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A fool's dance Baseball never seems to learn from its mistakes, does it?
Updated: Wednesday November 07, 2001 1:26 AM
There will be lawsuits and threats and a lot more public posturing on both sides. On all sides. This will get uglier -- way, way uglier -- before it gets anywhere close to presentable. That's saying something because, already, this is one miserable looking wretch. Major League Baseball, as only baseball can do, has stepped in it again. Less than two days after a most memorable World Series, team owners have voted to whack two of their own. If this were The Godfather, everyone would be going for the mattresses about now. It's going to be messy. "We consider this action to be inconsistent with the law, our contract, and perhaps most important, the long-term welfare of the sport," said players' union boss Don Fehr in a statement Tuesday. "If they eliminate the Twins, I say we eliminate their antitrust status," former wrestler and current Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura told Minnesota Public Radio on Tuesday. "This shows we're committed to solving our problems," baseball commissioner, and former team owner, Bud Selig said Tuesday. Oh, brother. Please, please, pleeeeeease make them go away. Everyone knows baseball has its economic problems. If the $5 Coke or the $40 ticket didn't tip you off (or the $25 million a year contract for a certain shortstop on a certain team in a certain Texas city), there's Selig at every turn telling you the game is a step away from ruination. So, to solve their problems, owners say they will off a couple family members. Simple as that. See you, Montreal. This is going to hurt us more than it'll hurt you. Whack! Minnesota, lemme kiss those chubby Midwestern cheeks of yours. Whack, whack! It's the saddest kind of joke to think that this plan will fix baseball's problems. Even owners realize that the economic inequities that exist among the teams are just that -- problems among the teams. The 30 major league teams just finished the first season of a five-year, $2.5 billion television contract. Millions and millions more come in through merchandising. Local TV and radio contracts bring in even more. Ticket sales, luxury boxes, in-park advertising, popcorn and peanuts and parking … there's money out there to be had. Lots of it. The teams just have to figure a way to split it all up. Yes, that brings up "revenue sharing" and "luxury taxes" and other things that the more powerful owners -- "powerful" meaning rich men who want to get even richer -- want to avoid. But these, reportedly, are smart people. You'd think they could figure it out. What they've chosen, instead, is to spike dozens of major league players' jobs that go with two whacked teams. If the union wants those jobs back, in the form of increased rosters on each of the 28 remaining teams (rosters would go from 25 to, say, 27 or 28), union reps will have to negotiate with the owners for them. "Negotiate" meaning submit to salary caps or first-year player caps or some sort of salary restrictions. That doesn't look promising. At all. "This is the worst manner in which to begin the process of negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement," Fehr said in his statement. "We had hoped that we were in a new era, one that would see a much better relationship between players and owners. Today's announcement is a severe blow to such hopes." Yeah, we all had hoped. We had hoped baseball would have learned from the last time, when fans stayed away after the idiots who run the game canceled the 1994 postseason. We had hoped baseball would have learned from any of the eight work stoppages since 1972 -- learned that fans, as fickle as they are, can't be duped forever. We had hoped that, after a World Series like the one that just ended, baseball would know better. This postseason, according to Selig and others, has helped a nation mend from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. And now the game is whacking itself apart. There will be nastiness in the months ahead. Numbers will fly and, unless you're an economist, not much of it will make sense. Two teams will be whacked. It may actually happen. Then again, it may not. We had hoped it all could be avoided. We were fools. But not nearly as foolish as those in the game now look. John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer. Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.
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