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jobu · 03-03-2004, 02:29 PM

I don’t think that cheap owners are necessarily the problem with baseball. They are just totally greedy. There are cheap owners in all sports. The problem is that everyone is not playing on a level playing field. Small market teams can’t compete with the larger markets. Is Kansas City going to be able to draw the same kind of revenue as the Yankees? No way. Therefore KC has do things differently than the Yanks. We can’t expect someone like KC to spend like the Yanks. Baseball is a business and owners aren’t going to go out and spend themselves into the red. Look what happened to the Marlins when Heizinga owned them. He spent like crazy and eventually had to sell the team. It isn’t in the owners nature to lose money. Even with the 200 mil the Yankees are spending Steinbrenner is still making money. If the owners would stop being so selfish and look at the big picture I think they could actually make more money. You need to have competitive balance to keeps the fans interest. Every year you can take 3-4 teams and say that they have no chance of making the playoffs (Brewers, Tigers, Pirates). People see this and say they aren’t going to any of the games. Why would you want to root for a team that you know has no chance of succeeding? Look at the Expos. They are owned by MLB. People in Montreal know that they can’t compete so they don’t bother going to the games. Before salaries got totally out of control people used to show up at Expo games. Why? Because the team was competitive and people thought they had a chance. The owners don’t care about this though. They want to get their money. They implemented this luxury tax to stifle the Yankees and to dip into George’s profits. Without doing any research I think the Yankees and maybe the Red Sox are the only teams that will have to pay it. This money goes back to the owners and they aren’t putting it into their own teams because they don’t need to. Baseball should have put in a minimum on the team salaries. A couple of years ago you heard owners crying that they needed new stadiums to draw the revenue to compete with the big market teams. Look at the Brewers, Tigers and Pirates. They all have cut their payrolls and gotten worse since they have had new stadiums built. All the money generated form these stadiums went right into the owners pockets. Bud Selig pulled one of the greatest scams on the people of Milwaukee. Now this comes straight form the commissioner of baseball. If I was a tax payer/fan of the Brewers I would pissed. There would be no way I would ever go see a game there. See, these owners aren’t cheap. They’re just greedy and they don’t care about the players, the fans or the game itself.

03-03-2004, 02:29 PM	#13 (permalink)
jobu Crazy	I don’t think that cheap owners are necessarily the problem with baseball. They are just totally greedy. There are cheap owners in all sports. The problem is that everyone is not playing on a level playing field. Small market teams can’t compete with the larger markets. Is Kansas City going to be able to draw the same kind of revenue as the Yankees? No way. Therefore KC has do things differently than the Yanks. We can’t expect someone like KC to spend like the Yanks. Baseball is a business and owners aren’t going to go out and spend themselves into the red. Look what happened to the Marlins when Heizinga owned them. He spent like crazy and eventually had to sell the team. It isn’t in the owners nature to lose money. Even with the 200 mil the Yankees are spending Steinbrenner is still making money. If the owners would stop being so selfish and look at the big picture I think they could actually make more money. You need to have competitive balance to keeps the fans interest. Every year you can take 3-4 teams and say that they have no chance of making the playoffs (Brewers, Tigers, Pirates). People see this and say they aren’t going to any of the games. Why would you want to root for a team that you know has no chance of succeeding? Look at the Expos. They are owned by MLB. People in Montreal know that they can’t compete so they don’t bother going to the games. Before salaries got totally out of control people used to show up at Expo games. Why? Because the team was competitive and people thought they had a chance. The owners don’t care about this though. They want to get their money. They implemented this luxury tax to stifle the Yankees and to dip into George’s profits. Without doing any research I think the Yankees and maybe the Red Sox are the only teams that will have to pay it. This money goes back to the owners and they aren’t putting it into their own teams because they don’t need to. Baseball should have put in a minimum on the team salaries. A couple of years ago you heard owners crying that they needed new stadiums to draw the revenue to compete with the big market teams. Look at the Brewers, Tigers and Pirates. They all have cut their payrolls and gotten worse since they have had new stadiums built. All the money generated form these stadiums went right into the owners pockets. Bud Selig pulled one of the greatest scams on the people of Milwaukee. Now this comes straight form the commissioner of baseball. If I was a tax payer/fan of the Brewers I would pissed. There would be no way I would ever go see a game there. See, these owners aren’t cheap. They’re just greedy and they don’t care about the players, the fans or the game itself.