Today’s insane genius idea involves baseball, so you non-sports-fans might want to skip it, unless you really like insane genius ideas. Based on a hypothetic situation that could never exist, I predict that my plan could bring baseball out of the East Coast ghetto in which it currently resides and allow it to challenge football as the USA’s #1 sport. My plan would also be good for all three legs of baseball’s current stool — fans, players, and ownership — if they would just put their petty non-working ideas aside for a second and listen to some reason. Like I said, this will never happen. But let’s dream a bit, shall we? C’mon, it’ll be fun.
My impossible hypothetic situation is this: The baseball players and owners meet, and instead of trying to convince each other that their side needs more money, they decide to try to become the #1 sport in America for the good of both sides. The NFL is definitely America’s game right now, and it shows no signs of slowing down. How could baseball ever hope to climb that mountain? Thankfully, in this hypothetical, they decide to call me, Michael Pape, to come up with a plan that benefits everyone. It just so happens that I have just such a plan. What are the odds?
The first thing I would do is explain that their short-term strategies have been a mild success, but they’re flawed because they’re, you know, short term. Baseball’s been relying on the home runs of cheaters and Bud Selig’s slick market-research-driven strategies for too long, and now they’re in a situation with an artificial ceiling. For example, there are 16 teams in the National League and 14 in the American because at 162 games they couldn’t get the scheduling to work with two 15-team leagues. So, instead of reducing the number of games or extending the season, they just made a division with 6 teams in the NL, and one with 4 teams in the AL. But hey, everyone (even a team in the unfair 6-team division) was in favor of this plan because the time zones lined up. That’s right, time zones. You don’t hear the NFL or even the NBA ever talk about time zones, do you? Why not? Because if the sport is healthy, nobody cares when the game starts. But this is the kind of thinking that baseball has engaged in, and now their conferences are patently unfair. Worrying about time zones is loser talk.
We’re going to get rid of loser talk right now. Baseball’s calling on me to get things rolling, and I’m not going to stand for it. Here’s my rule: If it sounds like hockey, we’re throwing it out.
The first part of my plan involves the players. We all know the baseball player’s union is insane, and they don’t want baseball to succeed unless the players make the lion’s share of the money. I think I can get them a bunch more money AND less work, and all they have to do is agree to two things they’ve said they’d never agree to: A hard salary cap and across-the-board revenue sharing. That’s right, I’m insane. But seriously, here’s how it would work: The average team payroll in 2007 was about $83 million. The salary cap figure would start out at $95 million and go up (as revenues dictate) every year. But, they might ask, how would we make the small-market teams spend more money to even out the big-market teams’ lower payroll? Simple…we implement across-the-board-100%-put-all-revenues-in-a-giant-pot-and-distribute-it-equally revenue-sharing. That way, everyone would have the money to spend, and player salaries would go up. Do you see, players, that Marvin Miller and Don Fehr have been lying to you all these years? You can’t argue with these numbers — revenue-sharing would get the players dramatically more money, plain and simple. You should listen to me more. You’ve traded a bunch more money for the current short-term dream of a Yankee or Red Sox retirement package that only benefits 10% of the players. Good thinkin’. At least Gary Sheffield is happy.
But that’s not all the players get — we’re also adding two new teams to balance out the conferences (more on this in a bit) and reducing the number of games to 156. That’s two more team’s worth of mlb players at $95 million each, and they don’t have to do as much work. How could the players not agree to this?
The expansion is made possible by the revenue sharing, because plenty of cities could support a team under such a system. All they would need is two more. How hard is that?
By now the owners, upon hearing all this, would have had a total conniption. Let’s turn our attention to them. The Yankees and Red Sox definitely won’t like my plan, but putting the needs of two teams over the whole is…what again? That’s right, loser talk. This is a baseball league, not a country club. We’re competing with the NFL, remember? Do you think that league worries when the Cowboys and Dolphins are bad? Of course not. Why? Because every team is its own strong brand. Sure, some are stronger than others, but the Super Bowl is still the Super Bowl, and even a Cardinals-Ravens game would bring unqualified success. Baseball needs to start thinking this way, that the sport’s only as good as its weakest teams. In short, they need to make things fair. I know nobody wants to hear that, but it’s true.
With that in mind, here’s what we’re doing for the owners. First of all, we’re expanding the number of teams and bringing in two new cities’ worth of moolah into the sport. They can charge a nice little franchise fee, too — but not a prohibitive one like hockey had. You want good owners, not desperate/dumb ones. You also let Mark Cuban buy the Cubs, for Pete’s sake. To keep him out because he’s too strong of a voice is…what again? Loser talk. The smaller markets, and even the medium markets, will like this because of the revenue-sharing. The bigger markets will grudgingly benefit from this, too, because of three factors: 1) As the brand is built for every team, overall revenues will go up, and eventually less and less revenue will have to be shared; 2) Because the stars will be spread-out, attendance and interest in every game will rise, and with it the all-important TV ratings; 3) There would be a hard salary-cap, remember? No more out-of-control spending wars. How could the owners pass this up? They couldn’t.
Ok, now on to time zones. Let’s never talk about them again, ok? What we’re going to do is add the two new teams to the American League and split both 16-team leagues into 4 divisions each. Only the division winners would make the playoffs, which would make the baseball purists happy by bringing back the idea of pennant races. Of course, this will lead to a big decision: Do we keep the Yankees and Red Sox in the same division, or do we split them up? Of course, we keep them together. So that means there will never again be a year the Yankees and Red Sox meet in the post-season (although the regular-season races could be dynamite). Do you see why this plan requires a total rethinking of baseball’s goals? They can no longer afford to live off the coattails of two teams. It’s time to take off the artificially-installed training wheels and ride that bike. It may wobble a bit at first, but remember this is a long-term plan. And what do they say about riding a bike? Once you learn how, you never forget. Think about that.
So, you’ve now got 4 teams in each division, and one division winner every year. You also have 156 games in the same seasonal timeframe, which should allow for any scheduling issues and give the players some much-needed in-season rest. It would also soften the dilution of pitching that two new teams would cause. You see how all this fits together? Genius.
As for interleague play, all I really care about is that it’s fair, and that means this (hold on to your hat): Either you get rid of interleague play altogether, or every team plays one series against every team in the opposite league. If you think about it, that’s the only way interleague play really makes sense. In my plan, we’re no longer making short-term money-grabs, so we can’t just have the White Sox play the Cubs and a few other teams because of supposed interest or time-zone cohesion. You know what the current plan sounds like? Hockey, and that’s bad. You’re trying to make every team successful, and with that will come equal interest in all games. If you have interleague play, and each team plays 3 games against the 16 teams in the other league, that’s only 48 games. You still have 106 games to play against your league. This is not really that revolutionary, is it?
Finally, so since this is baseball, we have to talk about steroids. The commissioner’s office will need carte blanche powers to deal with any of the players’ (or owners’) rules violations. What they need is a Roger Goddell-type to go in there and bust some heads. They need to stop pretending that the problem’s going to go away by itself. The only reason Congress is involved in this at all is baseball’s unwillingness to stop cheating. If baseball had their own Goddell, they could actually make steroids a thing of the past. How great would that be? He would do this in three ways: 1) pervasive and state-of-the-art drug testing, a la cycling and track; 2) Massive penalties for positive drug tests, so no players would even want to risk it; 3) an eraser and asterisk maker to erase/modify baseball’s hallowed records, in an effort to be honest. Can you imagine if Barry Bonds was actually erased from the record books because of his years of cheating? Who wouldn’t like that, except for possibly Barry Bonds?
The whole point of this is the fans, whom baseball has ignored for far too long. There will be no more hopeless teams, tied all-star games, steroid uncertainty, or unfair schedules. Baseball will be a sports league, and will be run as such. Everyone will make piles of money, and the World Series will be like the Super Bowl, only happening 4-7 times a year instead of just one.
This is my dream, and it will never happen. But thanks for taking the time to dream with me.
Pingback: 'ILLEGAL
Hmm. Mexican?