Completely spent

Baseball's day on the Hill turns into same old sad song

Any day now -- any hour, maybe -- Jason Giambi will scratch his name onto a contract and become $125 million richer, give or take a few million bucks. For playing the game of baseball.

But, you know, baseball, the business, lost almost a quarter of a billion dollars in 2001. Commissioner Bud Selig told Congress that on Thursday. It was more like half of a billion, Selig said, if you count interest payments on loans and depreciation of various team assets and those types of things.

Hooo boy. Here we go again.

John Smoltz missed all of 2000 when he blew out the elbow in his pitching arm. He became a closer in 2001 and last week signed a three-year, $30 million deal to stay with the Atlanta Braves. The Braves, by the way, lost more than $14 million last season, according to the numbers that Selig laid out before Congress.

Alex Rodriguez, remember, landed a contract worth $252 million over 10 years. His Texas Rangers lost almost $16 million in 2001.

Somebody stop these teams before they spend again.

And so it was, with all those millions floating around and baseball's red ink flowing as deep as Jesse Ventura's baritone, that Selig walked into a packed room in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, faced the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary and, in effect, said this:

"Yeah, baseball is pretty screwed up. We want to eliminate a couple of teams, cut thousands of jobs, turn our backs on maybe millions of fans. But we have to just to stay afloat."

And he said, basically, this:

"Please, don't mess with our antitrust exemption or things will get even worse."

Ahhh, baseball. The national pastime. Bickering about billions.

For more than a century, baseball has been bad business. Really bad, if you believe the owners. Still, the league expands, more parks are built, team values shoot through the retractable roofs and everybody in the game, it seems, from owner to player to the guy that pulls a rake around in the middle of the inning, drives a Mercedes or a Lexus.

Baseball had record attendance last year, more than 30,000 fans a game. The sport pulled in $3.5 billion in revenues, more than ever before.

But Selig claims that the sport is worse off than ever. Just check the audited charts and graphs.

Contraction -- cutting at least a couple teams, as Selig says he'll do before next season -- will help things. Increased revenue sharing will help, too. But the big one baseball needs, he says, is control over player salaries, which now average more than $2 million a year.

It's the old give-and-take.

BASEBALL: Guys, we obviously can't help ourselves. Please, please, pleeeease agree to a salary cap so we don't keep spending like madmen.

UNION: No.

It's hard to feel sorry for baseball, even as it bleeds red ink. The industry enjoys an antitrust exemption no other business in America has. It has all this power, all this money, all these high-powered attorneys and accountants and businessmen.

Why can't baseball can't solve what ails it?

"What are you waiting on …?," Rep. Melvin Watt, D-N.C., asked Selig Thursday in a sometimes contentious, sometimes humorous hearing on H.R. 3288, a bill that would strip baseball of part of its antitrust exemption.

That's always been the question. What are they waiting on?

Baseball owners and the players' union are waiting, as always, for the other side to crack. The union is waiting for owners to get their act together and find a better way to distribute all that wealth. Baseball is waiting for the union to say "Sure, cap our salaries."

Meanwhile, the people of Minnesota wait on H.R. 3288, which, if passed, could stop baseball from lopping the Twins. The Montreal Expos, another possible loppee, twist in the wind. The Florida Marlins and Tampa Bay Devil Rays, too.

"It's just very frustrating for us," intoned Minnesota's Gov. Ventura, who at times riddled Selig with questions during the hearing, compared baseball to OPEC and called the whole situation "crazy" and "asinine."

Everybody waits for the game to fix itself. But until baseball finds better ways to share -- and until the union makes some kind of concession to allow baseball to better control itself -- we'll continue to wait.

Giambi's about to sign, though. Any time now.

Big money, too, we hear.

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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