What's Wrong With Baseball? Money, to Start With
Recently a couple of old baseball stars named Gibson and Jackson -- National Leaguer pitcher and American League hitter -- have been pushing a book that they've published, bantering about who would have got the best of whom and comparing the game that they knew with the game they see today.
"I don 't know if the game has changed," Bob Gibson, now 74, told George Vecsey of The New York Times, "but the people have changed."
Actually the game changed radically in the decade after Gibson retired, which was the latter half of Reggie Jackson's career. They are being presented now as virtual contemporaries, but in fact Gibson played in one era, while Jackson, now 63, played in two. A quick glance at their year-by-year records reveals this immediately. Gibson pitched his entire career, from 1959 to 1975, for one team, the St. Louis Cardinals. Jackson batted from 1967 to 1987 for four teams. When Gibson retired, the designated hitter had just begun to transform the American League and divide the game, and free-agency, an even more transforming force, was just a-borning. It was the cause of Jackson's being traded that off-season by his original franchise, the Oakland A's, and the following year he signed one of the earliest mammoth free-agent contracts, for five years and $3 million, with the New York Yankees. Reggie Jackson was the face of a brand new ballgame.
As the 2009 playoffs proceed and the game of baseball continues to enthrall us with matches like the Minnesota-Detroit one-game decider last Tuesday, I've been thinking, with a nudge from Messrs. Gibson and Jackson, about the ways that the game has changed in the years that I've been watching it, which stretch back to about the time that young Bob Gibson began firing fastballs and darting sliders in the old Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.
No surprise: I think that it has changed mainly for the worse.
Having been badly burnt as a boy by a team president named Walter O'Malley, I have little retrospective admiration for old-time baseball owners. Their generally tight-fisted management, enabled by the unjust reserve clause that restricted players' freedom and income, almost necessarily spawned a severe reaction from the players and their union. But that reaction has, over the past three decades and more, opened a floodgate of money that has distorted and corrupted the game.
Major league baseball players simply make far, far too much money for the good of the game and its fans. Money is too important to be rendered meaningless, which is what happens when anyone receives extravagantly more than he needs for acquiring every conceivable material comfort and satisfaction. Many, perhaps most, players earn dollars that are simply symbolic -- that is, having no value except self-congratulation. A player earning $12 million a year who leaves his team and city to make $13 million elsewhere does not, if he is changing places for the money only, improve his life in any way, and each one who does so further erodes the bond between fan and team that is -- or used to be -- one of sports' greatest values.
An outstanding example of such a player is Johnny Damon, who starred for the Boston Red Sox earlier in this decade and was a key figure in the glorious 2004 World Series triumph that was their first in 86 seasons -- eight-and-a-half decades during which that city' earnest fans writhed in humiliation while, just down the coast, the New York Yankees piled up dozens of national championships. But then, in 2005, when Damon's contract ended, there were those contemptible Yankees trying to woo him away from the city and the fans who loved long-haired, bearded Johnny, and whom he appeared to love back.
Here's what he was reported to have said at the time:
"There's no way I can go play for the Yankees, but I know that they're going to come after me hard. It's definitely not the most important thing to go out there for the top dollar, which the Yankees are going to offer me. It's not what I need."
What the Yankees actually offered the 32-year-old Damon was an extra year. Quite reasonably, for a player passing his prime, the Sox limited their proposal to three seasons. When the Yankees went for four, Johnny Damon headed south. He also assented to a Yankee policy that deprived him of his signature locks and whiskers, features that, aside from being an essential part of his identity, he had turned into fast cash via television commercials.
Now I know full well that at this point many readers are shaking their heads in my direction and asking, "Hey Murphy, would you turn down $13 million?" (That's the per annum in Damon's Yankee contract.) Well, yes, I would if I were already getting $39 million from the team that I was emotionally and historically bonded to. To use Damon's own words, it would not be what I needed. Besides, after three years, he could still earn more money, maybe not $13 million, but certainly more than he'd need, and closer to what he would actually deserve
And here's the rest of the story: While Johnny Damon and hundreds of other players are making far more money than they need -- and many of them pumping poisonous steroids into their bodies to extend their earning-power -- the rank and file of baseball fans are being required to spend more money than they can afford to watch a ballgame. The better seats in the two new ballparks that opened in New York this season cost in the hundreds of dollars, with premium behind-the-plate tickets at Yankee Stadium topping out at $2500 before management noticed that, in a deep recession, the center-field camera revealed them to be glaringly empty, and mercifully slashed the price by half. Even the lower number is difficult to conceive. Anyone who is willing to pay a four-figure price for a single seat to a regular-season baseball game has too much money in his pocket, just as do many of the men on the field.
It may be that Bob Gibson was underpaid for much of his great career, or that his wearing the same uniform for nearly two decades was due in part to an onerous reserve clause, but the changes that were needed to make the game fairer to players have yielded to greed and disloyalty that have alienated those players from the fans and communities that they used to represent and be identified with. Some players from past decades are envious of today's multimillionaires, but at least one, a contemporary of Gibson, has vividly expressed, without any trace of that emotion, his own alienation from the modern game
Tony Kubek, Yankee shortstop at the end of their four-decade run of glory from the '20s to the '60s, then longtime broadcaster for the Yankees and NBC, decided after 20 years of free-agency that he no longer cared about major league baseball. During the players' strike of 1994, he sued for what he calls a "divorce." And he has never gone back -- not, he insists, to watch a single game.
"I just got a different life," he said this summer, when he was inducted into the broadcasters' wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. "People have said, 'you must hate baseball,' but I never said that because I don't. I didn't like some of the things I saw. I'm not averse to either side making money, but money was becoming more important than the game itself."
See what money does? I've got so wrapped up in it that I've left no room to get to the designated hitter and other things that bug me about the modern game. Next time.
Will Bunch: How Philadelphia Got Its Groove Back -- And Why N.Y. Is Jealous
New York became a black-hole-like force, sucking the energy from Philadelphia, stealing everything from our college grads to tourists. New York got Broadway, the UN, the World's Fair -- and baseball.
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Professional athletes have a very narrow skill set and have a very large audience the combination of those things often protends high salaries....and i would agree overall that many athletes are in fact overpaid....i'm not talking about the superstars (although true in some cases) but huge contracts given to a player that had one good year and then pfft...nothing.....to which in some sports the money is guaranteed....but atheles are entertainers in the end and fans of sports are no different than fans of the movies, theater, etc... we pay you to entertain us.....the real problem is not atheletes wages or owners etc...the problem is with the wages of the average fans, which unlike athletes, owners and every loser on wall street who nearly bankrupted america only to run crying to those same average joe's and beg for their hard earned tax dollars....so they can reward themselves with billions and tell their employees that there is just no money for raises for them.....wages have not outpaced inflation for a number of years...so until; we start demanding the non entertainers' (ie corporate america not a professional entertainment league (despite the fact they are a corporation but with anti-trust its differnt) wages be more in line with the average workers the way it used to be....i could really care less what an overpaid entertainer makes....did anyone see some of the turdbombs coming out of hollywood ately?
Two things. When I was in college my go to date was a phillies game. 4 buck tickets, a subway ride down from Temple. a couple of beers and a couple of dogs. Not that expensive. I got away with a 25 buck date that felt like a 50 buck one and I loved going to games. When owners started building these new stadiums to maximize their cash and super-boxes the players got a huge bump in salary. When teams like the Yanks started getting all that yes network money players got a huge bump in salary. There are plenty of teams in the bottom tier of the money that have a shot every year. The Twins, the Marlins, the Diamondbacks, SF this year. Heck, the Phillies don't spend what the Dodgers, Angels, or the Yanks spend and we won it last year. The problem is that without a cap there is a choice each owner makes. The Yanks spent 500 million dollars last off-season and they made it back in one year. So was that too much or too little? Gotta hop the fightin phillies are coming on in 45 minutes.
Peace,
J
J
Sure the players have huge salaries now. So what!?!?? These players have earned their status by becoming known entertainment commodites. Has money changed the game for the worse? Probably. But nothing will change until fans stop going to games and watching them on TV, and that's not going to happen. I'm not sure why but the players always get a bunch of misdirected anger. They have a skill that someone is willing to pay a bunch of money for. Get over it!!!
If you think ticket prices would go down if player contracts were less money you are kidding yourselves. The owners are the ones making the big money and they would be more than happy to pay their players less and pocket the difference. Sports teams are worth huge money and the owners are rolling in it.
I wish all sports teams were like the Green Bay Packers......community owned. The city and the fans in Green Bay have a real stake in the team and don't "serve at the pleasure" of a private owner or group. Here where I live we lost our AAA minor league baseball team because the city really could not afford to build a new stadium. The old one's not that bad and a little sprucing up would have been fine, but oh no, they MUST have a major league variety! Now we're getting a AA team, but already the owners are disregarding the feelings of the community, starting with the stupid names they've suggested. At least they're going to play in the old ball park...for now. I guess it's good enough for a AA team.
First, anyone who thinks that the if players made less money that ticket prices would be markedly lower is simply kidding themselves. All cutting player salaries would do is to stuff even more money into some already over-stuffed owner's pockets. The fact is that people are willing to spend a lot of money to enjoy this sport. I have no problem giving it to those who actually provide the enjoyment (the players), rather than to the owners.
Second, I can't wait for the last person who was a Dodger fan back when they were in Brooklyn to shuffle off this mortal coil, so I no longer have to hear the whining, self-indulgent, sob stories about how they were fans of the team for a few years when they were kids. It happened 52 years ago. Grow up, already.
People forget that pro athletes are essentially unemployable after the age of 40, and consequently the high paychecks take that complete lack of job security into account.
I'm sorry, but that argument doesn't hold water. The average salary in MLB is $3.26 million. That's for one year. A person making $40,000 a year would have to work 81 years to earn that amount.
And how long is the average MLB career? Ten years? Fifteen if you push it? Assuming the player in question is smart and doesn't splurge like a celebutante dealing with the demise of her quickie marriage with retail therapy, it evens out.
The baseball strike cured me of watching baseball, in particular, and professional sports, in general. The money has led directly to the "performance-enhancing" drug scandal, which MLB has consistently swept under the rug.
The losers are many:
1) Youngsters who emulate big league players and take steroids
2) Players whose lives are shortened or ruined by side effects of the drugs
Is the money really worth the real costs?
If the fans would strike, perhaps there would be hope for cleaning up the games, but I doubt that would ever happen.
But wouldn't the players still bounce from team to team looking for a little more money whether the amounts were "only" in the millions rather than the tens of millions? In fact, if salaries were lower, wouldn't players be even more compelled to jump ship in search of a few more bucks whenever the opportunity presented itself? The only way to get players to stay put is to reinstate the reserve clause (well-paid slavery, to paraphrase Curt Flood), and that's highly unlikely.
Was baseball better when players had no choice but to stay with the same team for 10 or 20 years? The answer is a matter of perspective. I guess if you're an old-time Yankees fan and your team was able to monopolize the services of a DiMaggio or a Mantle for their entire careers, or a Cardinal fan who had Gibson locked up forever, the answer would be yes.
But ask an old-timer who rooted for the Reds, Boston Braves, Senators, A's, or some other perennially awful team how they felt about seeing the same lousy players year in and year out, with no hope of the team ever getting better. I think most would say they would have rather "bonded" and "identified with" with great players for 3 years than with mediocre players for 13 years.
The country and people's priorities are mixed-up. Baseball is a wonderful "past-time", but I do believe that there are more important places to spend our money. The management has let the pay issue get out of hand with letting the players be in control of their salaries. The players now know that if they are that important, they can ask for anything and it will be theirs. Greed and fame is more important then feeding mouths or helping the poor or educating children.
Bravo for Tony Kubek. In additon to the price of admission, which I can no longer afford, there are the owners feeding at the public trough for new stadiums, the watering down of post-season qualification: sorry Mr. Murphy the 2004 Red Sox and 2006 Cardinals for example were wild cards. This fundamentaly alters the fairness of the game. You have 162 bites at the apple, if you've not gotten the apple, you shouldn't be rewarded for being an also-ran. And as for the play on the field, pitchers are babied and can't pitch complete games. Why should of all players, the starting pitcher get credit for a win after having been taken out in the middle of the game? The glory is for the pitchers' to win or lose. Just look at what happened to Adam Wainwright in Los Angeles last week.
Interesting that you chose Damon as your illustration. He was a KC Royal and an Oakland A before the Red Sox lured him away with that huge contract. How was that so different than what the Yankees did? How were the Red Sox the team he was "emotionally and historically bonded to"? He had already played for two others not the Red Sox.
Right, but he won a World Series with the Red Sox, and was a major player and key clubhouse figure. He really liked playing there. I don't begrudge him for taking the better deal, but he shouldn't have been a hypocrite about it.
See Robert E. Murphy's Profile
True. Wouldn't it be nice if being a Red Soxer meant more to him than an extra year on his contract? Perhaps you've heard the line that it's always about the money, especially when they say it's not about the money?
I'm having as hard a time agreeing with this premise as I am not. I think that, primarily, the imbalance of salaries is as if not more dangerous than the amounts. I am always in favor ot those who make it to the pro game to make as much money as they can as the athletic career can end at anytime.
That may prevent the players from thinking in the long term, but I am afraid that the owners may suffer from a greater short sightedness than the players. At any rate, the season is now way too long, way too complicated, and second place teams get to advance for being the best second place team and not even in relative terms. Not good. Baseball flirts with really bad weather now, and way too deep into football. Two divisions for each league is sufficient.
Perhaps the players should defer salary in a kind of common sense move, perhaps the owners should rethink the whole matter of star players, the gamble is always at best 50 - 50, and the best players do not always make the best team. It isn't the game I knew growing up and I don't know if the game is amenable to the likes of Bob Gibson anymore, I watch still because I like to see good pitching and defense.
There may be better shortstops, but no one plays the position or the game as well as one D. Jeter.
See Robert E. Murphy's Profile
A thoughtful response. Where I really hate to see the wild card in effect is when a division-winning team must eliminate the second-place team that, in all fairness, they have already eliminated. As for the season's being too long, the NY weather outside my window, as night games are scheduled to be played in Yankee Stadium, is good evidence for your argument.
We complain, and rightly so, about the huge difference between what CEOs earn as compared to the actual people who do the work so when the employees do make a fair wage it should be considered a good thing. The problem with baseball is the owners in the big market cities earn a lot more money than the rest and therefore can pay higher contracts to the best players. However baseball doesn't mind this because they will get high ratings with NY, two LA teams, and Philly which will allow them to get more money from the networks. The enormous amount of TV money has infected every sport and the networks now run the show. There is your problem.
See Robert E. Murphy's Profile
Yes, that's part of ther problem, as evidenced by the playoff games that will played this weekend in wet, 40-degree weather, at night, at Yankee Stadium.
The silence is deafening, is it not, Mr. Murphy?
See Robert E. Murphy's Profile
Except for Mr. Kubek, although he is a quiet if not a silent protester.
Robert Moses had a lot to do with your disappointment. A new stadium was turned down in Brooklyn.
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