The High Court

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The Big Gavel—Cheap Market Baseball

June 13, 2005

 

Lou Piniella is hot.  And the Chief Justice doesn’t blame him.  Or at least he wouldn’t, if say, Sweet Lou had been forced to take the Devil Rays’ managerial job at gunpoint.  But he took it voluntarily, and as a result, our sympathy here at The High Court of Sports is muted.

 

Nonetheless, Lou made a very good point this weekend as his (and Darth Reagan’s…don’t let Darth fool you…sources tell me he sat in an owner’s box at The Trop earlier this season) Devil Rays ended a seven game skid in Pittsburgh.  Prior to Sunday’s game, Piniella expressed his displeasure with ownership’s seeming disinterest in attempting to win in the present.  “I’m not going to take responsibility for this.  If I had been given a $40 million payroll or a $45 million payroll, I’d stand up like a man and say it was my fault.  Well, I’m not going to do it.  So if you want answers about what’s going on here, you call the new ownership group and let them give them to you.”

 

The new ownership group Piniella refers to is headed by a New York investor named Stuart Sternberg.  Sternberg’s group holds 48 percent of ownership.  Former owner Vince Naimoli is still a limited partner with 15 percent of the team.  Unfortunately for Naimoli (the guy Piniella came to work for), he is still the managing general partner, which means he gets the nasty looks and emails concerning the general misery which surrounds the franchise.

 

Tampa Bay is the only club in the majors that began the regular season with a payroll of less than $30 million.  As a matter of fact, their payroll was almost seven million dollars below that of the miserly Royals (36.88 million) and better than eight million less of their weekend opponent, the Pirates (38.1 million).  Pittsburgh’s owner, Kevin McClatchy, is so tight with his money his name should be spelled Mc-CLUTCH-y.  And he is just part of a wave of tight-fisted, bottom-line owners taking the fun out of some of baseball’s best cities.  Small market, they call them these days.  As for the Chief Justice?  He thinks they are all just cheap.

 

Piniella suggested that his ownership was more interested in winning in the future than in the present.  I would suggest that they and the owners like them, are not interested in winning AT ALL. EVER. They are, however, quite interested in taking a long swim in the revenue sharing pool, keeping costs down, and making piles of money for themselves and their investors.  These modern day Scrooges have no desire to keep players, managers, and worst of all, fans, happy with a winning product.  They simply run some unfortunate general manager out to the media every spring to tell the world that they are rebuilding around youth this season.  They beg the fan base’s patience as the youngsters mature.  What they don’t tell you is this…should the young players mature into quality major leaguers, they will immediately be traded so ownership doesn’t have to pay rising salaries.  The club will get some nice young prospects in return and next year a new general manager will tell the fan base to be patient while these guys grow into big leaguers.

 

Look at some of your so-called small market clubs…Cincinnati...Kansas City…Pittsburgh.  I won’t even bring up the Big Red Machine clubs of the 70’s, lest somebody claim they don’t count because the club was put together before free agency could tear it apart.  But I will remind you of the Reds of 1990, a group that upset the dominant club of that era, the Oakland A’s (ironically, Piniella managed that Cincy team…and Oakland is another small market outfit today).  From 1975 to 1985, you could make the argument that Kansas City was the most consistent team in the American League.  With Ewing Kauffman and company providing the franchise with all the resources to be successful, George Brett, Frank White, and Bret Saberhagen made K.C. one of the best baseball towns in the game.  And who can forget Pittsburgh’s Lumber Company, led by the charismatic Willie “Pops” Stargell and “The Cobra”, Dave Parker?  Oh by the way, Jim Leyland headed a pretty good Pirates ship with some guy named Bonds in the early 90’s.

 

The 1990 Reds survived despite an owner more interested in buying dog food than adding a good setup reliever (the late Marge Schott).  Slowly but surely, penny pinching owners would lead to the downfall of all three franchises, and not surprisingly, all three continue to flounder to this day.  What troubles me most, is the notion that free spending owners like George Steinbrenner are responsible for baseball’s competitive balance problems.  Of course, I don’t believe baseball has competitive balance problems, but that is another Big Gavel altogether.  Steinbrenner may be an egomaniac, but he is only guilty of wanting to win every year at any cost.  Clearly, he does not always operate with good judgment where baseball-related decisions are concerned, but he does so due to his overwhelming desire to win the World Series each and every year.  If other owners are not willing to make the commitment to success, that is not only their problem, but baseball’s as well.

 

And let’s be clear: ownership does not have to be fiscally irresponsible to prove itself serious about winning.  It does not have to spend two hundred million dollars on payroll.  It does, however, have to provide its organization with the resources to compete with its league in general and its division in particular.  If owners decide to make money by cutting costs, that is their prerogative.  And fans can respond to those decisions in any way they choose.  Most of the time they choose to respond by not coming to the ballpark.  Which is exactly what they do in Tampa (or St. Pete) and many other stadiums where cheap products are put on the diamond.

 

I hear lots of people (including those in the sports media) hee-hawing as the Yankees struggle well into June.  Well, enjoy your chuckles, but you just don’t get it.  If you thought it was great that the Diamondbacks, Angels, Marlins, and Red Sox denied King George his crown the last four years, then you should know you have one man to thank for that:  George Steinbrenner.  The Yankees’ high level of excellence as they won four World Series titles in five years forced every other club with designs on success to raise their level of competency.  I didn’t say they all raised payrolls, I said they raised their competency.  Successful clubs did whatever they needed to do to have a chance to win.  Minnesota gets the job done despite an owner who wanted to sell them into contraction.  With savvy scouting and development, the Twins have made themselves a perennial contender for the postseason.  Until this season, the A’s had managed to do the same thing.  And angst-ridden fans all over New England have the Evil Empire to thank for ending 86 years of Curse-induced misery.  You can bet your last bowl of clam chowder on it, the BoSox do not win a World Series without a push from the New York Yankees.

 

So as the Chief Justice gets out the Big Gavel, keep this in mind:  The next time you hear talking heads describe baseball franchises as big market/small market, you remember to divide them into your own categories of winners/bottom liners.  Ownership groups that would rather see happy investors than happy fans aren’t going to have to worry about having fans at all.  The Chief Justice rules that Tampa Bay’s ownership and others of their ilk are guilty of cheating baseball fans of the competitive franchises they so richly deserve.  Their sentence is simple:  Get out of the game.  If you aren’t passionate about the game, we don’t need you.  Sports franchises should be owned by individuals or groups that have a burning desire to be successful in the game, and that desire should always be greater than any financial bottom line.

 

Court is adjourned.

Sweet Lou?  Not since he realized they don’t have a major league team in Tampa…

(espn.com)