Baseball Musings: Selig Forgets History

October 24, 2006

Selig Forgets History

In an article about parity, Bud Selig delivers this whopper:

A decade ago, "I had dreams of things getting better, but in many ways this has exceeded my fondest expectations," Selig said.

Well, a decade ago, baseball was finishing nearly 20 years of parity. Starting in 1978, the World series winners were:

New York Yankees
Pittsburgh Pirates
Philadelphia Phillies
Los Angeles Dodgers
St. Louis Cardinals
Baltimore Orioles
Detroit Tigers
Kansas City Royals
New York Mets
Minnesota Twins
Los Angeles Dodgers
Oakland Athletics
Cincinnati Reds
Minnesota Twins
Toronto Blue Jays
Toronto Blue Jays
None
Atlanta Braves
New York Yankees

So that's 18 championships by 15 different teams, with only Toronto repeating in consecutive years. That after a three-peat by Oakland, consecutve wins by the Reds and consecutive wins by the Yankees. The change of teams continued in 1997 with the Marlins winning and in 1998 with the Yankees starting their run.

What was happening a decade ago was that it appeared the leagues were becoming polarized. It was happening because local money was outstripping National money for the first time is two decades. Why? Because all baseball did was whine about the labor problem. There was a work stoppage at the start of the 1990 season, just as MLB signed a new $1,000,000,000 contract with CBS. Labor strife continued, and at the end of that four year contract, no one was willing to pony up that much money again. The league had added two more teams, meaning a smaller pie had to feed more people. Then came the 1994 strike, and no one wanted to pay much for baseball.

Why didn't the owners recognize how good baseball was before 1990? They had parity, rising revenues and rising attendance. What more could you ask for? Why weren't they happy in 1990 with what they have today?

I'll invoke Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Basically, the old guard died out. I haven't gone through every team, but I believe the only person around from the first strike in 1972 is Selig, and he no longer owns a team (Steinbrenner came in a year later, so he's familiar with the old reserve clause). In other words, there's no one left around who remembers the good old days when owners controlled the players for life. The old paradigm finally died out.

Now the owners and players argue about drug testing and luxury taxes, important issues but ones that don't infringe on the basic right the players were fighting for all along, the right to earn what the market will bear through free agency. The owners accept the arbitration rules and the smart ones sign their good, young players to long term contracts to avoid the arbitration shock. The new owners understand the system works very well for them, so they're no longer interested in rocking the boat. If baseball had not been so resistant to change for two decades, it might be even better.

Posted by David Pinto at 01:29 PM | History | TrackBack (0)

Comments

Speaking of payrolls...I've slapped together a nice little chart ...showing that a sudden change has occured after the 2000 world series. Teams with the lower payroll will usually beat a higher payroll team in the world series. They've done it 4 of the last 5 years. Before that, you have to go back about 15 years to find 4 teams with a lower payroll than their opponent, winning the world series. I don't know what to make of this yet...but it sure does say something about the way teams are being built now and how payroll isn't as big a key to winning the series as it used to be. in fact, I find it absolutely weird that $100,000,000+ teams don't win the series and often don't even make it to the series. Of course, if this pattern holds true, the Tigers will beat the Cardinals this year.

Posted by: Devon at October 24, 2006 02:23 PM

From espn:

13. St. Louis 86,912,217
14. Detroit 82,302,069

wow, tough luck for STL.

Posted by: SleepyCA at October 24, 2006 03:04 PM

The thing about payrolls is that players are paid for past performance. Maybe it's not supposed to work that way, but it does. The Yankees are full of guys who are past their peak. Jason Giambi on the downhill side of his career is still a fine hitter, but he was better earlier, when he was paid less.

The Yankees are paying him to perform at the level of his Oakland years, but for reasons of age and (*ahem*) he's no longer capable of that kind of success. So, in practical effect, the Yankees are paying him now for his success then.

I think that's generally true of most big-name free agents. The 30-somethinig players can bring a lot to a team, but one thing they generally can't bring is the performance they were capable of at 27, which is what made them such hot commodities.

Posted by: Joel J. at October 24, 2006 04:37 PM

It's an interesting observation, Devon, but I think it's more an anomaly than a trend. 5 years is too small sample size, imo.

As for ol' Bud and the successes of major league baseball.... I can think of several things that aren't so great about the league. For instance, advertising is now so prevelant it's absurd. Count how many different ads you see on the screen in 30 seconds tonight? I bet it's more than 10 every 30 seconds, minimum.

Posted by: JC at October 24, 2006 05:41 PM

But I'll bet that Bud sees those ads as a good thing--- remember, each ad represents money coming in to baseball. Imagine the opposite. What if baseball *couldn't* sell any ads? Then we'd be like the NHL.

Truth be told, though, I agree. Way too much visual and aural assault at the stadiums these days. The MTV kids don't complain, though.

Posted by: Adam Villani at October 24, 2006 07:06 PM

re: kuhn's the structure of scientific revolutions

kuhn's work is a response in essence to the philosophy of scientific discovery advanced by the british analytic school of carnap & popper & quine, who essentially stated that science advanced by empirically verifiable propositions (or propositions that tended to be more verifiable than not). The notion that science advanced by leaps and jumps from reigning paradigm to reigning paradigm was in essence an attack on the carnap-popper-quine line of british analytic logical scientific philosophy.

how this all applies to baseball eludes me.

most of the owners think paradigms are two coins worth twenty cents.

there are some owners like the moneyball guys who are trying to break the reigning methods of doing business.

what was true back in the old days of the 60s and 70s was that many of the clubs were owned by individuals and families. All of those have been pretty much driven out and many of the clubs are now owned by companies or broadcast companies or cable companies.

The owners are rarely individuals; Selig is a dinosaur; most of the owners are coos or ceos appointed by corporate to watch the bottom line.

--art kyriazis, philosophicaly speaking

Posted by: art kyriazis at October 25, 2006 10:06 AM

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