The Day The Grinch Stole Baseball

With The Yankees signing of Mark Teixeira for $180 million for eight years, they completed their Christmas shopping spree. Are there any toys or trinkets left for anybody else? If you have all of the toys, is there anyone else left to play with?

Teixeira follows the dynamic pitching duo of C. C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett coming into the fold for the Bronx Bombers. It’s almost like being a kid on Christmas morning, unwrapping the gifts and getting every toy you could have imagined, and some you didn’t, under the tree. Of course it helps if your daddy is Donald Trump, or in this case, a Steinbrenner.

But what’s left for the other kids out there? All their stockings contained were lumps of coal.

Of course spending money doesn’t guarantee that you will win the World Series, as the Yankees have proven since 2000, the last glory year for the team that considers the championship as their birthright.  But it sure gives you a lot better chance.

After an unfathomable year sitting at home watching the playoffs on the tube, the Yankees spent $423.5 million on just three players, and will be paying $152.1 million for just nine players next year.  That may be more than any other team spends for the requisite twenty-five players.

And who said they’re done yet. The irrepressible Manny Ramirez is still out there, and if nothing else, he’s a winner, and that’s what the Yankees need most of all. There is also talk they may be making an offer to Derek Lowe, adding another starter to a bankrupt pitching staff.

I’m not a fan of the Yankees, and I wouldn’t really care about their careless spending, except for how it impacts fans of other teams and the fans themselves.

If you’re a fan of the Royals or the Pirates, what hope is there? It used to be that every year was another season, and that everybody started out 0-0. That’s not the case anymore. Some teams know before the season starts that they don’t even have a prayer of making the playoffs, let alone winning it all.

Year after year, their fans have the feeling of hopelessness. It’s not fun watching your team when they’re out of the race at the start of May. I should know. I’m a fan of the Cubs.

Of course, every so often comes a Tampa Bay Rays out of nowhere. But isn’t there run short term? What happens when their players are no longer under the teams’ control, and can opt for free-agency?

Actually, with arbitration, it won’t even take that long before they’re priced out of the market and the Yankees swoop in, replenishing their roster, thanks to their counterparts that are really more like glorified farm teams, feeding the boss hog.

Major League Baseball parallels our society that is based on capitalism. It’s great for the rich, but for the little guy that can’t compete, it’s a failed system. And nobody is on an even playing field with the Yankees, even the richer teams like the Red Sox, Angels, Dodgers, Mets, and Cubs.

Isn’t the socialist NFL a much better system for parity, a word so many people hate? They share the network money equally and everybody has a chance, from the big cities to the small-town burgs like Green Bay.

Is there any reason that a player needs to make $22.5 million dollars a year like Teixara’s contract averages out to? Couldn’t he live comfortably on half of that or even a quarter of it?

Does his family have to live like kings for the next several generations just because he can play a sport well? He’s not even that good. He may be by today’s standards, but I don’t think anyone pays the big bucks to go to a game to watch Mark Teixeira.

The real issue and this is what the player’s union completely backs is getting every last dollar you can out of a team so you can raise salary expectations for your brethren. The more you make, the more every body else makes too. At least that’s the theory.

With today’s economic situation, the mid and lower range players probably aren’t going to make as much money.

But who cares about the players? I certainly don’t, because they don’t care about me. They’re very rarely loyal to any team, and seldom take a home town discount, and when they do, the union comes down on them for the above mentioned reasons.

Top ticket prices at new Yankee Stadium are $2,500 a seat per game. That’s for one game and doesn’t include taking a friend with you. But I do think they give you popcorn with it. I sure hope the butter is free.

How can a family go to a baseball game anymore? Baseball used to be the most affordable athletic activity to enjoy with your family.

I remember as a kid going to the bleachers at Wrigley Field and getting in for less than a buck. Today it’s going to cost you over forty bucks, and that’s if you’re lucky enough to be able to buy a ticket for face value and not have to see a scalper or StubHub for a ducat.

Do I need to get a home equity line of credit to see a baseball game today in person? Will the owners of the best seats be faceless corporations that are still able to afford to buy tickets, maybe using our bailout money?

It’s not right and I don’t care about the player’s right to earn what the market bears. Because while so few are benefiting, so many are feeling the pain.

A young boy may no longer experience going to a ballgame with his dad to watch the game; an experience passed on from generation to generation.

The greed of the players and the owners is reprehensible.

The player’s union will not allow a salary cap to slow down the process. Baseball is the only sport without one. They don’t care about anyone but themselves.

If they were in charge and had to take the risks that go along with guaranteed contracts, would they be paying out this kind of money? I don’t think so. For them, it’s no risk and all reward.

But I don’t think the owners should reap all of the rewards either, despite the fact that they are the only ones with something to lose.

Without fans to go to the games, everybody loses…both the owners and the players.

I would say prices should be slashed in half, but would you want to spend a measly $1250 for the best seat at the Yankees game?

How about putting a cap on salaries where the most anyone can make in a year is $10 million? And that’s still way too high. The only two players in sports history with the highest salaries that have ever deserved them were Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan.

And what’s wrong with going back to the olden days, when players had to negotiate a new contract every year? That way you get paid what you deserve, not what you negotiated in a walk year when you actually played hard so you could sign a multi-year contract so you could go on vacation until the next time your contract was up? That’s how other people get paid. Why shouldn’t players get paid the same way?

For the fans, there should always be at least 10,000 tickets to every game that cost no more than ten dollars. You can charge for the luxury boxes and front row seats, but even on that, there should be a reasonable cap, not whatever the market bears.

Sports should be for the masses, not just a privileged few. And on this Christmas Day, let’s remember that old saying, “It’s better to give than receive.”

It’s time for all of the Scrooges in the world to finally wake up and give back to the people, instead of hoarding all of the goodies for themselves.