From: jlundy@bilbo.encore.com (Joe Lundy)
Subject: Re: Salary Escalation (was Re: Expos Clinch! Wallach to Dodgers)
Organization: Encore Computer Corp.
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 18:13:46 GMT

In article <1i836nINN81k@renoir.hal.COM>, charly@hal.COM (Charly Rhoades) writes:
|> In article <1993Jan3.194201.28068@ramsey.cs.laurentian.ca> maynard@ramsey.cs.laurentian.ca (Roger Maynard) writes:
|> >...  Salaries escalation
|> >is destroying the game.

See comments below...

|> 
|> 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.

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.

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?  The thrify and economically
smart franchises will do better than the big greedy ones.  Some day, the Mets,
Angels, Yankees, and Dodgers will wise up and realize the ills of their ways.
Look at the recent smaller market successes like the Twins for the model.

When the TV contract dries up, if it in fact does (CBS has done such a poor
job with what they had, IMHO), what will happen?  The new contracts will 
subsequently reflect this.

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?
|> 
|> 
|> 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.

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

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| Joe Lundy           Encore Computer Corporation, 6901 W. Sunrise Blvd.    |
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