Albert Pujols, Baseball and Pittsburgh
February 17th 2011 04:20
Baseball's financial arrangement between owners and players is ruinous. Disgusing. Heart-wrenching, ill-conceived and just bad. Football owners ought to take note, because if those two sides don't quit bickering and just get down to it, football might end up like baseball, and then god only knows the damage that would be done.
However, the Pujols saga is one of many reasons I've come to loathe major league baseball. I loathe is because I am a fan for the game's worst franchise. We have the game's worst owner, who is stupid on top of being greedy. We have the game's worst front office, and how this group manages to make bad decisions year after year just defies belief. And explanation. Yet here we are, and there's some (quiet and ultra-loose) talk that maybe with a miracle of a pitching blossom...ah, never mind. That's just crazy talk; it'll never happen.
Frankly, it won't, can't and will never happen given baseball's arrangements today. Teams like Kansas City, Milwaukee and PIttsburgh will struggle annually, unable to compete financially with big-market, big-dollar, big-revenue teams. Unable to compete financially in the sense that a big-revenue team can mask a mistake or a series of mistakes by spending. Need a big bat? Buy one. Need a shut-down right-arm? Get one. Not...scout a thousand, then four hundred, then one hundred, then twenty, draft a couple or three or four, shepherd them carefully through the farm system, pray that no elbow problems arise and then maybe you get yourself a top pitcher. Or at least a performer. The bitch of it is that just when you see that guy turning a corner...he's a free agent and has been lured to big-revenue teams by the promise of big money. So the small-market teams have to be perfect, as their margin of error is inexcusably thin. A mistake could set them back two, three or five years. Where's the equity in that?
Back to Pujols. The owners have a massive failing in dealing with baseball players in that the owners lack any sort of leverage. The players retain it all. That has to change, both through a hard salary cap and the designation of a franchise player. It's not just for the good of the owners, but the teams and fans of the teams. A great player can be brought up carefully, and slowly integrated into the game, because the team knows that it can keep him. Sure, they'll have to pay, but not more than the Yankees could pay, because the Yankees and teams like them would no longer be able to outspend the smaller markets. Baseball will remain a second-class sport in my mind until the financial situation is resolved.
Mind you, football - this could be you. So don't f*** it up!
The sorriest part of this is that baseball is a sport that is nearly perfect. A great baseball game is like a wonderfully written story. It has a beginning and the creation of the tension. Tension that builds slowly but inexorably through the middle parts, where the two sides push and pull, gaining and losing ground, before, at the climax, you are treated to one of the more sublime acts of any sport. Nothing rivals it. There's no timer. Only the count. There's the game's short-term best pitcher, throwing his best stuff. The hitters struggle to find a way to get to the guy. Each pitch could result in a hit, an out, or something in between. It's glorious in how slowly and steadily it builds the pressure until it's as if the only thing you can feel is the pressure. Then it's over. Sometimes...just like that.
I hope you can tell that I enjoy the sport. It's just that I cannot enjoy major league baseball. I just can't. I have been condemned to watch a pathetic team who, for 18 straight years, have failed to earn even 1 winning season. I have been condemned to be a fan of a team adrift, who constantly changes the plans in the 3rd year of the next 5-year plan. A team who can't spend the money because they don't have it because they can't earn it because their players suck and nobody goes to games and...you get the idea.
Albert Pujols wearing another uniform? Would be devastating to Cardinals fans, and I'd feel for them. Wearing the uni of a big-money team? The only reasonable answer left. And that...that's just a damn shame.
However, the Pujols saga is one of many reasons I've come to loathe major league baseball. I loathe is because I am a fan for the game's worst franchise. We have the game's worst owner, who is stupid on top of being greedy. We have the game's worst front office, and how this group manages to make bad decisions year after year just defies belief. And explanation. Yet here we are, and there's some (quiet and ultra-loose) talk that maybe with a miracle of a pitching blossom...ah, never mind. That's just crazy talk; it'll never happen.
Frankly, it won't, can't and will never happen given baseball's arrangements today. Teams like Kansas City, Milwaukee and PIttsburgh will struggle annually, unable to compete financially with big-market, big-dollar, big-revenue teams. Unable to compete financially in the sense that a big-revenue team can mask a mistake or a series of mistakes by spending. Need a big bat? Buy one. Need a shut-down right-arm? Get one. Not...scout a thousand, then four hundred, then one hundred, then twenty, draft a couple or three or four, shepherd them carefully through the farm system, pray that no elbow problems arise and then maybe you get yourself a top pitcher. Or at least a performer. The bitch of it is that just when you see that guy turning a corner...he's a free agent and has been lured to big-revenue teams by the promise of big money. So the small-market teams have to be perfect, as their margin of error is inexcusably thin. A mistake could set them back two, three or five years. Where's the equity in that?
Back to Pujols. The owners have a massive failing in dealing with baseball players in that the owners lack any sort of leverage. The players retain it all. That has to change, both through a hard salary cap and the designation of a franchise player. It's not just for the good of the owners, but the teams and fans of the teams. A great player can be brought up carefully, and slowly integrated into the game, because the team knows that it can keep him. Sure, they'll have to pay, but not more than the Yankees could pay, because the Yankees and teams like them would no longer be able to outspend the smaller markets. Baseball will remain a second-class sport in my mind until the financial situation is resolved.
Mind you, football - this could be you. So don't f*** it up!
The sorriest part of this is that baseball is a sport that is nearly perfect. A great baseball game is like a wonderfully written story. It has a beginning and the creation of the tension. Tension that builds slowly but inexorably through the middle parts, where the two sides push and pull, gaining and losing ground, before, at the climax, you are treated to one of the more sublime acts of any sport. Nothing rivals it. There's no timer. Only the count. There's the game's short-term best pitcher, throwing his best stuff. The hitters struggle to find a way to get to the guy. Each pitch could result in a hit, an out, or something in between. It's glorious in how slowly and steadily it builds the pressure until it's as if the only thing you can feel is the pressure. Then it's over. Sometimes...just like that.
I hope you can tell that I enjoy the sport. It's just that I cannot enjoy major league baseball. I just can't. I have been condemned to watch a pathetic team who, for 18 straight years, have failed to earn even 1 winning season. I have been condemned to be a fan of a team adrift, who constantly changes the plans in the 3rd year of the next 5-year plan. A team who can't spend the money because they don't have it because they can't earn it because their players suck and nobody goes to games and...you get the idea.
Albert Pujols wearing another uniform? Would be devastating to Cardinals fans, and I'd feel for them. Wearing the uni of a big-money team? The only reasonable answer left. And that...that's just a damn shame.
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