-=> Quoting Ed Grinnell to Russ Paige <=-
 EG> Russ Paige gave up a long homer to Otis Nixon and said:
 RP>  -Free agent salaries [are] out of control.
 EG> Despite what they try to say in the press, teams are still making a
 EG> profit. Some teams like the Braves and the Cubs can hide their income
 EG> behind the entities that own them but it's apparent to anyone that
 EG> looks that they're still making a lot of money. The money is there for
 EG> the owners to spend and the players know it.
 You're offering a half-truth at best.  Are you trying to tell me that
 the Pittsburgh Pirates are making money?  Are you trying to tell me
 that the San Francisco Giants, the Oakland Athletics and the Milwaukee
 Brewers are making money?  If you are trying to tell me that, you
 are flat out wrong.
 Free agent salaries have inflated payrolls to the point where the
 payroll alone exceeds the total operating expenses of 10 years ago.
 Of course, the Yankees make enough money off of television contracts
 to make a profit each year even if they don't sell a single ticket,
 but that's the "big tv market" exception, not the small market rule.
 Regardless of whether individual teams are making money, you're missing
 the big picture point.  Owners are in control of the business of
 baseball.  They are inflating free agent salaries to the point where
 it is making it virtually impossible for teams such as Pittsburgh,
 Milwaukee, and San Francisco to turn a profit each year.  They have
 only themselves to blame, but that was the whole point of my prior
 post--that owners have big problems staring them in the face, yet
 they either choose not to act, or are incapable of acting to
 minimize or eliminate those problems.
 EG> If you want to control salaries then push for the media to stop
 EG> paying them so much money and then they'll have to lower salaries
 EG> because they won't be making as much money.
 Media?  You mean the press?  Is the press paying free agents?
 Do you mean merchandisers?  You completely lost me on this line of
 --ahem--reasoning.
 "...then they'll have to lower salaries because they won't be making
  as much money."
 Huh?  Isn't that kind of backwards?
 Oh, wait, I think I see what you are saying.  When you said "them," you
 were referring to owners, right?  (Even though you had been talking
 about free agents.)  If the media (by that you mean
 television, which is the only medium which generates any meaningful
 amount of revenue for MLBaseball) stops paying the owners so much for
 the television contracts, then the owners won't be able to pay
 inflated free agent salaries because the owners won't have enough
 money.  Is that it?
 History does not support your thesis, Ed.  The San Francisco Giants
 never have had much money, yet they shelled out $42 million over 6
 years to sign Barry Bonds.  The San Diego Padres never had much
 money, yet they paid some big free agent salaries last year--e.g.,
 Ken Caminiti.
 When you look at free agent salary inflation, it's hard to place
 blame anywhere but owner stupidity.
 RP>  -Heck, MINIMUM salaries are out of control.
 EG> If you're talking about their salary vs yours then you're correct but
 EG> if you're talking in terms of what their industry pays then it's hardly
 EG> worth berating them.
 Who is "them" this time?  The rookies, or the owners?  It's nutty to
 be paying a rookie $108,000 per year.
 RP>  -Income disparity between large market and small market teams.
 EG> I'm all for revenue sharing but I'm NOT for profit maximization.
 I have no idea what you mean by "profit maximization.  Please elaborate.
 EG> Look
 EG> at SD and how their operation differs from Montreal and Pittsburgh.
 EG> They've taken a leap of faith and they stand to make MORE money despite
 EG> the fact that they've spent more. If the owners from Pittsburgh and
 EG> Montreal don't spend the money that they will get from revenue sharing
 EG> on the players then they've shown that they don't deserve the money.
 We'll see how it works out for San Diego.  The same "leap of faith" has
 been a failure at both Houston and San Francisco.  In the first year of
 Barry Bonds' $42 million contract in SF, he won the MVP award, his team
 won 103 games, the Giants set a new home attendance record, and the team
 lost somewhere between 5 and 10 million dollars.
 In Houston, Drayton McClane paid a lot of money for Greg Swindell and
 some other big name players, and has lost money continuously, despite
 consistenly drawing around 2 million fans each season.
 Despite success on the field, the Oakland Athletics eventually had to
 unload most of their high profile/high salary players.  Canseco,
 Henderson, Eckersly, Stewart--stars of the monstrously successful
 1988 through 1991 Oakland teams--are all still playing, but not at
 Oakland.
 It is very difficult for smaller market teams to make money.  The
 places where the smaller market teams do well financially over
 extended periods of time, the only consistent factor that I can
 see is an attractive ballpark.  Examples such as Boston, Cleveland,
 and, to a lesser extent, Baltimore (since it can draw on the DC metro
 area, thereby expanding its market) seem to point to stadium as
 an important factor in small market success.
 RP>  -Team relocations
 EG> It hasn't happened in a while but it could. I don't think that I'd
 EG> put the blame anywhere but on the owners as a collective.
 My point exactly.
 RP>  -Municipal extortion over team relocations and stadium construction.
 EG> They can do just like Houston did with the Oilers or better yet, what
 EG> Oakland did with the Raiders. I'm sure that with a little vision into
 EG> the future, they'd gladly give Al Davis what he wanted back then. I
 EG> don't think that the cities that gave their teams new stadiums are
 EG> regretting it after all is said and done.
 What did Houston do with the Oilers?  They told the Oilers to go to
 hell, so the Oilers did--or at least will, in 1997--er, wait--1998.
 This after repeatedly renovating the Astrodome to the detriment of
 the Astros and the Astros' fans.  Baseball scoreboards were removed
 for skyboxes which only benefitted the Oilers.  Then the Oilers
 packed their bags.  Sounds like extortion to me.
 Sure, Oakland treated the Raiders very well.  Sued the Raiders in 1982
 and lost, at great expense.  Then the Raiders defrauded the Los Angeles
 Coliseum, extorted money from Irwindale CA, and then accepted a monstrous
 $100 million+ bouquet of roses from the City of Oakland/Alameda County.
 The City and County will never recoup that money through activity
 associated with the Oakland Raiders, they even admitted that when they
 put the package together.
 You need to reread your NFL history texts.  In 1982, when the
 Oakland Raiders left Oakland, Al Davis had not made any complaints
 whatsoever to the City of Oakland/Alameda County.  He had made money
 hand over fist there for the entire time he owned the team (which, if
 I'm not mistaken, is the entire time the team has existed).
 RP>  -Rising ticket prices
 EG> Baseball STILL remains one of the best buys in all of sports. Ticket
 EG> prices aren't raised often (Cincinnati hasn't raised theirs in years)
 EG> and when they are, they're not raised by as much as other sports.
 Bleah.  Baseball ticket prices have increased far beyond the rate of
 inflation for the past 10 years.  Has the quality of the game increased
 at a rate higher than inflation during that time?
 RP>  -Increasing player violence
 EG> Are you kidding me? I saw more "violence" back in the '80s. I can
 EG> still remember some of the more memorable brawls between the Braves and
 EG> the Padres and I'm sure that other fans can remember just as many as
 EG> well.
 First, so what?  I don't condone gratuitous violence in baseball
 regardless of when it takes place.
 Second, I don't consider the '80s to be some benchmark in
 MLBaseball history.  Players charge the mound a HELL of a lot nowadays
 (including way back in 1988), and it should not be tolerated, yet it
 is, since it continues to occur.
 RP>  -Increasing confrontations between players and umpires
 EG> The owners can put a stop to this by muzzling their umpires and
 EG> making them accountable.
 I think you have that remedy backwards.  The umpires are hired to
 be Gods while they are on the field.  Any blasphemy that occurs on
 the field should not be tolerated.  Even 10 years ago, arguing a
 called third strike was an automatic ejection.  Now, it's routine to
 see players jawing at an umpire over a called third strike.  Roberto
 Alomar spits on an umpire and gets no punishment at all, in a
 practical sense.
 Again, Ed, my main point is that the MLBaseball owners are inscrutable
 idiots.  The players association is also an idiot, but to a slightly
 lesser degree, and the fans who went to games in strike-shortened 1995
 are also idiots.  My problem is that I'm no idiot--I boycotted 1995
 AND 1996, yet the idiots are all costing me money when I return to
 MLBaseball fan status.
 Russ
 ----
... I'm not abnormal.  I'm hypernormal.
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