Skilled Ballplayers and Fans Who Are Brats

The New York Times ^ | 1 September 2002 | Ira Berkow

[BluesDuke]

And Jack, your Britney Spears example is a good one -- why doesn't anybody seem upset that a no-talent ditz like her rakes in the bucks, but plenty are up in arms over, say, A-Rod's salary?

I think it is pretty much as Mr. Berkow postulates: a four-letter word called envy. More of us probably wanted to be an A-Rod type when we grew up than wanted to be a Britney Spears type, and because we were not able to be an A-Rod we often as not resent the hell out of it rather than appreciate the point that A-Rod didn't exactly put a gun to Mr. Hick's head and coerce him into offering twice his actual market value.

[altair]

Willie Davis was in center for a long time.

[BluesDuke]

But it is incorrect to say that both sides can't be wrong in an argument. The players are spoiled, and so are the owners.

Think of it in the way that Jim Bouton once put it, in his first addendum to Ball Four (in 1980): As much as I think the players don't deserve all that money, I think the owners don't deserve it more. Aside from the point, of course, that only a comparative few players actually are "spoiled" (by what? their salaries? their fame? the near impossibility some of them have to live peaceable lives away from the ballpark without being bothered every ten minutes even at home?), and we hear little enough about the preponderance who are not, I don't believe that any objective reading of the whole of the evidence would suggest the players even close to being as wrong as the owners.

Remember: Baseball's prime, number one product happens to be the players. Why should they have been compelled at something close to gunpoint to pick up the tab for owners screwing the pooch, or aiding and abetting the punishment (there is no better word for it) of those owners who do know how to operate a baseball team - including how to promote and market their team, whatever and wherever their real or prospective market might be - and who do engage brains before and in hand with dollars in building and sustaining their teams (which is, in fact, what Mr. Steinbrenner learned the hard way how to do)? We would not tolerate that sort of welfarism (I think) in the ordinary run of American life, why on earth should we tolerate baseball engaging a form a welfarism which has, in different particulars and operatives, the same net result as political welfarism does: rewarding incompetence and sloth at the punitive expense of competence and effort?

And as for the present CBA, I happen to think that in the long run the players have an upper hand they will catch onto soon enough, if you think of it this way: As there was no requirement that those clubs qualifying for revenue shares spend them strictly on baseball-related matters with their teams, there is no such requirement in the current CBA. And we will see very soon whether those owners who qualify for revenue shares over the term of the new CBA prove to be the kind of welfare queens they proved under the old pact.

And many players are "great" in one particular area like hitting or pitching. If you can hit it 500 feet or throw it 100 miles an hour, they will find a spot for your whether you can do anything else adequate or not. Dave Kingman, Dick Stuart, Willie Mayes Aikens, Greg Gossage, etc. have prove that. But since I don't attend games anymore, I don't care what happens.

About the only difference between today's monodimensional players and the ones who have existed in at least comparable proportionate volume in previous baseball eras that today's "overpaid" monodimensionals just so happen to make more money than yesterday's did, even when yesterday's did find (as often enough they did, witness Dick Stuart for one) that the one thing they did well was still worth a princely salary for the time from some owner somewhere. (Stuart with the 1961-63 Red Sox was earning $45,000 a year, handsome pay for that time and place.)

But since you don't attend games and don't care anymore, I suppose I am wasting my cyberbreath...

[Flashlight]

...I remember a time when every spring, I knew that Garvey would be at 1st, Lopes at 2nd, Russell at short, Cey at 3rd, Yeager behind the plate, etc....

Ask any baseball fan in Detroit (young or old, but he should at least be old enough to remember the 1984 season) to name players from both the '68 and '84 world championship teams.

'68 is usually easy:

Cash, McAullife, Oyler, Wert in the infield; Horton, Northrup, Stanley, and Kaline in the outfield; McLain, Lolich, Wilson, Sparma on the mound. Tom Matchick, Gates Brown on the bench.

'84, however, is like a fuzzy block in the memory:

Morris pitching, Hernandez closing, uh, uh, Fryman? uh, no, that funny guy on third, whats-his-name. Oh, wait, Trammell and Lou Whittaker in the infield (duh), and oh, yeah did I say Kurt Gibson, and whats-his-name, Roesma? And that other relief pitcher...

you get the idea.

Is this true? It sure is for me, and I followed the '84 team a lot closer than the '68 team. I asked my sister-in-law, who's way too young to remember '68, but followed '84 closely, and was surprised to find that she had the same responses.

If I'm wrong on this, I'd like to know, but that's how it always is when I ask someone.

And if it is true, I'd sure like to know why. Why does one team fade in memory, and another stay fresh in the mind thirty-four years later?

[sonjay]

Not being a baseball fan, I happen to think baseball players are paid WAY more than they're worth.

But, in a market economy, they are free to attempt to obtain the highest pay they can. Owners are free to attempt to keep their wages as low as they can. Fans are free to protest or boycott if they wish.

Market forces at work: If they players demand so much from the owners that they bankrupt the owners, they lose their livelihood. If they offend so many fans that enough fans stop watching baseball, baseball-related income will go down and either the players will have to make concessions or they will bankrupt the owners. If they demand and get what they want and it doesn't bankrupt the owners, and if the fans keep going to the games regardless, baseball will continue. There are other outcomes possible as well, such as a rise in the popularity of the minor leagues, etc.

To my knowledge, no one has yet come up with a better system.

So let the players keep on demanding more, let the owners keep resisting, and let the fans do all the protesting and boycotting they want. That's the free market. The market will work, one way or the other.

[BluesDuke]

Market forces at work: If they players demand so much from the owners that they bankrupt the owners, they lose their livelihood.

One disadvantage that both the players and the owners had, during the just-concluded CBA runup, was that neither side was allowed to discuss the actual baseball economic situation publicly, and the owners were not even allowed, technically, to discuss it among themselves. (Selig had imposed a gag order on the owners and those $1 million fines for violating it that you may have heard about, which hardly stopped a couple of owners on various sides of the CBA question from flapping their yaps or incurring some sort of fines.) It also happens to be so that the players' salaries, whatever anyone thinks of them, were doing nothing to bankrupt anyone. When both Forbes (not heretofore renowned for anti-capitalist biases) and the Society for American Baseball Research did their own probes into baseball's economics and finances, each discovered that where the owners were crying "going broke" it was so for reasons having nothing to do with player salaries and only too much to do with what, in other businesses and industries, would have been deemed fiscal practises enough to attract criminal investigations.

Consider (I have referred to this elsewhere): From 1995 through the 2001 season, baseball actually brought in $2.1 billion additional revenues a year and less than half of those monies went toward player compensation, with no accounting for where the rest went except that for the most part they did not go toward baseball-specific expenses. And I noticed only too vividly that the hysteria media to which I alluded elsewhere raised little if any question about it, even when interviewing guest "experts" who did in fact raise the question.

If they offend so many fans that enough fans stop watching baseball, baseball-related income will go down and either the players will have to make concessions or they will bankrupt the owners. If they demand and get what they want and it doesn't bankrupt the owners, and if the fans keep going to the games regardless, baseball will continue. There are other outcomes possible as well, such as a rise in the popularity of the minor leagues, etc.

But, in a market economy, they are free to attempt to obtain the highest pay they can. Owners are free to attempt to keep their wages as low as they can. Fans are free to protest or boycott if they wish.

And it was the players who sought to preserve the market economy in baseball to whatever extent they could do so; the players, plus several of the owners. (What must be remembered is that professional team sports are unique, if discussed in terms of management-to-labour, in that the primary product that is sold, the primary product that must be marketed, is the sport's players.) It was several others among the owners who sought to enhance or perpetuate what would in other economic scenarios be called a welfare state - teams who cannot or do not operate reasonably or intelligently, who cannot or do not promote and market their product reasonably or intelligently, "entitled" to shares of monies from those teams who can and do and with no obligatory requirement, in either the previous revenue sharing plan or the freshly-consecrated one, that those qualifying to receive revenue shares or "luxury tax proceeds" must spend those shares and proceed percentages exclusively on baseball-relative team business.

It goes without saying that fans should be free to protest or boycott if they wish, but it should also be a concurrent maxim that they should be granted at least the minimum respect enough to afford them an informed basis for a protest or a boycott. That is what the hysteria media failed to do. And while it might have been true to a certain extent that many fans couldn't have cared less to examine the issues around the CBA or to see the thing as it was and might otherwise have been, I found it very interesting to observe in the sporting media what has long enough been a given regarding the political media: when they want to, they are very good at properly informing and illuminating, rather than inflaming or immolating.

A protest or boycott which is not founded upon truly informed thinking is a protest or boycott almost predestined to futility, as you and I have probably both seen on numerous occasions regarding numerous issues. But there is no excuse whatsoever - we would certainly say so involving a politically-oriented boycott or protest - for fans throwing things on fields or at players (as happened in, of all places, Anaheim's Edison Field last Thursday night; I mean, Angel fans above all are so laid back ordinarily as to be accused of somnabulence, or so their image has been, even if I know better from having gone to Angel games and heard the noises - but on Thursday night fans progressed from throwing beach balls to throwing debris and foul balls hit into the stands...one miscreant almost became, in fact, the first fan in history to knock a pitcher down with a little chin music, winging a foul ball he'd caught just inches away from Angel pitcher Kevin Appier's head. Not acceptable. Not from Cleveland Brown fans outraged over a controversial field call, as happened last winter, and not from baseball fans who might otherwise have had a legitimate grievance. Dick Young, the old New York Daily News writer, put it best, when addressing an outburst by Met fans frustrated with the losses rather than charmed by the early team's astonishing ineptitude: Make noise? Great! Make noise until you get laryngitis. Paint signs? Great! Paint signs until you get bursitis. But throwing garbage and all that jazz? What kind of slobs are we raising at the Polo Grounds?)

Because a sports league is a contrivance (Bob Costas and George Will are quite right in that regard) and, thus, has a unique economic model within a customary market model, there is a place for a certain degree of revenue sharing, especially if you consider baseball, for example, as a kind of franchise business. But there are ways and means of effecting certain base revenue sharing plans that, even before the contortions and whatnot that come from the CBA negotiations, would put plenty enough money into plenty enough teams. I mentioned it above: baseball has got to re-adjust the gate receipt sharing between home and visiting team, and this may well be the only way in which baseball, realistically and sensibly, can draw upon the NFL's experience. (Except for going to the 60-40 gate split between home and visiting team, those who insist still that baseball should or must take up the ways and means of football are neglecting that baseball, by implication - never mind romantic designation - a pastime, cannot be and should not be marketed as a spectacle or extravaganza a la football. But, of course, baseball has been gripped for at least a generation and a half by a mindset among its mandarins that is manifest perhaps best in what has become a cliche, Selig and his minions promoting and marketing the game as though trying to sell a skunk as a room freshener, as it were.)

[BluesDuke]

Why does one team fade in memory, and another stay fresh in the mind thirty-four years later?

Perhaps, in the case of the Detroit Tigers, the 1968 Tigers stay fresh in memory more than the 1984 Tigers do because the 1968 Tigers ended up as a kind of salve for a city practically laid waste by racial and other troubles and incidents all year (there was recently a fine special about that very thing, produced and shown by HBO), whereas the 1984 Tigers laboured under no such overhanging pall. Perhaps, too, there was the factor of the 1968 Tigers winning the team's first pennant in what, twenty-two years, and they had the metaphysical fortune of a) an outsized talent, eventually eroded by an outsized ego and taste for the shady life, being the first pitcher since 1934 to win 30 or more games in a season, b) a good-if-not-great pitcher having a good season and a hell of a World Series, and c) a future Hall of Famer coming toward the sunset of an excellent career getting to the postseason dance at last, going against a very well-honed St. Louis Cardinals team (as in, three future Hall of Famers Cardinals) for the World Series, whereas the 1984 Tigers weren't exactly dispatching world beaters in that World Series or crowded with future Hall of Famers (though Jack Morris is in fact a borderline Hall of Famer, by his record, and Alan Trammell is cited often enough as Hall of Fame material, though whether or not he is in fact so is a matter of debate).

I'd be willing to bet you that, likewise, few other than die-hard-enough Met fans could name you more members of the 1973 pennant winner than the 1969 Flying Wallendas act that upended the world and won a shock pennant and more-shock World Series. Time and place is often even more important than shadow and substance, which could also explain why people would sooner remember or know the 1934 Gas House Gang Cardinals (well, actually, believe it or not the Cardinals weren't called the Gas House Gang in earnest until the following season, technically - and did you know it was a legendary New York cartoonist, Willard Mullin, who provided the impetus with a drawing showing a gang of Cardinals trudging forth from a gas house on the wrong side of the track?) than the 1964 last-minute pennant winners who beat the last of the old imperial Yankee teams in a very vibrant seven-game Series.

[winodog]

I saw the raiders come back in the second half and beat denver in the year where they played them in the final game to get in the playoffs, then had to play them again next week. That was a great game and fans were very rowdy.
But the worse fans I ever saw were ram fans in Anahiem.
Of course I sat behind the Miami section in the end zone.
The fans there were ruthless and I saw a few fights.
I also went to a padre game this year. Two very sexy and well endowed diamondback fans were sitting in the lower section just underneath the concourse. They had a large cardboard sign saying backs rule or something. It took both of them to open it and hold it up.
They would hold it twords the field, then turn around and show it to the upper seats and all the padre fans would yell at them (but SD fans seem very content to just be there and they are not the fighting type). Anyway they held it up and one fella was waiting and he grabbed it from them and ran up to the top where they ripped it up and the poor girls could not do anything.
It isnt a big deal but it was very entertaining. It was my sons first major league game and he got a ball and had the player who gave it to him sign it, both of which I would have said the odds were about two thousand to one.

[Mr. Mojo]

As there was no requirement that those clubs qualifying for revenue shares spend them strictly on baseball-related matters with their teams, there is no such requirement in the current CBA.

An interesting piece of info, and one that I wasn't aware of. Of what benefit is revenue sharing to baseball - not that I support revenue sharing in any form - if the money gained from such a socialistic practice isn't spent on the game itself? I'm sure competent owners (like Steinbrenner) are just thrilled to know that the money they earned as a result of their competence could be going to supporting incompetent owners' (like the Rangers' Hicks) failed investments in other spheres.

[BluesDuke]

An interesting piece of info, and one that I wasn't aware of.

Not too many people are aware of that. I wasn't aware of it myself until last winter, when I began reading Mr. Pappas's dispatches breaking down and analysing baseball's economics as it is, as opposed to how what one radio sportsman calls "Bud's Duds" (i.e., the "small market" owners) wish it to have been.

Of what benefit is revenue sharing to baseball - not that I support revenue sharing in any form - if the money gained from such a socialistic practice isn't spent on the game itself?

You have to remember that, in the strictest term, baseball is actually a franchise business of a sort and, like any franchise business, it will and should apportion a certain bed of revenues around its various franchises. (I argued above but it's worth repeating: one major way to have resolved a lot of the revenue sharing mess would be for baseball to redress and adjust its home-visitor gate receipt split, which is now an abomination.) This is a lot of the source of the argument over common as opposed to localised broadcasting revenues and common as opposed to team-directed, team-market-specific promotion and marketing effort (or lack thereof, as the case assuredly is among too many teams - I still cannot forget the year I spent in Louisville seeing practically no considerable marketing effort by and on behalf of the Cincinnati Reds in that region or in southeastern Indiana). Since MLB in its central, headquarter terms has done such a pathetic promotion and marketing job over the last several years, it then becomes a matter of socialism as you so define for X number of teams to lay claim on shares of the revenues of Y number of teams who do operate reasonably, invest wisely, and promote and market intelligently and creatively - as, for example, like them or loathe them, the Yankees assuredly do.

I'm sure competent owners (like Steinbrenner) are just thrilled to know that the money they earned as a result of their competence could be going to supporting incompetent owners' (like the Rangers' Hicks) failed investments in other spheres.

Steinbrenner - who indeed learned his lessons on baseball management the hard way (remember what people conveniently forget: all those years he threw money around like wedding guests throw confetti and stockpiled free agents while depleting his farm system to help secure them, condemning the Yankees to practically a decade of futility), and didn't even begin to enjoy field and developmental success in proportion to his spending investments until he finally got it through his fat head that it's a bright idea to let them do the jobs you're paying them to do when you bring in competent baseball people to operate your club - has been very outspoken on precisely the question you raise. His outbursts in owners' meetings on precisely that question and its related issues are said to be legendary. Ironically, it was Steinbrenner who was the only owner quoted at all, never mind approvingly, when Bug Selig - even while reporting that under his brilliant leadership baseball pulled in $3.5 billion in revenues in 2001 but still managed to piss away $519 million, allegedly - asked for and got a three-year contract extension and raise to a $4 million salary. (Gee whiz - where were those condemning the greedy incompetent commissioner getting all that money?) Selig should have considered himself grateful that he was just baseball's CEO, for all intent and purpose, and not a standard corporate CEO, never mind that Steinbrenner was still fool enough to say that baseball still needed Selig's "steadiness" and "accommodating way". In the real corporate world, a CEO who had just told his board and his division heads that the company pulled in $3.5 billion but pissed away a real or alleged $519 million would be lucky there wasn't a hole in his golden parachute when they push him out of the plane above the local unemployment office.

[BluesDuke]

I also went to a padre game this year. Two very sexy and well endowed diamondback fans were sitting in the lower section just underneath the concourse. They had a large cardboard sign saying backs rule or something. It took both of them to open it and hold it up.

I still remember the first time the Los Angeles Dodgers came to New York to play the Mets in 1962. A group of Met fans still smarting over the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn five years earlier hung seven window shades along an upper deck rail and, when the Dodgers began batting in the first inning, they unrolled the shades in sequence, and they read...

OMALLEY
GO HOME!

Would you believe the Mets' then president, George Weiss (the former Yankee boss), ordered his security people to escort those enterprising fans out of the Polo Grounds? Weiss couldn't continue the censorship for long; Met fans were just too quick and too voluminous with the banners, and Weiss, to his credit, got the hint and let the banner people have their way.

[Mr. Mojo]

Ironically, it was Steinbrenner who was the only owner quoted at all, never mind approvingly, when Bug Selig... asked for and got a three-year contract extension and raise to a $4 million salary.

The relationship between these two apparently incongruous personalities is mystifying. Perhaps it's just a holdover from Selig's loyalty in '94. What do you think?

Your points about strictly limited revenue sharing are well taken, and appreciated.

[Mr. Mojo]

Btw, you are planning on watching the Bombers and BoSox in 5 minutes on ESPN? Boston needs a sweep to stay alive.

[BluesDuke]

Had I access to a television set (I am working this holiday - alas, I work now as a security guard, not a writer, and I have a post at an empty-for-the-holiday plant), I would be watching that game.

[Mr. Mojo]

Joe Morgan just brought up some good points about bat contruction, and how it contributes to the high number of shattered sticks these days -- The handles are ultra-thin, the barrels are ultra-thick, and the overall weight is ultra-light. The idea being, I suspect, that bathead speed gained from the light weight combined with the weight distribution variance between the two ends of the bat produces more power. By way of contrast, have you ever checked out the bats of Ruth or Cobb? Very thick handles, and very heavy. Broken bats were far more rare, and in the case of the Bambino at least, the power generated was more than sufficient.

[altair]

And if it is true, I'd sure like to know why. Why does one team fade in memory, and another stay fresh in the mind thirty-four years later?

I don't know, but I do know that I will never forget (or forgive) pitching to Jack Clark in the top of the 9th in game 6 of the 1985 playoffs. I had tickets to game 7, sigh.

[altair]

It was my sons first major league game and he got a ball and had the player who gave it to him sign it, both of which I would have said the odds were about two thousand to one.

I would guess closer to a million to one.

[Cap'n Crunch]

Must be 'Ira' can afford to pay for a game ticket. They've priced me out of the ballpark. Oh well, there's always TV....ooops, wait a minute, gotta pay to watch them on TV too, scratch that.

[Post Toasties]

Well, I'll concede that 'more goodies' is not the objective this time, having read your cite. And I should say that I don't begrudge the high salaries per se. But the willingness to deprive baseball fans full seasons of play to me seems counterproductive to baseball, and something that was more successfully avoided formerly.

[Misterioso]

I completely agree with you. A lot of these players and some of the owners don't see the bigger picture, and that is the good will of the millions of fans that live through each season with the ups and downs of their home team. Baseball is entertainment, but it's not like TV or the movies. It is much more than the momentary escape they provide. In fact, the experience of following a team, in any sport, impacts every fan (short for fanatic) even after the season is over.
You miss the games (for baseball fans) all winter, and then start counting the weeks before spring training. It's a lot more than entertainment for me.

I just sat through an eye-popping rout of the Diamondbacks by my Dodgers, and I wondered if I should turn it off around the 6th inning. But I then realized that I wasn't watching the game just to see who won, I wanted to see every pitch and every swing. And I realized, also, that I would not have turned it off even if the Dodgers had trailed 18-0. That love for baseball is not to be trifled with, and they knew that when they came to their 11th hour agreement.