Bad Idea Gets Ink.

"For years baseball has tried to peddle this ridiculous dream that any big-league team blessed with enough know-how, desire and luck could win the World Series regardless of its payroll.

It's a big, fat lie, of course. It's nothing but a marketing ruse that's meant to sell hope in the hinterlands, though there is none."


Not that it's a huge deal, but I honestly don't recall MLB trying to peddle the idea than "any big-league team" (etc., etc., etc.) could win the World Series.

Commissioner Buzz Kill is not exactly a marketing genius. In fact, he has seemed quite preoccupied with shouting from the mountaintop that small-market teams got no shot. Selig even wanted to eliminate some small market teams (maybe that's not such a bad idea). Revenue sharing, luxury taxes, hand wringing, eye rolling, saying bad things about his own sport. He's no David Stern, you know?

The funny thing is, lots of small-market teams do pretty well. Florida got two rings recently, the Twins keep winning their division, the A's make the playoffs more often the the Mets or the Phillies.

The Nationals stink. The Brewers stink. Doesn't mean all low-payroll teams stink. Doesn't mean the whole sport stinks.

So let's tear down the economic model and rebuild it and, at the end of the day, we've done all this for a few thousand baseball fans in Milwaukee? What's the point?

I am only being somewhat flippant with my response that these low-revenue teams belong in the minor leagues. Justify your existence. Why does Milwaukee somehow deserve major league baseball more than, say, Erie, Pennsylvania or Portland, Oregon? If the argument is expanded, then why stop with 30 teams? Let all the fans throughout the whole country experience the thrill of a bogus pennant race.

You see, MLB is doing fine, even if some of the teams are not:

"Baseball seems to be brewing for another of its ugly internecine fights, all right. But this time it could be owners fighting owners. Because the way the sport is built needs to fundamentally change."


Why does MLB need to fundamentally change? What are Bud Selig, Jim Bowden, and Johnette Howard whining about?

If the salary gap is killing the sport, why is the sport setting attendance records, revenue records, salary records? The sport is not dying, the sport is thriving.

The problem ain't when the players get paid too much, the problem is when the funds dry up. Ask the NHL.