This is a pet peeve of mine. So often we hear about the importance of 'competitive balance' as vitally necessary to keep the fans coming to the games. Without competitive balance baseball is finished the preachers of competitive balance sermonize. It irritates me because they talk of competitive balance but what they really want is to restrain player salaries.
I mean all you have do is recall that fact that the reserve clause-of all things-was once credited as being the necessary bedrock of competitive balance in baseball; the owners and their mouthpieces in the press warned darkly that if the reserve clause was set aside, baseball would simply end, free agency would destroy baseball! But how would it do this? Well, the answer given brings us back to the whole point of the exercise -free agency was supposed to bring about an explosion in player salaries that would destroy the league.
Exactly, that was what the reserve clause was meant to do was not retain competitive balance but restrain salaries to a fraction of what they should have been even for the Joe DiMaggios and Mickey Mantles of the league.
When it was asked what the removal of the reserve clause would do the answer was given that the same team would win the World Series every year!!
The idea that the reserve clause prevented 'the same team from winning every year' is rather astonishing. If anything, the RC would be expected to do the opposite as now if a team selected great players in the draft it got to keep them for their entire career where as a team with poor drafts would be stuck with them throughout their career-why would other teams be willing to trade for poor players?
The fact is that the RC did a pretty poor job of giving us competitive balance and stopping the same team from winning every year: after all, the same team did win most years-namely my NY Yankees.
I mean starting with 1921 and ending in 1964-a 42 year period which is as long as my own current natural life-the Yanks went to the WS 30 times and won it 20 times!
The first reaction is that the RS failed to stop the same team from winning most every year-the Yanks were in the WS 75% of the time over 43 years and yet fans kept coming to the games.
When you look at the doctrine of competitive balance, how is that possible? I mean I thought fans needed lots of suspense, they need a different team winning every single year-the Yankees shouldn't be allowed to win more often than any other club, in other once every 30 years or so-and yet they won almost every year and there was no earth shattering end of baseball, and the fans kept setting attendance records.
If the fans of teams other than the Yankees can still keep coming every year even with the Yanks were in the WS 3 of every 4 years over 43 years and won it 2 out of every 4 years, then their sensitivity to competitive balance is not nearly as high as we have been led to believe.
What I think is fair to say is this: even if you think competitive balance is just terribly important-I don't and I think those 43 years of Yankee dominance or for that matter, 15 year dominance of the New England Patriots in football show otherwise-but even if you do, I think you have to be pretty skeptical of any time the owners or their representatives talk about a particular policy as guaranteeing it-I mean if they thought the RC would increase it-they're judgment is simply worthless.
It's interesting as well that the luxury tax and revenue sharing haven't decreased inequality between owners in terms of team payrolls. While these measures have served somewhat to restrain the spending of 'big market' teams-after all, the incentive of spending on your team has been reduced even if you're George Steinbrenner, or his children, who now run the team, they actually have failed to increase the spending of 'small market teams'-ie, the revenue being redistributed from BM to SM teams is not going to payroll-so how could it possibly be leading to more equality between the clubs?
For that matter, I think one could go further and even question a true scared cow in the big sports-football, basketball, and hockey as well as baseball-that the reverse order draft is this great achievement for competitive balance. I mean, what would happen if you simply let players speak to whatever team they wanted to? I know the sky would fall and one team would make the WS almost every year. Oh wait.
P.S. What's strange about pro sports is that it's the owners who are the socialists and the unions that are capitalist; Marvin Miller was the most visionary capitalist we've had. I wonder what he would say today with salaries being eroded as they have since 2002.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/04/on-run-differentials-and-oakland-as.html
I mean all you have do is recall that fact that the reserve clause-of all things-was once credited as being the necessary bedrock of competitive balance in baseball; the owners and their mouthpieces in the press warned darkly that if the reserve clause was set aside, baseball would simply end, free agency would destroy baseball! But how would it do this? Well, the answer given brings us back to the whole point of the exercise -free agency was supposed to bring about an explosion in player salaries that would destroy the league.
Exactly, that was what the reserve clause was meant to do was not retain competitive balance but restrain salaries to a fraction of what they should have been even for the Joe DiMaggios and Mickey Mantles of the league.
When it was asked what the removal of the reserve clause would do the answer was given that the same team would win the World Series every year!!
The idea that the reserve clause prevented 'the same team from winning every year' is rather astonishing. If anything, the RC would be expected to do the opposite as now if a team selected great players in the draft it got to keep them for their entire career where as a team with poor drafts would be stuck with them throughout their career-why would other teams be willing to trade for poor players?
The fact is that the RC did a pretty poor job of giving us competitive balance and stopping the same team from winning every year: after all, the same team did win most years-namely my NY Yankees.
I mean starting with 1921 and ending in 1964-a 42 year period which is as long as my own current natural life-the Yanks went to the WS 30 times and won it 20 times!
The first reaction is that the RS failed to stop the same team from winning most every year-the Yanks were in the WS 75% of the time over 43 years and yet fans kept coming to the games.
When you look at the doctrine of competitive balance, how is that possible? I mean I thought fans needed lots of suspense, they need a different team winning every single year-the Yankees shouldn't be allowed to win more often than any other club, in other once every 30 years or so-and yet they won almost every year and there was no earth shattering end of baseball, and the fans kept setting attendance records.
If the fans of teams other than the Yankees can still keep coming every year even with the Yanks were in the WS 3 of every 4 years over 43 years and won it 2 out of every 4 years, then their sensitivity to competitive balance is not nearly as high as we have been led to believe.
What I think is fair to say is this: even if you think competitive balance is just terribly important-I don't and I think those 43 years of Yankee dominance or for that matter, 15 year dominance of the New England Patriots in football show otherwise-but even if you do, I think you have to be pretty skeptical of any time the owners or their representatives talk about a particular policy as guaranteeing it-I mean if they thought the RC would increase it-they're judgment is simply worthless.
It's interesting as well that the luxury tax and revenue sharing haven't decreased inequality between owners in terms of team payrolls. While these measures have served somewhat to restrain the spending of 'big market' teams-after all, the incentive of spending on your team has been reduced even if you're George Steinbrenner, or his children, who now run the team, they actually have failed to increase the spending of 'small market teams'-ie, the revenue being redistributed from BM to SM teams is not going to payroll-so how could it possibly be leading to more equality between the clubs?
For that matter, I think one could go further and even question a true scared cow in the big sports-football, basketball, and hockey as well as baseball-that the reverse order draft is this great achievement for competitive balance. I mean, what would happen if you simply let players speak to whatever team they wanted to? I know the sky would fall and one team would make the WS almost every year. Oh wait.
P.S. What's strange about pro sports is that it's the owners who are the socialists and the unions that are capitalist; Marvin Miller was the most visionary capitalist we've had. I wonder what he would say today with salaries being eroded as they have since 2002.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/04/on-run-differentials-and-oakland-as.html
No comments:
Post a Comment