From: charly@hal.COM (Charly Rhoades)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: Salary Escalation (was Re: Expos Clinch! Wallach to Dodgers)
Date: 7 Jan 93 17:59:01 GMT
Organization: HaL Computer Systems, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: renoir.hal.com

In article <C0CDB0.5nM@encore.com> jlundy@bilbo.encore.com (Joe Lundy) writes:
>In article <1i836nINN81k@renoir.hal.COM>, charly@hal.COM (Charly Rhoades) writes:
>|> I wholeheartedly agree!  I think there ahould be a cap on the
>|> escalating salaries of owners, due to its detrimental effects
>|> on the beloved, and unchanging game of Baseball (TM).  I am a
>|> Bay Area resident, and look what outrageous sum Giants owner
>|> Bob Lurie made from selling that team:  bought for under $10
>|> million and sold ten years later for $100 million!
>|> 
>|> And who best to enforce this cap but the US Government?  After
>|> all, it's not the American way to let the market correct itself.
>|> Not when such correction might allow the masses of workers get
>|> a bigger slice of the pie they contribute to making, at the
>|> expense of the gluttonous profits a couple-dozen oligarchical
>|> owners have been enjoying for many, many years.
>
>What's wrong with profit?  What would ruin the game is government intervention.
>I agree that the Anti-trust exemption for baseball should be lifted, but the
>government interfering in the "free" market will make things far worse.

Nothing is wrong with profit.  I was attempting to show that the so-called
"problem" of ballplayer salary escalation is really a long-needed correction
of an imbalanced profit distribution -- a heavyhanded, and it seems
unsuccessful attempt on my part, perhaps...

>Salary escalation is not destroying the game, owners' stupidity is.  There is
>nothing wrong with paying a marquee player like Bobby Bonds the $7M he's making.
>What's wrong is the marginal players and past-their-prime players making so
>much (Andre Dawson, Matt Young, and anyone else on the Red Sox for example)
>That is what is choking the market.

I agree wholeheartedly (again!).  It reminds me of artist Jennie Holtzman (?)
and her phrase:  Save me from the things I want.

The owners are using the time-honored technique of creating the very
problem they decry.

>Look, as long as CBS can front a billion bucks for TV revenue, these teams are
>going to shell out to get the talent.  If I were Barry Bonds, would I feel 
>too immoral to take that kind of cash?  Would you?  ...

No I wouldn't (and I haven't).

In the past, I have also tried to portray the "greedy" ballplayers in the
light of other professions, but to little avail.  Other role-playing analogies,
not just over salaries, have fallen on deaf ears too.  For instance, if you
are only one memeber of a team creating a computer product, and the product
fails, should you receive all the blame?? -- Just like a Barry Bonds was
during the NLCS?  Oddly enough, even to the select audience that uses Usenet,
many cannot see the similarity between decrying a $3 million a year ballplayer
and a $60,000 computer professional.  Perhaps it's my Pittsburgh background
(although my father's family has been involved with computers for thirty
years).  But I don't think Computer Nerds (whether Stat-Drunk or not) should
be casting stones in the glass house of inappropriate salaries, not until we
appreciate what our industry's average salary is and what the average US
income is.

>Lurie bought the team before the tremendous baseball boom occurred.  Is there 
>something wrong with getting a handsome return on his investment?  It would have
>been even more handsome if the free market was truly in effect and he could move
>his team to Tampa.  Does baseball have the right to hinder free market activity
>just because of an antiquated edict?

No.  More power to him, and congrats.  And I would add, the ballplayers
should also get a return on *their* investment of time and effort, *and* for
their risks.  And baseball *has* been hindering free-market activity with
regards to ballplayer compensation for some time now...

>|> And has anyone else seen the sickening end-of-year figures
>|> showing how much *money* entertainers like Barbra Streisand,
>|> Rush Limbaugh, and Bruce Springsteen make?  David Letterman
>|> making $30 million??  I bet he doesn't even write 1% of those
>|> jokes he reads.  At least Paul Schaefer has some chops and can
>|> play a tune or two.  Pretty soon these slackers might be raking
>|> in the bucks in proportion to those really deserving few like
>|> Apple CEO John Scully or Disney CEO Mike Eisner, eh??  Wasn't
>|> it the head of Time Warner who "earned" $47 million *last year*
>|> (in stock options as well as salary)?
>|> 
>|> Kinda gets me hackles up in an indignant fury...
>
>Too bad!  How would you feel if you were in the same boat.  You work hard to 
>build an empire (which creates lots of jobs and general good for the economy)
>and the government says you can't have as much as you do.  So, what do you do?
>You cut costs, lay off people, "rightsize", and/or go overseas.  Sure, not with
>Baseball, but with anything else this is true.  The government will step in 
>when there is a monopoly, or oligopoly (i.e. Baby Bell, Standard Oil) but to 
>tell a CEO what he can or cannot make?  I don't know about this.  Surtax on 
>millionaires?  What is this, Sweden?  There's a sound economic model for you.

Another attempt of mine to paint an analogy that many fail (or refuse) to 
acknowledge.  Executive compensation is becoming a hotter topic now, but
it still is not scrutinized the way ballplayers compensation is.

I'd like to follow-up on this analogy in another post, but suffice it to
say there is nothing wrong with a CEO making a large (multi-million dollar)
salary, for the reasons you cite and more.  But *too many* CEOs and high-placed
execs are getting outlandish compensation for companies that are *failing*,
or are downsizing or moving overseas without government pressures.

My Government suggestion was entirely tongue-in-cheek, as in, who else is
going to save these "poor" owners from themselves??  The US Government?
(who hasn't been able to save the American people from themselves, and in
fact encourages us to think we can have what we want without paying for it??)
I don't advocate government-controlled CEO salaries, but neither to I
support government-protected CEO salaries, immune to normal marketplace
and business-operations balances -- which is what the anti-trust "exemption"
permits.

>Now, if the Red Sox could only "rightsize" Lou Gorman out of a job...


Is that what I want to do to Sauer and Simmons, the shithead twins?  It
would be much too quick.  They need to suffer, as I am in painfully
anticipating a needlessly wasted season with each of their dunderheaded
actions.  The ballgames themselves will be almost blessed relief...

Smith at $1 mill/yr. to platoon with Martin?  Foley (at any price) to
platoon with anyone??!
-- 
   Charly Rhoades               
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