this in mind, I ask the cry baby owner the following: if you get your revenue-sharing-luxury-tax welfare plan, and you wisely invest the hand out you get from the successful owners, and your team improves, and, somewhere down the line, you sell your team for a higher price, are you going to share some of the selling price with the guys who gave you the hand out? Fat chance.
            The whole justification for what the owners want to do is a Che Guevarian concept of equality referred to, in modern parlance, as "parity". If, argue the crybaby owners, when spring is sprung and the leaves return to the trees, and the bees start humming in the hive, and the melting snow on the mountains fill the rivers of the land in their timeless flow from sea to shining sea; if, when the sound of horsehide hitting wood once again reverberates cross the land, from the redwood forests to the gulf stream waters; if, at this fecund time in the eco-clock of creation, so very few teams in professional baseball have a chance to win, and never will, the World Series . well . we are doomed. The sport will wither and die and springtime will have all the life of a winter storm whistling down from Canada.
            According to the crybabies, "parity" would be good for the game. They back up their whimpering with a bevy of vague arguments that could never find their way into scientific investigation, nor ever hold up in a court of law. They point to the popularity of other sports with salary caps and more sensitive revenue sharing plans. They harp upon the supposed competitive imbalance in their own sport, i.e., those "Damn Yankees". Neither argument stands up to rational scrutiny and I'm here to tell you why.
            When the crybabies talk about the "successful" sports with salary caps and all that other stuff in harmony with truth, justice and the American way, they are talking about football and basketball. They claim that "parity" is the reason for their popularity. To make such a claim is a gross exaggeration.
            Football is probably America's most popular athletic fix, but to say that parity is the reason for such success is a demagogic simplification of a more complex situation. For one thing, an owner in pro football only has to sell tickets to 8 games, once a week, and almost always on the holiday known as the weekend. This creates a "special event" kind of atmosphere that must be patiently awaited all week, whether you will attend in person or watch on TV. In such an environment of both anticipation and limited opportunity, even a lousy football team should have no trouble attracting fans. In comparing baseball's daily grind --- 30 teams, 15 games, almost every day for six months --- one has to marvel at the 28,000 or so people that show up, on an average, to every Major League baseball game.
            But even more fundamental to football's success is the hyper violence it showcases. It is a charged up, aggressive spectacle living harmoniously with the modern American personality. It is in your face. It comes on hard. It most exemplifies the conquering style of the American empire. But it is not something one can take every day. It can only go down once a week, both physically and emotionally. Even if we could show that there is now more parity in football than before the salary cap days --- still a doubtful proposition --- it would be difficult to claim that it is the substantial reason for the sport's success. That prize goes to the game itself.
           With regard to pro basketball, the parity argument is riddled with a long round of machine gun fire. The golden era in the NBA was the decade or so inhabited by Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. Although Bird and Magic paved the way, Jordan, who is a bit younger, brought the game to its zenith. Parity had no influence in this popularity. Once Jordan won his first championship, his team won five more, losing only the two years he sat out his first retirement. Jordan's team dominated the NBA more so than the Yankees have dominated baseball. Once the great trio had disappeared from the game (I don't count Jordan's latest return), regardless of salary caps, revenue sharing, and other such Marxist-like standards, the game's popularity has waned. Parity-shmarity, what a crock of bull.

            Which brings me to .

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Email: JerryG@postcman.info