From: miked@pterodactyl.cis.ohio-state.edu (Michael Davey)
Subject: Re: Baseball and Billions
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept. of Computer and Info. Science
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 16:59:03 GMT

In article <1992Aug26.160428.9224@adobe.com> snichols@adobe.com (Sherri Nichols) writes:
>
>I did more than suggest it.  I stated it plainly.  Not spending money on
>the game would force owners to change their behavior.  How could it not?
>Especially now when we're starting to get a group of owners who have made
>substantial investments to buy teams.  If you've spent $100 million to buy
>a team, you're not going to run it as a hobby, you're going to run it as a
>business, and if attendance drops, you're going to take measures to
>increase it.
>
	Look, read my original post. I said that the owners have every right 
to try and make money. I`m just arguing that The game itself as an abstract
idea is not a business. However, in all practicality, major-league baseball
must be treated like a busines in order to survive.  This does not mean that
every decision regarding the rules of The Game should be made solely with
the bottom line in mind, however. Lots of things can be done to increase
attendence without adding a DH, for example. This implies there is something
wrong with the game itself. Which there is not. If you start making changes
based on how much money you can generate, the integrity of the game is 
compromised, no matter how you slice it.

>Let me ask you a question: do you think baseball owners are worse now than
>they were in the past?  Why?  

	This question is irrelevant. Of course they are a bit better now
than the past. But the discussion we are having is about the owners now
and not how good are they relative to how bad they were 40 years ago. The 
owners now, in my oppinion, make stupid decisions. Everything I have read
regarding the salary structure, free agency, etc... fingers the owners as 
the most responsible party for the current economic problems affecting the 
game. Read my post yesterday about what Bob Lurie said about the owners. 
Besides, collusion occurred in the mid `80`s and would seem to indicate
that the owners have not changed too much from when the players were
seriously mistreated. I might add, that it is the anti-trust exemption which
allows the owners the power to make the bone-headed decisions they make. The
general structure of your arguments indicates what you really want is a 
competive open market where the exchange of commodities can occur and those
organizations that are less competitive will suffer. In such a market, your
focus on the bottom line as the best measure for the validity of a particular
decision affecting the game might be warranted. Without a truly open exchange,
however, i.e. no anti-trust exemption, your argument is invalid as no free
and equal interaction between player, owners, and fans is occuring.

>Why should now be any different than the last 150 years of baseball?
	I guess if you are satisfied with the status quo no matter how
from the ideal it is, then your correct. But there are a lot of fans of the
game who are not satisfied with mediocrity and hope that managment could
continue to get better with time.

>What a concept: try to give the fans something they enjoy!
 	Give me a break. NL fans enjoy the game just as much as AL fans.
If you work in the marketing department for a major sport franchise and the 
best idea you can come up with to increase interest is to change the rules
of the game, you should seek another line of work.


>Why is your opinion on that matter
>more important than all the AL fans who've made it clear that they prefer
>the DH?  Or those fans in Houston who prefer to watch a game in comfort,
>rather than being eaten by mosquitos?  

	At this point I would not argue to lose the DH in the AL if the fans
there like it so much. A dome in an area where the climate is inhospitable
is a prudent decision. A dome in a beautiful climate (like Tampa) is stupid.
The point is that the DH was introduced because the owners in the AL saw that
atttendence was down and wanted to generate interest by fixing something that
was not broken. Are you going to seriously argue that in the late sixties
all the people in AL cities happened to find the game boring while all 
the fans in the NL cities did not? Yeah right. Comparing the DH to the shot
clock in the NBA is another inappropriate counterexample. Games in the NBA
were boring for everybody because a team could sit on the ball and wind the 
clock down, contrary to the spirit of the game as everyone agreed. It did
not make sense to allow delaying tactics so they changed the rules. Again,
the DH was originally introduced by unimaginative owners to affect the bottom
line, not because of the universally perceived flaw in the rules of the game,
otherwise, the NL fans would have clamored for the DH in their league as well.

--Mike D.--













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