Monday afternoon was supposed to be a fun day in the world of baseball. The home run derby was set to provide some post-July 4th fireworks and the rest of baseball had the day off. But into this blissful day of hardball heaven, came the the two most painful words in baseball (just ahead of Bill Buckner and Bucky Dent): strike date.
To be fair, no one is really surprised that the player's union was talking about setting a strike date. Anyone who follows the game knows that it has been brewing all season. And yet to have the All-Star Break defiled with the meeting and the announcement is simple arrogance on the part of Mssr. Donald Fehr, the MLPBA's chief negotiator.
A nave fan might ask, "Why are baseball players striking? The average salary is more than $2 million per season and the major league minimum is over $250,000." Although no nave fan would actually know those figures, the point is still valid.
What is all the fighting about?
Since Curt opened the Floodgates, baseball salaries have risen faster than a Sammy Sosa derby dinger. And now that everyone has finally caught onto the fact that the current salary structures leave the top five salaried teams with a phenomenal advantage over the rest of baseball, the support for a major luxury tax and payroll tax is finally there.
But now, the player's association doesn't trust Major League Baseball! This has finally come full circle. The owners of the wealthy teams help destroy the balance of the sport with nine-figure payrolls, and now the players who have benefited from the escalations are afraid to deal with the owners.
Some will yell at me and say, "The Oakland A's, Minnesota Twins and now even the Montreal Expos are winning with small payrolls. Give up on that foolish competitive imbalance idea." As Dr. Evil would say, "Zip it!" Yes a pair of small market teams have been winning the last few years, and this year Omar and Frank have turned the Expos around, but look at the other small payroll teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates, Detroit Tigers, Milwaukee Brewers, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Colorado Rockies, etc. I could go on, but when you compare the year in and year out success of these small market clubs to the continued dominance of the Yankees and Braves and perpetual competition of the St. Louis Cardinals, Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians (pre-Bartolo firesale), it becomes obvious that money does win year in and year out, even if there are exceptions to the rule.
Competitive imbalance due to money having been fairly well established by this brief exercise (I'd be happy to go into more detail but I simply don't have the space here), why wouldn't the players want to back Bud Selig's proposed luxury tax which would help even out the payroll discrepancies? Jason Giambi, who swore that Oakland and the Bay Area were his personal Holy Land, a place he loved in his soul and could never leave, wouldn't have to bolt for Gotham! Raul Mondesi wouldn't be given away to a division rival for cash and a warm body (that's all Scott Wiggins isreally)! So why don't the players want to listen?
Anyone who can't answer, please press the call button and someone will come by and smack you in the head with a tack hammer because you are, indeed, a retard. THE MONEY! The players don't really care about staying somewhere, unless they are already playing for one of those top payroll clubs. Money talks, small market teams balk and the stars walk. That simple. A luxury tax would inherently cap salary escalation because the big spenders in baseball who prefer to spend money to buy talent rather than risk the presence of rookies in a pennant race would hold off on shopping sprees which would give the rest of baseball extra money to competitively bid against them in the next offseason.
Is light finally dawning on everyone out there? Don't believe the crap you hear from the player's association. Admittedly, Bud Selig shouldn't be trusted because his daughter still owns the Brewers, but he's not out to hurt everyone at his own advantage; he's only out to hurt the Yankees, which is perfectly acceptable. What is really causing this friction is that the MLBPA is afraid that this will lead to a salary cap setup like the NFL in which the biggest All-Stars in the game can be waived and left on the sidelines for an entire season because they command too much money. They want money, money and more money.
Thankfully, Tom Glavine and others went in with lead pipes and beat Fehr to a pulp and convinced him that a strike would be bad for baseball, and the players did not set a strike date. But the players have to be prepared for a fan backlash anyway, as their spiraling greed has now ruined not only the 1994 World Series, but the 2002 All-Star Game. How fitting that they did so with the game at Bud Selig's brand new ballpark in Milwaukee?
