Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
July 28, 2002
Cheering In Tampa:

I'm watching the Yankees at Tampa Bay. Jeter gets a single, Nick Johnson hustles to third, and the crowd goes wild! The Devil Rays are averaging about 20,700 before today with the Yankees, 12,800 otherwise. I guess all of Steinbrenners old friends are there.

And Robin Ventura hits a grand-slam, and the crowd is giving him a standing ovation!

This actually brings up something I've been thinking about for revenue sharing. One reason some teams don't like an unbalanced schedule is that they don't get to bring in the big draws as often. In my mind, the reason to share revenue is to pay your opponents for playing you, since without an opponent, you don't have a game. So why not bid to bring opponents into your ball park?

You could set up some rules, so each team would have to play a minimum number of opponents, and would be limited in the number of times a team could visit their stadium in a season. Teams like the Royals and DRays could bid to bring in draws like the Yankees 8 times a year. But teams like the Devil Rays and Royals would also try to develop players that would draw crowds, so other teams would bid for them.

As an example, the Royals with a Bo Jackson. Bo wasn't a great player, but he was an exciting player. I remember saying (before his injury), that he's one player I'd go out of my way to see play, because you never know what amazing thing he's going to do.

It's just a thought. It's a free market solution that just doesn't blindly transfer money from rich teams to poor teams, and encourages all teams to develop a product people want to see. I know it would never be implemented, but I can dream. :-)


Posted by David Pinto at 02:14 PM | Baseball