It has become exceedingly clear over the past few years that baseball is no longer America's national pastime. Leaving aside the frightening and inexplicable popularity of NASCAR, football has firmly implanted itself as a more popular sport than baseball, while basketball continues to make advances. (Fortunately, hockey has the stigma of being Canadian and will remain forever a distant fourth). For anyone who has followed the sporting world over the past decade, this conclusion is by no means shocking.
What some may find surprising is the reason that America has turned away from baseball: Baseball is too capitalist. While the NFL and, to a lesser degree, the NBA, have embraced the socialist notions of revenue sharing and salary caps, Major League Baseball has stuck to its guns of free enterprise and has suffered accordingly.
Baseball has turned fans away in large part due to the perceived greed of its players and owners. Alex Rodriguez, by all accounts an upstanding young man, is maligned by many for realizing the American dream and capitalizing on his immense talent to the tune of a quarter of a billion dollars. Labor disputes have deepened this perception, as there is something unsettling about millionaires and billionaires whining for sympathy from regular folk who just want to enjoy the game. The American public bemoans baseball's labor disputes, seemingly oblivious to how beautifully capitalist they are. Players seek the maximum compensation for their services while owners seek the maximum return on their investment in the team.
Ultimately, it is not the off-the-field squabbles that knocked baseball from its perch but rather the way the game's rampant capitalism has destroyed the competitive balance. This problem is typified by the success of the New York Yankees, whose current payroll, $149.7 million, is now $33 million greater than that of the second-highest paying New York Mets and a staggering $130 million greater than the lowest paying Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
The only team to rival the Yankees' success in the past decade is the Atlanta Braves, who benefit from a billionaire owner and revenue from having most of their games nationally broadcast on the Turner Broadcasting Station. In contrast, small market teams in Kansas City and Milwaukee go through one losing season after another. As a result, casual fans have grown weary of seeing the same teams in the postseason every year while even some of the diehards in small markets have grown cynical and turned away from the game.
In stark contrast to this is the socialist NFL, with its stringent salary cap and revenue sharing, which has had eight different champions in the past nine years. Three of the past four world champions did so without even making the postseason the year before. While there have been teams that have enjoyed sustained success in the NFL, such success is not dictated by the size of the market in which the team plays.
Some of the cities that have suffered the most under baseball's economics in the past decade, such as Pittsburgh and Tampa, have enjoyed considerable football success in that same period. One of the most successful teams in the NFL plays in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the smallest market in professional sports. The NFL is the league of opportunity, and so fans of every team (even the lowly Cincinnati Bengals) feel that they are at most a year away from contention. While baseball continues to lose fans to disillusionment, the NFL's fan base expands.
And so there we have it: incontrovertible proof that socialism works. Unfortunately, Americans seem more outraged about the poverty of their baseball franchises than the poverty of their fellow citizens. (I personally can avoid any such hypocrisy by being both a liberal and a Pirate fan). While I realize it seems impertinent to compare the economic situation of baseball to that of the country at large, the problems facing baseball illuminate the questions of justice that underlie debates about the redistribution of wealth.
Many sportsfans argue that it is unfair for the Yankees to be able to buy the best players simply because of the benefits of playing in the largest market. Is it not correspondingly unfair for someone born into a wealthy family to begin life so far ahead of the less privileged as a result of superior health care, superior education and other advantages.
In both cases, advantage does not automatically correspond with achievement: The New York Mets finished last in their division last year despite having the second highest payroll, while the low-revenue Oakland Athletics had baseball's second best record, just as some children of privilege squander their advantages while some of the most disadvantaged are able to overcome the odds. Such exceptions, however, cannot be allowed to overshadow the structural problems that limit the chances of success for the unfortunate. Our legislators need to take a lesson from the NFL and embrace the concept of revenue sharing.
A great barrier to redressing the income gap in the United States is the inability of those in the upper portions of the financial world to understand the frustration that comes hand in hand with being born at the bottom. While it is implausible and immoral to force these people to experience the obstacles createdby poverty to engrain an understanding in them, perhaps forcing them to root for the Brewers is the next best thing.
Anthony Resnick is a Trinity sophomore and a regular Chronicle columnist.
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