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by jeep 08/10/2006, 7:11pm PDT |
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Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:
Whoa, shellshock! jeep, you're the first reasonable person I've ever met that has disagreed with a cap in baseball. Not having one (and a corresponding salary floor, don't get me wrong) is killing the game. I know the owner of the Royals is pocketing his revenue sharing and that should be criminal, but the current system is horribly broken.
A salary cap is completely and utterly irrelevant to competitive balance in baseball, and having one would not help anyone involved but owners like David Glass who are using politics to seek rent. Baseball's revenue increases faster than the player's salaries, which have been pretty stable for a while due to collusion in the Commisioner's office. Welcome to fucking reality, where Alex Rodriguez' record contract with Texas was worth every penny even before you consider the real estate deals and cable deals that were triggered directly by it (the very next day and equaling the total amount of the contract, in fact). Here's the problem in all sports which shows up pretty clearly in baseball: there are some teams that make good decisions consistently, and some that make bad decisions consistently, and there's no way for baseball as a whole to eliminate the poor decisionmakers. If you are a retard long enough, Paul Tagliabue and the NFL owners can and do have the capacity to force you to sell your team, in baseball the comissioner can only do this if the owner pulls a Marge Schott and starts using the word 'nigger' in mixed company.
Other teams' advantages due to media market size and local population are a direct result of the antitrust exception: if there was no congressionally-established monopoly for baseball, there would be five teams in New York, whether MLB put them there or some competing organization did. That market would be divided, there would be competition for those fans and their money and the ad revenue that baseball brings in. Then MLB would not have a choice but to do what the market demanded, and the owners would not have a choice but to run their teams like businesses instead of the political rent seeking arrangements that many of them are now.
There are accurate scientific tools for making good decisions in baseball, but because of revenue sharing (but ultimately because of that antitrust exception) only teams with an interest in investing in their product are making use of them. David Glass, who owns the Royals, can not be forced by baseball to sell his team despite years of handing out bad contracts and trading away good players. Glass is a very good businessman and knows it's better to take free money than invest in a risky restructuring of his organization. He can take Steinbrenner's luxury tax money, accept his cut of revenue sharing, pay his AAA-grade players nothing, and whenever someone asks why he runs his team like he needs to wear a helmet and bib to work, he can cry that the Yankees and Red Sox, who actively invest in and aggressively market their teams, make it impossible to compete. It's all a lie, though. If he didn't have that revenue sharing money he'd have to invest to get better revenue on his own or sell the team, and honestly that's what is best for that franchise. Kansas City loves their team and will come back to that crappy park if someone puts a good product on the field.
This isn't solely restricted to baseball, plenty of other sports teams, notably the Bruins and Celtics, seek the same rent in their own way. When I was a kid I was told not to watch any sports because "all the games were fixed," but it turns out the game on the field is the only thing about sports business that isn't a complete lie.
/jeep/
...the late Doug Pappas wrote all about this for Baseball Prospectus, and about the stadium deals that cities got ripped off for, too. |
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Before there was an OMM by jeep 08/04/2006, 12:53pm PDT 
Good luck! NT by laudablepuss 08/04/2006, 3:07pm PDT 
Re: Before there was an OMM by Liz Enkittengasm 08/04/2006, 4:47pm PDT 
SELLOUT by Entropy Stew 08/06/2006, 8:08pm PDT 
Another one bites the dust... by Zsenicorpse 08/06/2006, 10:25pm PDT 
Capitulator To Staying Out of Bankruptcy Court This Time Next Year by jeep 08/09/2006, 7:41pm PDT 
Re: Capitulator To Staying Out of Bankruptcy Court This Time Next Year by Ice Cream Jonsey 08/09/2006, 7:59pm PDT 
Wayward Org Charts by jeep 08/10/2006, 5:32pm PDT 
Re: Wayward Org Charts by Ice Cream Jonsey 08/10/2006, 5:51pm PDT 
Wayward Baseball Owners by jeep 08/10/2006, 7:11pm PDT 
Re: Wayward Baseball Owners by Ice Cream Jonsey 08/11/2006, 2:22pm PDT 
Re: Wayward Baseball Owners by jeep 08/12/2006, 8:46pm PDT 
Re: Wayward Baseball Owners by Ice Cream Jonsey 08/13/2006, 12:37am PDT 
Re: Wayward Baseball Owners by jeep 08/15/2006, 8:30am PDT 
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