Cry Me a River

I honestly don’t get sportswriters.  They always seem to take positions a universe away from mine.

 

Like Ken Rosenthal in yesterday’s The Athletic; he’s worried that baseball’s in trouble because Bryce Harper and Manny Machado haven’t signed megadeals yet.  “If Harper and Machado cannot get the deals they want, who can?” asks Rosenthal, who goes on to use Alex Rodriguez as his basepoint.

 

Rodriguez signed a 10-year, $252 million contract with the Rangers after the 2000 season when baseball was generating revenue of $3.5 billion.  The deal proved too rich for Texas, who traded A-Rod to the Yankees in 2004.  Rodriguez exercised his opt-out right in 2007, and the Yankees rewarded him with a 10-year contract at $275 million, this at a time when baseball revenue was in the neighborhood of $6 billion.  With revenue now reaching $10 billion, Rosenthal figures Harper and Machado should get deals commensurate with their abilities, however that’s measured.

 

It would be nice if Rosenthal had bothered to check and see how much the industry’s costs have gone up since 2000; that would at least suggest a little objectivity on his part.  No matter.  Let’s assume revenues have outpaced costs by a lot over the past eighteen seasons.  In that case, so what?  Rather than take the players’ side (Rosenthal wants free agency changed so players can benefit from their peak-production years), why not take my side?  Please.

 

Any sport generating $10 billion a year doesn’t need my help in building stadiums.  A good deal of that money is a de facto subsidy from taxpayers.  You want these guys so much, fine, then sign them.  But pay for your own ballpark first.  If welfare is so bad, practice what you preach.

 

That $10 billion may also represent the point at which the golden goose starts choking.  Before I read Rosenthal, I saw a story in the Tribune that MLB attendance was down four percent last season, and TV ratings took a beating compared to the NFL’s, with forty out of fifty of the most-watched sporting events in the U.S. last year being football games.  How is making Harper and Machado incredibly rich going to change that?  

 

What I want more than anything is for baseball to be our national pastime by reflecting American life.  Most Americans live within budgets, work hard and hustle.  They care very little about launch angles.