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Don&#8217;t blame Boss for MLB&#8217;s ills
To Be Frank With You ...
By Frank DiLeo, Daily Record
It&#8217;s easy to blame George Steinbrenner for everything that&#8217;s wrong with baseball. After all, when you have a team whose payroll is larger than the gross national product of some small countries, it doesn&#8217;t look good for Major League Baseball.
The acquisition of Alex Rodriguez has once again fueled a national debate over the current state of baseball. Don&#8217;t be fooled though. The Boss loves to stir the pot and could care less if people think he&#8217;s ruining the game.
But while most small-market as well as many larger-market teams are criticized for not wanting to spend money to put a quality team on the field, The Boss is spending the money he makes from Yankee fans.
Would you feel better if he kept the Yankee payroll at $100 million and pocketed the rest of the profits?
Fact is, the more money The Boss spends, the better it is for baseball, under the current system. As the Yankee payroll approaches $200 million, that&#8217;s all the more money New York will have to give to the small-market teams under the current revenue-sharing plan.
The other plus for baseball is that when the Yankees don&#8217;t win the World Series for the fourth-straight year, it will reinforce the false notion that payroll equals success.
In 2002, the Anaheim Angels beat the Yankees and won the World Series with a payroll of $61 million. Last season, the Marlins defeated the Yankees and their $150 million payroll with a mere $54 million.
Yes, it&#8217;s absurd that the Yankees currently have four of the eight $100 million ballplayers in the majors on their roster. And if you think this is unfair, wait until July, when The Boss decides that Enrique Wilson isn&#8217;t cutting it at second base and trades for Jose Vidro.
But you can&#8217;t blame Steinbrenner for putting his profits back onto the field&#8230; where they belong.
Remember the strike in 1994? Baseball fans lost almost half the season, including a World Series. How about the threatened work stoppage this past season? Thankfully, a strike was averted, but this is the result of those two occurrences.
George Steinbrenner can spend $200 million on a baseball team. The Pittsburgh Pirates can take their cut of the shared revenue and pocket it instead of putting it on the field. Players can use steroids or any other performance-enhancing drugs with little, if any, worry about being punished.
Forgive me if I can&#8217;t recall what was wrong with baseball before the strike in &#8217;94 that&#8217;s worse than the current state of affairs.
It was, after all, the Texas Rangers, not the New York Yankees, who gave A-Rod a $252 million contract. The Bronx Bombers got a steal of a deal, one that could rival the Babe Ruth trade. I&#8217;ve seen Little Leaguers with a better feel for baseball fundamentals than Alfonso Soriano. What&#8217;s best is the Rangers will still be paying part of A-Rod&#8217;s salary.
Right now, the 32 teams in Major League Baseball all have to operate under the current collective bargaining agreement. It allows teams like the Pirates to make bad decisions and blame the out-of-control spending for not being able to compete.
There are a lot of issues Major League Baseball needs to address which will never get fixed. There should be some sort of salary cap in place, like the NFL or NBA has. There should be harsher punishments for steroid users. And most importantly, there has to be some accountability from the teams that don&#8217;t spend money and cry every time the Yankees and Red Sox try to one-up each other.
If you want to point the finger, point it at the MLB Players Union, which has all the power right now and no apparent will to compromise salaries for the good of the game.
Blame the Rangers for paying A-Rod $252 million.
Blame a system that allows one-legged, overweight Mo Vaughn or disgruntled Albert Belle to make millions even though they won&#8217;t play an inning of baseball.
Blame Bud Selig&#8217;s Milwaukee Brewers for telling taxpayers they can&#8217;t compete without a new stadium, then getting one and still not competing. And do the Brewers have to prove to Wisconsin taxpayers that they can&#8217;t afford to put quality ballplayers on the field?
If you win two bucks on a scratch-off ticket, Uncle Sam will somehow find out. But the Brewers can get hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars and not have to prove a thing. And while they did recently agree to an independent audit after outcry from several state lawmakers, the team still doesn&#8217;t have to divulge all of its financial documents&#8230; and won&#8217;t. What&#8217;s better is that right after the audit was underway, chairperson Wendy Selig-Prieb, who is head of the team&#8217;s board of directors, announced the team would be put up for sale.
So let me get this straight: The Yankees are ruining baseball for spending their profits. But the Brewers can have the taxpayers fund a stadium and put a terrible, cheap team on the field, and that&#8217;s good for the game?
And it&#8217;s terrible that some team paid A-Rod $252 million, but if he decides to take some steroids for the World Series, he&#8217;ll get counseling&#8230; and that&#8217;s good for the game?
No, George Steinbrenner isn&#8217;t the poster boy for what&#8217;s good about baseball. Far from it.
He&#8217;s just the biggest target.
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Just one note - Don't mess with Sori!
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