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GEORGE STEINBRENNER, Greedy Capitalist, Is Destroying Baseball, A Boring Game Of Pop-Ups & Foul Balls At Best, Wherein Small Market Teams Have No Chance!
posted Saturday, 25 August 2007
GEORGE
STEINBRENNER,
Greedy Capitalist, Is
Destroying Baseball,
A Boring Game Of
Pop-Ups & Foul Balls
At Best, Wherein
Small Market Teams
Have No Chance!
AND THEY CALL IT A SPORT?
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/George_Steinbrenner_Note_To_Self.jpg
ESPN only shows excerpts: homeruns, strikeouts & great defensive plays. But that is a very small part of baseball. Basically it’s pop-ups, foul balls, pitchers warming up, relief pitchers coming in from the bullpen and warming up (what in hell were they doing in the bullpen!), untimed mound chats and other lifeless, noneventful meanderings inducing ennui. When was the last time ESPN showed clips of those baseball happenings?
Tennis players warm up before the match begins and after a long rain delay. Suppose that each time a tennis player served, he or she were allowed to warm up first. Then tennis would be as boring as baseball. Those of you, who love baseball and abhor tennis, have your prejudices from your youth and won’t let go.
Suppose the NFL allowed QBs to warm up every time there was a change of possession!
And, you won’t remember this because it was so long ago, but basketball used to have a center jump after each basket scored. Talk about slowing down the action and giving an advantage to the team with the center, who got most of those “center jumps”. They don’t do that anymore. But baseball hasn’t changed since 1867.
But boring nonevents are not the real cause of baseball’s demise. No, that honor belongs to the owners of Big Market teams, who get much larger attendance and much, much larger TV contracts. The NFL has Revenue Sharing. The NFL and the NBA have salary caps. Either of these two approaches would benefit MLB greatly because those initiatives would level the playing field. And if ever a playing field needed leveling, it’s in baseball.
If you are a Yankee, Met, Dodger or Red Sox fan, you have no problem. Your team makes money and can compete. But if you root for the Reds, the Kansas City Royals, the Pittsburgh Pirates or some other team with less than a super pool of paying fans, your only hope is to be a spoiler. If you expect to win a World Series, keep those dreams to yourself lest you be committed permanently to your local Insane Asylum.
That’s why baseball teams used to move from city to city. If you can’t get crowds in one “Small Market” town, go to another, desperate for any Big League baseball. That was when America should have stood up on its hind legs and demanded fair distribution of the spoils. That is also why no new teams have been added. What Metropolis, with a humongous pool of paying fans, is currently unrepresented? Answer: NONE! Why open a franchise in some “Small Market”, which would lose money and be a drain on baseball and the Yankees!
When I was a child, growing up in Cincinnati, I remember how the Reds imported fans from Chillicothe, Ohio, and Kentucky and Indiana. These excursions to watch the Reds play were well publicized on the radio. TV hadn’t become the monolith it is today. But in those days the Reds had a chance and often won the World Series; just ask the Yankees!
George Steinbrenner does not care about the future of baseball; he only cares about his own profit and the Yankees making more money than anybody else. Have you noticed the Yankees don’t win World Series anymore; hell, they rarely even get to the World Series these days. That’s great news, but it only covers up the fact that the Yankees have a chance every year and small market teams like the Cincinnati Reds have none. The last time these two met in 1976, the Reds swept the Yankees in 4 straight. During the winter the Yankees signed the Reds’ best pitcher, Don Gullett, and outfielder, Ken Griffey, Sr. The Yanks won a couple of World Series and the Reds fell on hard times. Money, not managerial expertise or superior farm system, won the day.
Americans, by and large, are dumb creatures. They allow the Rich to manipulate the system to benefit the Rich. That occurs in politics, baseball and business. In politics even Democratic legislators abuse Earmarks to feather their own nests. The answer is not another Republican, but a Green Party legislator. But Americans are too dumb to do that.
In baseball, often the Yankees draw more people to ballparks than any other “Road Team”. If that situation were reversed and fans avoided the ballparks when the Yankees came to town, Revenue Sharing would come to baseball in a heartbeat. But Americans are too dumb to do that.
In business, the CEOs and members of the board of Big Corporations make most of the money, while the workers are now losing their jobs to Outsourcing. If the people boycotted the products of a few major perpetrators of these acts, the jobs would come back to America and the CEOs would be fired and replaced with new CEOs at much lower salaries and many fewer perks. But Americans are too dumb to do that.
All of these problems have obvious solutions. But the middleclass does not have leaders, who lead. The middleclass would not follow those leaders even if they existed. Americans are too dumb to do that.
The Grinch, who stole baseball!
http://www.theweeklydonut.org/wp-content/donuts/2006/07/Steinbrenner_American.jpg
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