(You may check out more of my takes at my other blog, Wonderful Matters.)
This one, however, is one I must write some things about, and indeed I have touched on this quite often before though not in this particular blog effort. I share the disclaimer because it doesn't seem like it is a bad as others, and I agree, it isn't, but I do like the subject and it is quite symptomatic of all the other more lethal deceits all around.
I'm writing too much because I like baseball. And I like a favorite team in baseball. And I like competitive sports kinds of things, both to watch and to play.
A day or two ago the Los Angeles Dodgers professional baseball team garnered a lot of attention because they once again signed a major baseball star to a massive contract. They had already signed a number of free agents over the years, the very best players available so they could have a team that has indeed gone on to win the last two World Series titles in Major League Baseball.
I also recently noted so much attention to this perceived inequity that some are seeking ways to keep this from happening. The idea is that it is simply too unfair that one team should have so many of the best ballplayers and dominate the game like this. I've seen some attention to the idea of a lockout, the owners putting a pause on baseball until this can be rectified. Then there is the inevitable cry for an imposed salary cap and other rules to keep these teams from doing this.
All of this is terribly misguided, and it isn't because the situation isn't horrifically unfair. It is unfair. But the answer is not a lockout or salary cap or any of those ineffective even debilitating things people think is the answer.
The answer is ending free agency altogether.
Yes, the answer is to restore an environment where the teams could draft and develop players and be able to keep the best ones for as long as they want so their team has a genuine chance to compete. If a team wanted to trade a player they could. If a team wanted to release a player they could, and then another team could sign that player -- they could sign that player for a bazillion dollars if they wanted to.
Yes, I know, it is very unlikely that will happen because this idea, the idea of the evil "Reserve Clause" has been made so objectionable, much because it is considered to keep player salaries artificially low and that just flies in the face of the beloved capitalist ideal that must be upheld no matter what.
The problem is it doesn't impede any players ability to make excellent money, and a professional sports league by its very nature must be managed differently than the wild-west market out in the outside-world streets.
This is because of the value of competitive integrity.
This just means every team has a fair and somewhat equal chance to win any given game merely based on the hard work they've done and the talent they cultivated. Everyone is now starting to see that competitive integrity in Major League Baseball has been shattered. The reason is simple.
Mammon.
The Major Leagues and all its players (and owners and other stakeholders too!) simply want to make as much money as they can, and they've shot competitive integrity in the head to achieve that. This is not to say making as much money as you can is bad, no, the position of this blogger is that anyone should be able to make whatever money they've earned paid them by people who do so because they've received some benefit from that payment.
Serving Mammon though is different. It is taking money when profound institutionalized deceit is involved.
The issue here is the MLBers, we'll call them all MLBers for short, all realize that for that to happen, teams like the Dodgers and Yankees -- and yes those two teams in particular -- must be winning on a regular basis for the money to come in. If they aren't, the money dries up. So for years, indeed for decades when you look at it, the Dodgers and Yankees have been given advantages that enable them to regularly win, advantage that other teams are not afforded.
The deceit is that they try to convey the idea that competitive integrity is still in place.
It isn't, and it hasn't been for most of Major League Baseball's history. (I'd love to detail that history, but you can look at it yourself. This one blog effort, though, simply doesn't have the size for that now.)
The simple truth is the way it is now, you can either have players making inordinate amounts of money, particularly for teams like the Dodgers or Yankees, or you can have competitive integrity.
You cannot have both.
Now there is one single caveat to this reality, and that is if there are indeed enough fans who appreciate a Major Leagues where the Dodgers and Yankees may very well suck for long periods of time, and teams like the Pirates and Rays frequently appear in the World Series. Really, if the Pirates and Rays -- just as examples of teams that are in much smaller markets than the Dodgers and Yankees -- are successful at drafting and developing players so they are genuinely the very best teams in the Majors, then great! Everyone even making lots of money great! More power to them.
But can you see the problem with this from a Mammon standpoint?
The money vanishes because 28 teams simply do not have the fan-base size that the Dodgers and Yankees have.
The owner and major stakeholder of every other team not the Dodgers and Yankees do definitely want their team to win. That's great. They do what they can to be that one team to upend the dominant major market success apple cart -- and indeed some teams do! Woo-hoo! Royals in 2015. Nationals in 2019. Rangers in 2023. Every once in a while it happens and the MLBers are great with that because it keeps the deceit alive and well.
But everyone knows if the Dodgers and Yankees are not regularly winning and at least making the playoffs, and yes, doing so every single year, then the money dries up for everyone.
In other words, you do want your team to win, but if it doesn't, you definitely want the Dodgers and Yankees winning.
This destroys competitive integrity. Sorry, it does. Competitive integrity is simply not there. It isn't.
What is happening now is that because the Dodgers have been so brazen about their exploitation of free agency, the MLBers have overplayed this reality and there may be a critical mass of people seeing through it all.
It is interesting that people will squawk about the massive television contract the Dodgers have and that is how they can afford those players, interesting because it is assumed this is the thing. The television deal certainly generates the money, but the main thing is why? It is simple: The Dodgers have a gargantuan fan base and with it all the money they will spend on Dodger winning -- but only Dodger winning.
Again, the most important point here is that this is not just good for the Dodgers, but good for everyone.
Back in the 1990s when there was some squawking about the wild Yankees success, the Majors implemented something they call a luxury tax. The Dodgers and Yankees, largely because they generate the most money and can afford to buy the best players, were expected to shell out gobs of that money to other teams so they have a chance to buy players too. It sounds really good, but it does nothing to uphold competitive integrity, and much of that is simply because the Dodgers and Yankees still have to be regularly winning -- made to be regularly winning -- in order for the other teams to be subsidized!
Once again, there is one single solution to this problem.
End free agency.
This doesn't mean a team can't do all they can to be the best and generate the most revenue they could! Go work very very very hard in the front office, in the dugout, on the field, at the ball park, and be a winning team that fans like! And if you have players that deserve to get $60 million a year, then pay them that! Wonderful! Go for it, make a small market team into a juggernaut, winning World Series after World Series -- that's great if they've worked hard and put good players on the field fairly and squarely!
And everyone would genuinely appreciate it!
But the MLBers right now feel that can't happen because no team has the fan base and commensurate money generation for everyone that the Dodgers do. The very reasonable consideration is that the Majors would collapse if the Pirates or Rays put together a dynasty and the Dodgers had the same empty stadium half the Major League teams have every night of the regular season.
I don't know if what has happened recently with the Dodgers will get people to truly, seriously, actually face the reality of what is shared here in this post. I do think many have, but they have been irrevocably mesmerized by the trope that you can't touch free agency -- it is indeed kind of a third-rail of professional baseball.
But maybe that's just it.
Maybe most fans just don't want it touched. They don't really want competitive integrity, maybe they are just okay with the Dodgers and Yankees always made to win, and that because the MLBers do know it would look bad if they won every single year, the Majors blesses us with those few times other teams will win and we'll all be just fine for my team to have that one little chance to win that one time. Maybe my team this year can be that 2015 Royals or 2019 Nationals or 2023 Rangers that'd just be great just for right now! Next year the Dodgers and Yankees will win again, but for now I get my thrill from my team winning WOO-HOO!
How sad. Really, how sad. That so many are just so taken by this grave deceit.
Again, maybe the Majors have gone too far. Maybe right now the jig is up.
We'll see.
It hasn't changed for many decades. There has been a lot of window-dressing to make it seem like they really want competitive integrity, but they don't. I don't know, will that actually change now?
We'll see.
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