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| Wednesday, July 19 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Don't be fooled, baseball won't lose teams Special to ESPN.com | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The most frightening gathering of the rich, the powerful and the
misguided outside of the national political conventions took place last week
when the major league owners held one of their quarterly meetings.
As part of the well-attended seminar, "Blood from a Turnip:
Squeezing Out the Very Last Drop of Public Money," the owners floated
another gem of management strategy. Rather than fix the financial disparity
in baseball, they simply would consolidate the league by buying out and
disbanding struggling franchises.
Please stifle those laughs in Minnesota and Oakland.
Baseball is going to disband teams? Yeah, right. This is nothing
more than a desperate, transparent attempt to stoke the fire under
communities that haven't signed up for corporate welfare in the form of a
new ballpark. After Carl Pohlad's ludicrous threat to move the Twins to
Mayberry two years ago, cities finally have learned that the list of viable
places for teams to move is as blank as Amazon.com's profit sheet. So to
maintain the pressure for public tax money, owners dreamed up this threat to
buy out troubled franchises.
Shaquille O'Neal's acting career should be taken more seriously than
this proposal. Baseball will turn over its luxury suites to the homeless
before it disbands teams in struggling markets.
Of more substantial note though, a blue ribbon task force that
included man of the people George Will delivered its list of recommendations
for solving baseball's financial problems. Among these proposals are
increased revenue-sharing (a.k.a, the Steinbrenner Remedy) and a minimum
team payroll (i.e., the Pohlad Solution).
There are some promising ideas in the report, which probably means
they never will be considered. Too bad, but here are some other
recommendations the owners can ignore.
1. Eliminate the designated hitter. Like cigar bars, this is an idea
whose time has passed. Baseball needs more offense like television needs
more Regis Philbin. Placate the union by phasing out the rule over time,
giving DHs four years to buy a glove or find a real job.
2. Create a revenue pool for stadium construction. If these new
stadiums are so damn important to the sport's future, let the sport pay for
them by using a hefty cut of national broadcast revenues to cover the costs.
And if any team with a new stadium already howls that this isn't fair, they
can just shut up. Other than the Giants, no team paid out money that wasn't
issued by Milton Bradley for their stadiums.
3. Expand by two more teams, giving each league 16 teams and four
four-team divisions. One goes into Las Vegas, the fastest growing city in
the country and a community without a major league team. The other goes into
New York, which is large enough to handle four or five teams without a
problem.
Expansion to 32 teams solves numerous problems with the schedule and
division format while moving another team into New York solves a major
problem -- namely, the Yankees' unfair market advantage. Toss another team
into the mix, give local stations another team competing for viewers and
broadcast contracts, and suddenly the Yankees are no longer the dominant
franchise in the league.
And finally ...
4. Install a true commissioner, one who represents the owners and
players alike. It's simple. The owners nominate a list of candidates. The
players nominate a list of candidates. Each side votes for one from each
list. Whoever gets the most votes wins and rules as commissioner for a
four-year term, or until Mike Morgan retires, whichever comes first.
And then just to keep him suitably humble, the job's official title
is "Commish."
Box score line of the week Nomar Garciaparra went 4-for-4 and 3-for-3 to raise his batting average to .400. Shannon Stewart and Johnny Damon each hit four doubles in a game to tie the major league record. But this week's award goes to Oakland rookie Mark Mulder for his recent efforts. Mulder started the season with a 5-2 record, but major league hitters have figured him out recently. He's allowed 27 runs and 38 hits in his past four starts, all losses, including a 15-hit outing July 5 and Tuesday's award-winning gem. Mulder's line: 4 IP, 9 H, 10 R, 9 ER, 3 BB 2 K. Lies, damn lies and statistics The Blue Jays became the first team with four players to reach the 20-homer mark by the All-Star break -- Carlos Delgado (28), Tony Batista (24), Raul Mondesi (23) and Junior Cruz (20). By comparison, the Twins have had only one player hit 20 home runs in an entire season since 1996. ... The Cubs went over the 100 million mark in attendance at Wrigley Field during their final homestand before the All-Star break, which must be some sort of record for most fans at one ballpark to never see their team win a World Series. ... The Rockies have hit just 22 home runs in 48 road games. ... And you thought Jose Lima was struggling -- Sauerkraut Saul has yet to win the Pierogi Race in Pittsburgh this year, going 0-45 in the first half. But he is determined to turn it around in the second half. "We're already thinking of security issues," Pirates promotions director Rick Orienza said. "We just hope it isn't like the Staples Center situation, where people start setting fire to cars." From left field After spending seven years working as a carpenter in the Dominican Republic, Arizona's Geraldo Guzman won his second game in as many big league appearances Monday, holding the Mariners scoreless for seven innings this week. He isn't the only player to take a strange path to the majors. Some other noteable players who took the road less traveled before reaching the majors in the past two years:
* began year in the majors, returned to the minors and is now out for the year after undergoing elbow surgery Jim Caple is the national baseball writer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has a website at www.seattle-pi.com. | ALSO SEE Economists: Baseball's debts misleading Stark: Rumblings and Grumblings | |||||||||||||||||||||||||