There have a spate of 'whoa is me, baseball is so irrational when giving Ted Lilly a $50 million contract' type posts lately, so I'd just like to explain a little about the context in which this is happening. See, we live in a country of 'haves' and 'have nots'. See, there is a small, but influential, portion of society that has lots of money. These 'rich' people spend money more freely than those people who comprise the 'have nots'. So when a 'have' decides to buy a lefthanded pitcher for his play baseball team, its not like a 'have not' going further into debt to buy fancy wheels for his whip (that's what kids call cars). So might I suggest that your concerns for the fiscal sanity of billionaires is... how you say.... stupid.
From Peter Gammons:
Twelve years ago, when a strike cancelled the World Series, baseball was a $1.3 billion business, give or take a few million. I was told that this season baseball did $4.7 billion in revenue, but was then corrected Saturday night by one MLB official, who said, "We're going over $5 billion."
Bud Selig made baseball a business, and as he watches a series that assures a seventh champion in seven years -- something the NFL, NBA and NHL have never done -- he can rest assured that the business he will eventually turn over to Andy MacPhail will be judged by its financial record, not steroids tests.
A team like the Royals can get $30 million from revenue-sharing, $30 million from the national television contact, millions more from the Internet, etc., and then sell tickets and make local radio and TV deals. It's a wonderful life.
The new agreement ended draft choice compensation for losing free agents, raised the minimum salary, and made other small alterations. No pay-for-performance. No salary cap.
Just labor peace and a lot of money.
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment