Saving baseball

By Stephen Cannella, Albert Chen, Daniel G. Habib and Tom Verducci

Issue date: August 5, 2002

The August 5, 2002 issue of Sports Illustrated laid out a 15-point plan, based on the owners' and players' latest proposals, to avoid a baseball strike. Achieving labor peace is the first step. Here are the other 14 ways to help get the game back on track.

1. Bring in Nolan Ryan as the new commissioner

Bud Selig is a brilliant speaker of the house, but he's not cut from presidential cloth. He has yet to substantially improve the owners' relationship with the players, he engenders little trust from fans, and he has been unable to communicate a clear vision for the game. His apparent conflict of interest, given his ownership in trust of the Milwaukee Brewers, has been problematic from Day One.

That said, no owner puts in more sweat equity or understands all the issues in the game better than Selig. He's a valuable member of ownership's team, so he should be named chief executive officer of baseball and continue to work the phones from Milwaukee, where he masterfully educates and unifies the owners.

What baseball needs is a new leader who provides an unassailable presence on both sides of the labor fence and who also inspires confidence from fans. We've seen the endorsements for accomplished men of public service such as Bill Clinton, Mario Cuomo and Rudy Giuliani, but do we really want a career politician with an outsider's perspective running the game? No, we want someone who has baseball in his blood and in his soul. We want someone who knows what it means to be a player, an owner and a fan. We want Nolan Ryan.

Ryan's credentials are impeccable, and no one in the sport is more widely admired. He not only was a Hall of Fame pitcher but also has been successful in the banking business, having started up The Express Bank in Alvin, Texas, and as part owner of the Double A team Round Rock (Texas) Express; he hopes to bring another minor league team to Corpus Christi.

Selig would continue to do much of the spadework, but Ryan has the presence and perspective that the commissionership demands. For instance, he might not be the person to close a complicated labor deal, but he can spend the four or five years leading up to negotiations establishing a respectful partnership with the players that would make a deal easier to reach. He has shown in Round Rock--where he's a regular around town and at the ballpark--that he understands how to reach out to fans.

By the way, if Selig can move the commissioner's office to Milwaukee, Ryan is more than welcome to work out of his Refugio, Texas, home.

2. Make a day at the ballpark more family-friendly

For starters, offer ticket packages that families can comfortably afford. Though attendance is down for the third straight season, ticket prices over the past five years have increased by 35%, a higher rate than in the NFL and NBA. According to Team Marketing Report, a family of four spends an average of $145.26 to attend a major league game, a 67.5% increase from 10 years ago. Every team should learn from the Minnesota Twins, who offer a $44 Saturday night family ticket package that includes four outfield seats and $25 worth of food and drinks. The Twins have sold more than 45,000 such tickets this season.

Major league teams should also follow the lead of their minor league affiliates, who specialize in family-oriented promotions such as pregame batting practice for fans (Salt Lake Stingers) and on-field clinics (Eugene Emeralds).

3. Eliminate baseball's antitrust exemption

No other sport enjoys this archaic exemption, one that permits major league owners to act as a monopoly. For instance, a free market -- not a cartel of owners -- should determine where major league and affiliated minor league baseball is played. The New York Mets once flexed their territorial muscles by preventing a Long Island town 50 miles away from getting a minor league team.

The Washington/northern Virginia region would be more receptive to a major league team than Montreal, but baseball doesn't want to test the territorial rights of Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos. The Oakland Athletics would surely be more profitable in San Jose, but the San Francisco Giants won't let them relocate there.

Baseball's own Blue Ribbon Panel Report of 2000 even recommended the concept of franchise relocation to "a very large market already occupied by one or more high-revenue clubs." Such relocation, the committee wrote, helps competitive balance because the relocated club generates more revenues and the existing club or clubs benefit from enhanced rivalries. In other words, put a team in New Jersey or Brooklyn. The New York metropolitan area supports three hockey teams. It can easily do likewise with baseball.

4. Give new meaning to the All-Star Game

Award the league that wins the game home field advantage in the World Series. We've heard the argument against that idea: For the most part, players who wouldn't be in the World Series would determine who got the extra home game. That would have some validity if the home advantage were currently determined by even a smidgen of merit. Now it's awarded simply on a rotating basis. What once helped make baseball's All-Star Game the best such exhibition in any sport was that the players cared about the outcome. As it stands, starters regularly leave the premises after one or two at bats.

5. Nix the nostalgia and try some modern marketing

Rick Burton, a sports-marketing professor at the University of Oregon, tells his students the story of the Narragansett Brewing Company, a Rhode Island beermaker that sold suds in New England with the same folksy slogan -- "Hi, neighbor, have a Gansett!" -- for decades before going out of business in the early 1980s. "They woke up one morning," says Burton, "and found that all the neighbors were dead."

Baseball may be headed for its own Gansett moment, the day when all its fans are dead -- or, demographically speaking, might as well be. "Sports have to reinvent themselves to make them relevant to kids," Burton says. "Baseball continues to live in the past, both with its operating methods and its efforts at marketing nostalgia." If baseball wants to get with the times and reinvigorate its image, it has to quit telling us how great the game was and give younger fans a reason to love it now. A dose of history is fine now and then, but a blurry image of Willie Mays making an over-the-shoulder catch is as thrilling to kids as Grandpa's stories about movie tickets that once cost a nickel.

Instead, stir interest by demystifying the sport. Break down some of the walls separating fans and players -- and not only with choreographed autograph sessions. Think little gestures don't matter? Before one April game, Boston Red Sox players surprised fans by greeting them at the gates of Fenway Park. Fans were forbidden from asking for autographs (many did anyway), but the city still buzzed over the event.

FanFest, the interactive exhibit and card-memorabilia show that is held at the site of the All-Star Game each year, is always a huge hit. A similar attraction should be a seasonlong fixture in every major league city. And baseball should build on the popularity of the kids-run-the-bases promotion that teams occasionally offer after games by throwing open its doors before games, on off days and during the off-season. "We treat baseball stadiums like sacred temples that no one can enter unless the priests are there," Burton says. "Get kids running around on the fields, make them more public areas, use them as parks or sites for clinics and camps."

6. Institute a competitive balance draft

Talent is the most valuable commodity in baseball, and, like money, it needs to be shared. Each November the eight teams with the highest revenues would protect 38 players on their roster, rather than the traditional 40. The eight clubs with the lowest revenues would be able to draft one unprotected player from those rich ones. No team could lose more than one player. New York Yankees outfield prospects Juan Rivera or Marcus Thames, for instance, might get a chance to play every day for the Pittsburgh Pirates. The draft would create hot-stove fan interest and reward savvy organizations smart enough to unearth the next Vinny Castilla or Trevor Hoffman, who were expansion draft picks.

7. Launch an all-baseball digital TV channel

ESPN is baseball's de facto television home, but Major League Baseball should develop an in-house channel akin to NBA TV, the league's all-basketball digital-cable channel. For starters, an MLB-owned-and-operated channel could offer comprehensive highlight packages and live coverage of press conferences and other events, as well as exclusive access to players, clubhouses and the game's inner circle, which a privately held channel cannot provide. In addition, placing the package on a digital tier is easier than securing analog cable placement and would open forward-looking avenues in TV commerce and interactivity, an area that the league has managed well with Web-based features such as Condensed Games and Custom Cuts packages (pay services that assemble video highlights based on user preferences).

NBA TV, conceived on a similar model but also featuring live coverage of 98 games per season, was worth $45 million to AOL Time Warner (SI's parent company) for a 10% share and 25 cents per customer to cable providers. Any venture that increases baseball's total revenue pool would benefit competitive balance. TV is a tough game to break into, but in the brave new 500-channel universe, where country music can sustain not one but two channels, surely there's a place for the national pastime.

8. Level the playing field in Latin America

All teams should have an equal shot at Latin American prospects. As the players' association has suggested, Major League Baseball -- not individual clubs -- should operate Latin American baseball academies, the boarding school-training centers for prospects age 16 and up. For instance the Atlanta Braves, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Red Sox and the Yankees (high-revenue teams all) currently operate first-rate academies in the Dominican Republic, giving them an advantage in developing and signing the best Latin American talent. Among the players who have come through the Dodgers' Dominican academy, for example, are Pedro Martinez, Ramon Martinez and Raul Mondesi. Some low-revenue clubs, such as the Twins and the Pirates, have academies that are far less plush, which inhibits their ability to recruit and sign players. More equity in the distribution of Latin American talent will help competitive balance.

9. Create a baseball World Cup tournament

What better way to bring intrigue to the game than a tournament (six teams, double elimination, 10 days) with players representing the U.S., Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Japan plus an international squad (Australians, Canadians, Koreans, etc.)? Cuba could be added if the political situation can be resolved. The event would be held every other year in the third week of March with the host city rotating among Miami, Phoenix, San Juan, Santo Domingo, Caracas, Tokyo and other venues such as Toronto. There's nothing like a little nationalism to arouse interest, as the sport of soccer proves every four years.

10. Assist small-market clubs in retaining their stars

Low-revenue teams deserve a fighting chance to retain the stars they originally signed and developed -- players who form the foundation of fan loyalty -- and to do that they need financial assistance. The Kansas City Royals, for instance, could have used such help in trying to re-sign outfielder Johnny Damon, whom they traded to Oakland before last season in anticipation of losing him to free agency. Damon subsequently signed a four-year, $31 million contract with the Red Sox.

Under what would be baseball's version of the NBA's Larry Bird Exception, the Royals could have qualified for money from the commissioner's discretionary fund. Any team in the lower half of the revenue rankings would be eligible for funds to re-sign players whom they had originally signed and developed and who were eligible for free agency. The available money would be $3 million per year for each Type A free agent (the elite, as established by the Elias Sports Bureau's statistical rankings), $2 million for Type B and $1 million for Type C.

If such a system were in place this season, the Anaheim Angels would qualify for funds to help retain outfielder Darin Erstad, and the Royals would have had help in paying the five-year, $55 million extension that first baseman Mike Sweeney signed in March.

11. Give pitchers a chance: Raise the mound

Over the past three decades a combination of factors -- introduction of the designated hitter, expansion, cozy new ballparks, an ever-changing strike zone, the proliferation of bodybuilding supplements -- has shifted the balance of power to the hitters. There's no better evidence than the home run explosion that peaked in 2000, with 2.34 homers and 10.28 runs per game (both alltime highs). The surest, simplest way to shorten the pitchers' odds on getting shelled is to raise the height of the mound from 10 inches to 12 1/2 inches. Why 12 1/2? The last time the game was seen as being overly dominated by pitchers was in 1968, when the major league average was .237 and games averaged 1.23 homers and 6.84 runs--and the mound was 15 inches high. We split the difference.

Every argument in favor of raising the mound has in recent years been met with a single riposte: Fans love the long ball. But do they? From 1988 through '94 there were 1.62 home runs per game, and average attendance was 23,926. From '95 through '01 home runs increased 35%, to 2.18 per game, while attendance was essentially flat (25,180).

The moral: As homers have grown more commonplace, their ability to attract fans has plateaued. All of which raises the question: If prodigious sluggers are making a mockery of the game's offensive records, and fans are evincing a been-there-done-that attitude, why not raise the mound, at least on a three-year trial basis? Who knows? Power pitching could be the next big thing.

12. Allow teams to trade their draft choices

Bad teams always wind up with something valuable after the season: a high pick in the next amateur draft. Baseball, however, doesn't allow teams -- good or bad -- to barter that commodity for players, cash or additional picks. In the NFL, for instance, the landmark Herschel Walker deal turned around the Dallas Cowboys, who received three first-round picks and three second-rounders plus five players from the Minnesota Vikings in exchange for the former Heisman winner. Given the chance, a downtrodden major league team could pull off a comparable coup.

13. Help clubs that don't sign their No. 1 picks

When the Philadelphia Phillies failed to sign their first-round pick in the 1997 draft, prized outfielder J.D. Drew, they ended up with nothing to show for a valuable piece of currency (the No. 2 pick) intended to help a bad team get better. The solution: Any club that fails to sign its first-rounder gets that same pick back in the next year's draft. Under this setup the Phillies would have received a compensatory selection after the second pick in the '98 draft (call it 2A) in addition to their regular first-rounder that year. A team shouldn't be penalized if negotiations with a draftee fall apart -- and the player shouldn't have all the leverage in those negotiations.

14. Limit interleague play to games that matter

Two weeks leading up to the All-Star break, or about 12 interleague games per team, are plenty. Too many of the games are nothing special. Let the natural rivals play home-and-home series annually (Mets-Yankees, Giants-A's, Cubs-White Sox, Expos-Blue Jays, Marlins-Devil Rays, Phillies-Orioles, Cardinals-Royals, Dodgers-Angels, Astros-Rangers, Reds-Indians). The Braves played the Red Sox six times this year, for instance, but they're not natural rivals. And do we really need the Marlins-Royals series we got this season? Schedule all other interleague games on a rotating basis.

Issue date: August 5, 2002

 

Related information

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video