This Week’s
Attitude

By Neil S. Friedman

‘Tis The Season For (Boo!) The Business Of Baseball

’Tis the season...for football, hockey and basketball — but certainly not BASEBALL!

Nevertheless, you’d never know it by all the media attention the boys of summer are getting lately. Here we are in mid-December, the first full month of baseball’s off season, with chilly winds from the frigid Canadian north drifting south, and America’s favorite national pastime is featured prominently in the daily sports news.

Coincidentally, until last weekend, even the spring-like weather was more conducive for baseball than late autumn sports.

After the Yankees were defeated in the World Series last month, I didn’t think I’d be dwelling on next year — well, until next year.

It’s been hard to avoid baseball lately. There are: trades happening and expected, major free agent signings in the wings, ongoing winter meetings and last week Congress held hearings about the sport’s financial status.

Regrettably, it’s the business of baseball, not the game loved by millions, that’s currently newsworthy. Money, of course, is the crucial motive behind most of the activity, from what top free agents will earn after okaying new contracts to team contraction to baseball’s financial woes. The fields of play, however, are boardrooms, hotel suites and offices, far from stadiums and ballparks. And the participants are not exciting professional athletes. They are "players" of another sort sporting business suits not team uniforms. One team is made up of owners and/or their representatives. The opposition consists of lawyers, agents and owners, wheeling and dealing the optimum deal for their clients. This is the business of baseball.

The first order of business is expected to conclude this week. It seems after weeks of reports about contraction, the elimination of two financially deprived teams will likely be postponed through next season.

Somewhere in Minnesota and Montreal (and possibly Mudville), the cities reportedly targeted for baseball purging, Twins and Expos fans are cheering. However, in Montreal, a French-Canadian city that lives and breathes ice hockey, the clamor is in all probability more subdued, since the Expos average attendance was a mere 6,000 fans per game this year. Heck, the Yankees put more fans in the bleachers per game than that!

Contraction should be good for baseball. But, like a band-aid on a gushing wound, it will hardly cure baseball’s ills. Every time baseball expands, the quality of the player pool is diluted. Nowadays, quality pitchers are minimal and many dominant hitters have only improved because of shorter outfield fences and modern bodybuilding regimens and supplements. Naturally, the players’ union opposes downsizing because 60 of its members could be permanently benched.

On a local note, departing Mayor Rudy Giuliani is making a last ditch effort to enhance his legacy by attempting to get the city to approve funding for new stadiums for the Yankees and the Mets. This, barely two months since Giuliani pointed out that the city’s budget problems "are real and substantial," and after he ordered city agencies to start planning 15% cuts to reduce projected budget deficits.

New York’s financial problems were greatly intensified by the September 11th devastation. I hardly think the city is in a position to even discuss financing new stadiums, unless the owners lend a substantial hand. Besides, no one has proved that anyone but owners ever benefit from taxpayer-funded stadiums.

Being an astute businessman, I tend to think - and hope - Mayor-elect Mike Bloomberg will squash any initiative for building new stadiums.

Speaking to Congress last week, Commissioner Bud Selig told Congress that in the last six years major league teams have lost a combined $1.38 billion. In fact, last season only five (Mariners, Brewers, Yankees, Cubs and Royals) of 30 teams managed to make a profit.

While major league baseball has rebounded from the damaging mid-’90s strike that led to the cancellation of a portion of the regular, as well as post seasons, it has yet to close the widening gap between successful and struggling franchises. Despite revenue sharing, this factor diminishes the sport’s competitiveness. Teams that can spend, do, and sometimes end up overpaying for a single player. Baseball is a team sport and while a marquee star may put a few thousand fans in the seats it does not guarantee a spot in the playoffs.

When owners, lawyers and agents assemble, baseball is reduced to just another big business negotiation, far removed from the Little League fields where the sport is played and enjoyed as a game viewed through the innocent eyes of youth.