Editorial: What’s wrong with baseball

Published Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Baseball is a great sport, yet it continues to lose the grasp on the American imagination it once had.

Talk to nearly any loyal fan from a small-market team — such as Minnesota — and they will tell you why: It’s no fun when the New York Yankees and other large-market teams can plop down huge payrolls for the best players while the Twins and other small-market teams can’t hold on to star players. A Minnesota example is how Torii Hunter became a Los Angeles Angel.

What’s right with pro football are effective salary caps and revenue sharing, which evens the playing field no matter which market the teams play in. New York and Green Bay both can field equal teams. That gets a greater number of fans interested in the sport — and watching other teams. Some years, it produces a race-to-the-finish parity and other years, like this one, some teams excel far ahead while others dwell in the cellar. The caliber of players on teams partly has to do with how the front office managed the salary cap and partly has to do with draft selections — not with market size.

In baseball, though, small-market teams don’t have an incentive to spend on big-time players because they know that A. they likely will be outbid by rich teams, and B. if they land a big name, chances are they won’t have enough overall talent to beat the rich teams. Conclusion of the front office: Why waste the effort?

Baseball knows it has a problem. The final four teams this year were all big-market teams.

“We don’t know if that’s a trend or just an aberration,” Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio said this week. “The disparity among the clubs appears to be widening.”

Major League Baseball wants eyeballs glued to TV sets. If you are a Minnesota Twins fan and you want to send a message to Major League Baseball, don’t watch the World Series.

By not watching, you cast your vote for fairness in professional baseball.

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