Sports Ignorant -- Baseball on the Brink
(me as editor's note -- All Sports Ignorant posts will also be copied here, because people can just skip over the sportsy stuff if they don't like it, and I want to write a little about sports now. There's so much to be discussed!)
The Los Angeles Dodgers did baseball a tremendous service yesterday by pulling out of a proposed 3-team deal with the Diamondbacks and Yankees that would have sent 41-year-old Uberpitcher and noted Yankee killer Randy Johnson to the Yankees along with another good left-handed pitcher whose name I can't remember right now but it sounds like O-Ren Ishii. This merely delayed the deal, however, because all parties involved besides the Dodgers seem determined to get Randy Johnson in the accursed pinstripes. How did we get to this point?
Well, R. Johnson has said that he wants out of Arizona, and he only will play for the Yankees. In short, he's A-Rod II: This Time it's Worse. A-Rod merely cut the number of potential teams to which he would be traded to two: The Yankees and Red Sox. R. Johnson has said "Yankees or bust", putting Arizona in the terrible position of having to trade their best player and not being able to get much back for him. And this after Arizona overpaid to get Johnson in the first place and won a title with him. There's a sickening lack of loyalty among baseball players that seems to grow every year -- R. Johnson has no reason to screw the Diamondbacks over except to get what he apparently wants, which is a 3-year overpayment deal with the only team that will give it to him: as always, the New York Yankees.
This begs the question, "Does R. Johnson really need the extra money at this point?" He's a millionaire many times over, and I don't think even as sketchy-looking a figure as he could have squandered all his money already (plus, he doesn't look like the type to have, say, a posse. Maybe shady and blackmailing 3rd cousins, but not a posse. And the posse is what squanders the money. People don't lose millions of dollars without the help of several "friends"). So, Randy, wot's uh the deal? You can make it to the next meal, no? Why do you have to ruin baseball (that's really what this column is about -- I will explain soon) to get a few extra mill?
The thing that gets me is the players know that the Yankees are the only team that will pay them exhorbitant salaries. This is why R. Johnson only wishes to be traded there. If he kept his options open, this would put the Diamondbacks in a much better position, but he's not thinking about that now(And you could argue that he shouldn't be thinking about that -- but it shows a phenomenal lack of loyalty, as I explained above). He's thinking, "The Yanks are the only team I can milk for 20 million over three years. You know how many cans of mullet sheen that is? I'll be set for life, as will my sons Cletus and Riverbank." Preserving the ability of the the Yankees to set the market so high (because of their tremendous comparative income) is now the number one issue the players union cares about. That's why baseball needed a salary cap but ended up with a luxury tax. People said that the owners finally got some concessions, and finally "won one." But the players mostly don't want to give up competitive imbalance. They could care less if the Yankees are are luxuriously taxed, as long as they keep on paying ridiculous salaries. The players don't want to give up the knowledge that if you're good enough, at the end of your career you can always get that Yankee windfall and a shot at the World Series. It's their Pension Plan for Superstars, and over the last few years Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Roger Clemens, and so on have cashed in. It doesn't matter to them that competitive imbalance has ruined the sport for most of the rest of the country. Most of them didn't graduate from college and can't even spell competitive imbalance, so they probably believe it doesn't exist. But their leader Don Fehr knows, and has put the fear of competitive balance in them something fierce. That's why the players fight against real revenue sharing and anything resembling cost controls. They think that if the Yankees are pulled back into the pack, they no longer can get what they would verbalize as their "fair share."
Sports are about competition between teams. If all teams in a given league have the chance to be competitive, the league grows. Every team that doesn't have that chance sees interest (and money) in it die a slow agonizing death. Now, all the league needs to do to stave off that death is give every team an equal-as-possible chance to win. The NFL has perfected this, largely because of revenue sharing but also because of their hard salary cap and the fact that their player's union cares about more than just the player's money.
(side note: Every time I hear about the great job that Donald Fehr and the Baseball Players Union is doing, I think about: Jason Giambi and his steroid-filled illness that Fehr was fighting the detection of (in Giambi's best interest, of course); The fact that baseball in 2004 still does not have a real (punishing) steroid policy(talk about competitive imbalance -- Fehr must just love steroids, since they give one player an unfair advantage over another); The average baseball salary going down 2.7% in 2004, reversing a 10-year trend; and, most ominously, the fact that at least half of baseball's teams are dying on the vine, with the only thing keeping them afloat being the 30-and-older generation's obsessions with the Big 3 American Sports. The kids don't have that bias, and unless they happen to be in a consistently competitive region, they have no incentive to become baseball fans. In short, the Union is fighting to reduce the number of fans as the old ones die and aren't replaced. As much as Social Security is facing a doomsday, Major League Baseball is facing a doomsday. In 20 years when the average salary is still 2.4 million and R. Johnson's kid Cletus is pitching for the Yankees, remember this: the decline of baseball to the nation's 6th most popular sport could have been prevented, now.
The Yankees and Diamonbacks will eventually find a partner with which to make their Trade of Doom, although after the trade goes through they still have to pay R. Johnson his three years of money (right now they're only offering two). That could be another snag. But if the Yankee-killer joins the Yankees (think about the cosmic implications of that for a second), it could accelerate the process that years of competitive imbalance, greedy and ineffectual ownership, steroid fears, taxpayer-funded stadiums, and Jose Cansenco have developed.
Besides or on top of the Trade, the Yankees will find another way to get "O-Ren Ishii" or his equivalent, and will sign Carlos Beltran giving them the 2 best under-30 players in baseball (along with A-Rod). They will win championships by buying them, and everyone will know it. I can't be the only one who thinks this is a bad thing. I know that term "buying a championship" is bandied about a lot, but how many times does it happen, really? It can't happen in the NBA or NFL because of the salary structures (This doesn't stop NBA teams from trying, though -- see Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban -- but how many championships has he won? Or the Knicks? They're not even good), so we're left with baseball (and hockey, which seems on the verge of doing what baseball will never do, that is, fix the sport), and the Yankees teams that won all those titles were mainly built from within the Yankees organization or in trades before they became stars. Same with the Red Sox last year. If the Yankees get all these players and win, what message does that send?
"Trying to compete with the Yankees if futile. To give up is Divine. You other baseball teams, just do what the Brewers have done and try to go limp."
The Los Angeles Dodgers did baseball a tremendous service yesterday by pulling out of a proposed 3-team deal with the Diamondbacks and Yankees that would have sent 41-year-old Uberpitcher and noted Yankee killer Randy Johnson to the Yankees along with another good left-handed pitcher whose name I can't remember right now but it sounds like O-Ren Ishii. This merely delayed the deal, however, because all parties involved besides the Dodgers seem determined to get Randy Johnson in the accursed pinstripes. How did we get to this point?
Well, R. Johnson has said that he wants out of Arizona, and he only will play for the Yankees. In short, he's A-Rod II: This Time it's Worse. A-Rod merely cut the number of potential teams to which he would be traded to two: The Yankees and Red Sox. R. Johnson has said "Yankees or bust", putting Arizona in the terrible position of having to trade their best player and not being able to get much back for him. And this after Arizona overpaid to get Johnson in the first place and won a title with him. There's a sickening lack of loyalty among baseball players that seems to grow every year -- R. Johnson has no reason to screw the Diamondbacks over except to get what he apparently wants, which is a 3-year overpayment deal with the only team that will give it to him: as always, the New York Yankees.
This begs the question, "Does R. Johnson really need the extra money at this point?" He's a millionaire many times over, and I don't think even as sketchy-looking a figure as he could have squandered all his money already (plus, he doesn't look like the type to have, say, a posse. Maybe shady and blackmailing 3rd cousins, but not a posse. And the posse is what squanders the money. People don't lose millions of dollars without the help of several "friends"). So, Randy, wot's uh the deal? You can make it to the next meal, no? Why do you have to ruin baseball (that's really what this column is about -- I will explain soon) to get a few extra mill?
The thing that gets me is the players know that the Yankees are the only team that will pay them exhorbitant salaries. This is why R. Johnson only wishes to be traded there. If he kept his options open, this would put the Diamondbacks in a much better position, but he's not thinking about that now(And you could argue that he shouldn't be thinking about that -- but it shows a phenomenal lack of loyalty, as I explained above). He's thinking, "The Yanks are the only team I can milk for 20 million over three years. You know how many cans of mullet sheen that is? I'll be set for life, as will my sons Cletus and Riverbank." Preserving the ability of the the Yankees to set the market so high (because of their tremendous comparative income) is now the number one issue the players union cares about. That's why baseball needed a salary cap but ended up with a luxury tax. People said that the owners finally got some concessions, and finally "won one." But the players mostly don't want to give up competitive imbalance. They could care less if the Yankees are are luxuriously taxed, as long as they keep on paying ridiculous salaries. The players don't want to give up the knowledge that if you're good enough, at the end of your career you can always get that Yankee windfall and a shot at the World Series. It's their Pension Plan for Superstars, and over the last few years Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Roger Clemens, and so on have cashed in. It doesn't matter to them that competitive imbalance has ruined the sport for most of the rest of the country. Most of them didn't graduate from college and can't even spell competitive imbalance, so they probably believe it doesn't exist. But their leader Don Fehr knows, and has put the fear of competitive balance in them something fierce. That's why the players fight against real revenue sharing and anything resembling cost controls. They think that if the Yankees are pulled back into the pack, they no longer can get what they would verbalize as their "fair share."
Sports are about competition between teams. If all teams in a given league have the chance to be competitive, the league grows. Every team that doesn't have that chance sees interest (and money) in it die a slow agonizing death. Now, all the league needs to do to stave off that death is give every team an equal-as-possible chance to win. The NFL has perfected this, largely because of revenue sharing but also because of their hard salary cap and the fact that their player's union cares about more than just the player's money.
(side note: Every time I hear about the great job that Donald Fehr and the Baseball Players Union is doing, I think about: Jason Giambi and his steroid-filled illness that Fehr was fighting the detection of (in Giambi's best interest, of course); The fact that baseball in 2004 still does not have a real (punishing) steroid policy(talk about competitive imbalance -- Fehr must just love steroids, since they give one player an unfair advantage over another); The average baseball salary going down 2.7% in 2004, reversing a 10-year trend; and, most ominously, the fact that at least half of baseball's teams are dying on the vine, with the only thing keeping them afloat being the 30-and-older generation's obsessions with the Big 3 American Sports. The kids don't have that bias, and unless they happen to be in a consistently competitive region, they have no incentive to become baseball fans. In short, the Union is fighting to reduce the number of fans as the old ones die and aren't replaced. As much as Social Security is facing a doomsday, Major League Baseball is facing a doomsday. In 20 years when the average salary is still 2.4 million and R. Johnson's kid Cletus is pitching for the Yankees, remember this: the decline of baseball to the nation's 6th most popular sport could have been prevented, now.
The Yankees and Diamonbacks will eventually find a partner with which to make their Trade of Doom, although after the trade goes through they still have to pay R. Johnson his three years of money (right now they're only offering two). That could be another snag. But if the Yankee-killer joins the Yankees (think about the cosmic implications of that for a second), it could accelerate the process that years of competitive imbalance, greedy and ineffectual ownership, steroid fears, taxpayer-funded stadiums, and Jose Cansenco have developed.
Besides or on top of the Trade, the Yankees will find another way to get "O-Ren Ishii" or his equivalent, and will sign Carlos Beltran giving them the 2 best under-30 players in baseball (along with A-Rod). They will win championships by buying them, and everyone will know it. I can't be the only one who thinks this is a bad thing. I know that term "buying a championship" is bandied about a lot, but how many times does it happen, really? It can't happen in the NBA or NFL because of the salary structures (This doesn't stop NBA teams from trying, though -- see Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban -- but how many championships has he won? Or the Knicks? They're not even good), so we're left with baseball (and hockey, which seems on the verge of doing what baseball will never do, that is, fix the sport), and the Yankees teams that won all those titles were mainly built from within the Yankees organization or in trades before they became stars. Same with the Red Sox last year. If the Yankees get all these players and win, what message does that send?
"Trying to compete with the Yankees if futile. To give up is Divine. You other baseball teams, just do what the Brewers have done and try to go limp."
posted by Mike Pape @ 6:17 AM
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