Spring fever and the 2008 baseball season are upon us. Baseball fans around the country are eagerly flipping through TV channels and newspaper sports pages following their team’s early trek into the 162 game season with aspirations of post season promise.
That sounds really nice, but it’s not entirely true. Only the fans of teams with large payrolls are truly watching their team’s progress with realistic hopes of post season action. The rest of us (yes, I’m a fan of a team with a payroll that New Yorkers would chuckle at) are watching our teams’ progress and hoping for a “good show” and a “decent season”. We know our team’s chances of making the playoffs are not unlike our chances of winning a multi-state lottery.
How has baseball become what it is today?
Interesting question when one considers two other sports that have addressed and found a solution to the high payroll problem. The first of these is the NFL.
Football long ago blazed the trail with a serious, concerted effort to ensure that all teams in their league would be able to compete with each other in the ability to acquire talent by using a team payroll salary cap.
The NHL has just recently come to this very same solution after a season-ending lockout. Hats off to these two major sports leagues! Before someone throws a flag at me and demands why I haven’t mentioned the NBA, you have to look at basketballs salary cap structure. Well, that’s if you can. It’s so complex, dynamic, and vague, that it isn’t really where the NFL and NHL are.
Why then, many ask, hasn’t baseball embraced the NFL and NHL salary cap style of contract with the player’s union?
Believe it or not, the answer is quite simple. As a whole, MLB is happy with the revenue they are generating. Oh yes, they have a luxury tax for the big payroll teams. But let’s be realistic.
Would a team willing to drop over $100 million on player salary for a season be discouraged from spending incredulous amounts of money on players because of this luxury tax? That answer speaks for itself season after season. The low payroll teams suffer severely, as do their fans, but baseball as a whole is making money.
Personally, I never see baseball solving this issue. The commissioner of MLB and the few powerful owners benefiting from the lack of a team salary cap never consider this when renewing their contract with the MLB players union. They are happy with the revenue they receive and don’t really care about the fans of teams such as Minnesota, Kansas City, or Oakland.
The best thing for the fans, though it’s as likely to happen as finding the ark of the covenant or life on Mars, would be for MLB to insist on a team salary cap during the next contract talks with the MLB player’s union. The union would absolutely refuse to agree to it. There would absolutely be a lengthy lockout resulting in the loss of at least one season of baseball. Fans and associated businesses would suffer short term losses. It would be a terrible note in baseball history.
But what about the long term?
Take a look at the NFL and the NHL. Are those players short of money? Are they forced to take part time jobs in the off season to compensate for a lack of potential salary they may have had if there wasn’t a salary cap? Are there not players in football and hockey still making absurd salaries?
I’m sure that Alex Ovechkin making $9.54 million a year playing hockey and Dwight Freeney making $12 million a year playing football won’t be looking to pawn any family heirlooms anytime soon.
I won’t bother answering those questions….we all know the answer to those questions.
Baseball will continue to operate as it does now, favoring the big market teams. The remainder of the league will continue to survive and do the best they can. A MLB team salary cap will likely never happen.
Teams without financial pull will develop great talent and continue to see those players eventually leave to pursue greater salaries with the richer teams. This is the best thing for our great American pastime, right?
Play ball, New York, Boston, Detroit, and Los Angeles! Play the best ball you can, Florida, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, and Oakland.
