a cynic's guide to modern life
COMMENTARY #1 11.09.01
The Case for Major League Baseball Contraction
The writing has been on the wall for anyone who had the sense to
realize that this contraction business that MLB commissioner Bud Selig is
throwing around is coming whether or not we want it to.
Professional sports has tried the idea of thirty team
“super-leagues”, and from where I’m standing, it has failed
miserably. These are the sad
facts of professional sports life…
-
There are only so many talented players available in any given
sport. If there’s only
enough talent to fill, say, eighteen teams, thirty teams will dilute the
talent pool enough to make for a less enjoyable product.
-
There is only so much money to pay professional athletes
-
People are not going to spend their hard-earned money on a team,
due to less than abundant finances, that isn’t competitive.
If they don’t spend their money, then the team doesn’t make
money, and then they can’t field a competitive team and so the process
is doomed to be cyclical
-
The result of a thirty team league is that most games tend to be
boring and pointless; in a lot of cases, there is nothing at stake and the
teams aren’t talented enough to produce a good game
-
Most professional sports leagues in North America are two-tiered in
nature – that is a core of viable, competitive teams and a supporting
cast of teams that don’t have a hope in hell of winning, because of the
reasons mentioned above
Baseball,
like any other entity, has suffered from the effects of growing too fast.
Major League Baseball has taken the first steps by raising the
issue. I have little doubt,
even if Selig is thwarted this time around, that eventually he or his
successor will succeed. And
MLB’s other professional contemporaries aren’t far behind either.
Everybody
must take some of the blame in this.
The owners, the players and the fans all have contributed to this
problem. The owners have
pushed expansion to the point of ridiculousness.
The players expect unintelligibly huge ($100 million dollars!)
contracts to keep playing and the fans continue to shell out more and more
cash to pay for this bloated arrangement.
Less financially able teams are left in the dust, and maybe come
next year, they’ll be dropped from the race entirely.
Sports writers near and far have charged to the rescue, saying that
contraction is nothing more than a bluff to force the cities and
states/provinces of the teams considered for the chopping block to build
new stadiums. While this may
be the immediate case, the issue of contraction, now that it has been
raised will not go away. Yes,
jobs will be lost. (I’m not
worried about players themselves who if they are cut from the majors,
probably had no real business being there to begin with.
I am concerned with stadium staff and the businesses that rely on a
professional team.) But
perhaps, maybe not, but just perhaps Selig is just saying what few others
seem to have the guts to say: The
league is too damn big!
Of course, I’m speaking as a baseball fan
and not as a person who is terribly interested in the business aspects of
professional sports. Baseball
has lost its roots long ago when the battles in the boardrooms became more
important than the battles on the field.
But the current situation today is enough to make any hardened fan
cry, especially in those cities that cannot possibly field a team that has
a shot at winning the World Series. Cutting
some teams, like cutting a rotting limb will be painful for a while. But in the long run, which pro sports have to start looking
towards, it will be beneficial. Less
teams equals more concentrated talent.
Less teams means those teams who remain have a better chance at
being competitive and ultimately a better chance at winning.
Which makes for more exciting baseball for the paying fans.
Whether we want it to or not, a contracting baseball league will
happen. There are only so
many cities that can support major league teams and those teams on the
bottom rung can only relocate so many times.
Cities shouldn’t need to build new stadiums with 9-digit price
tags every ten years to satisfy the whims of an owner.
Either baseball prunes its tree now, or its sick branches will die
on their own. Growing numbers
of cities cannot continue financially supporting a team that can’t keep
up in a money race. The
experiment of expansion has been tried.
And it has failed. Let
it die in peace.
Copyright © 2001 Don Porter. All rights reserved.