From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Baseball and Billions
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 18:19:44 GMT

In article <1992Aug27.162228.1411@cis.ohio-state.edu> miked@pterodactyl.cis.ohio-state.edu (Michael Davey) writes:
>In article <1992Aug26.200720.19337@adobe.com> snichols@adobe.com (Sherri Nichols) writes:

>	This whole thing is ridiculous. You are not reading my posts carefully
>and are answering questions with questions that are not related to the original
>questions. The last time you participated in a discussion of this length
>on the net, you ended up invoking some pseudo-relgious crap to make your
>point that stats do not describe accurately and precisely all the
>different aspects of the game.

I think you have Sherri confused with someone *very* different.  Or can
you present some evidence for this preposterous accusation?

> Now, you keep arguing that because the state
>of the game and the owners are better than they were in the past, there is 
>no grounds to criticize them now.

Relax!  Your verbs aren't even agreeing with your subjects anymore, you're
so upset.

> And if we are upset with something, we should
>just use our power as free and equal participants in an open market to get 
>what we want.

Sherri said this?  News to me.  

> Sorry, honey, (sorry about the mysogeny, but your ignorance 
>forces me to act out of character)

Yeah, right.  Like the owners were "forced" to collude.

> but as I have tried to explain, it is not
>an open market dynamic, 

How many things are entirely open-market?

>and just because something is better than it used to 
>be, does not mean we are not justified in criticizing it in its present 
>incarnation.

True, but irrelevant.  The problem is not critique, but the evidence
to *support* such a critique.

> You will not even admit there are problems with the present
>state of the game such as incredibly high salaries,

Salaries are the same percentage of revenue as  20 years ago.  

> player apathy,

Care to name names?  Care to show that there weren't more apathetic
players 25 years ago?  I'd say baseball is making *progress* in that
respect.  More people want to play, more people want to keep playing.  
Look at the conditioning that players do today as a matter of course!
25 years ago, only a few players did it.  

You want to hear about apathy?  Carl Yastrzemski has admitted that,
before the 67 season, he worked out as never before.  Trained with a 
trainer, all that stuff.  Result?  A triple crown.

He never did it again, and never had a season like that again.  He
said it was too much work.

Yes, *that* Carl Yastrzemski.  How many players today loaf in the off-
season?  Where's the evidence for apathy as a problem?

> t.v. money
>that only allows the big franchises to get richer

Got numbers for this?  Several small franchises are doing quite well
with the TV money.

Or does that make them big?

> and other things which you
>only need to look at some of the other Sports leagues to realize that things
>need to be changed if baseball is to continue to survive.

Uh, right.  That is, wrong.  No other sport has a revenue structure like
baseball; no other major sport even has minor leagues like baseball's.  
Simply pointing to economic problems in other sports is meaningless; you must
then explain why baseball does NOT have those problems, and THEN present
your evidence that it eventually will.

> Taking all this into account, 

All what?

>it seems to me that giving the owners all the power is too mistake 

Yeah.  So tell me what wonderful things commissioners have ever done.

>that the fans and players have an equal stake in the whole affair, and since 

Really?  Owners, consumers, and employees all have equal stakes in a 
business?  Not in my business, I'll tell you that.

Moreover, note the power that the players' union has already.  Nobody's
proposing that that be taken away, so why talk about the owners having
all the power?

>we fans cannot really affect things, a strong commissioner in system of 
>checks and balances

Uh, who's going to *choose* this commissioner?

> might be effective in curbing stupid and/or greedy owner
>behavior (like the Cubs' lawsuit, which is both) when it occurs. Read the 

Hmmm.  Remove the teams' right to sue, eh?  *Great* way to get the 
government involved in the management of baseball.  Such restraints
would be a justification for outside regulation.  Yum.

>stuff in BB weekly and try and justify the dumping of Chandler for 
>intergrating the big leagues

Is that why he was dumped?  That's a pretty hard accusation to swallow,
especially since there's not all that much evidence that he did much in
the drive for integration, despite the claims he made in his autobiography.

Seems to me that Branch Rickey and Bill Veeck were the prime movers for   
integration.  And you know what?  Both of those guys later bought or GMed
other teams -- moves that the other owners had to approve.  In Veeck's
case, he bought another team THREE times.  Boy, they must really have
hated him to approve all that.  

Now, there's only been one autocratic commissioner, and that was Landis.
He was the worst Federal judge in the US before he got his job, and he
wasn't all that rational as commissioner, either.  Sure didn't give the
players their "equal stake" or anything.  And he banned all talk of 
integration, too.

> and further try and deny that this *kind* of 
>behavior still occurs and obviously, the owners need to have some system
>in place to prevent their ignorance (when it occurs, mind you, as obviously not
>every owner or owner decision is stupid) from screwing things up.

Well, the last commissioner who got all the owners in line and convinced them
to work together and do the rational thing and not act stupid was Peter
Ueberroth, who had all kinds of prestige when he came into the office.

What did he get them to do?  Collude.  It's cost them millions and millions,
not to mention the embarrassment of getting caught and the loss of 
credibility.  Yeah, a strong commissioner really got baseball in good
shape there.  

What else did Ueberroth do?  Well, he announced, "Baseball has solved its
drug problem."

Not.

Now, would you please tell us what you're talking about?

Roger

Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball