Baseball Must Change or Die
(Just Like the Rest of Us)

Michael Cox

The hubbub of the owners meetings continues, as the braintrust in charge of MLB makes such bold statements as:

- We heartily approve of the sale of teams to people who likely have the legal right to buy them regardless of whether Ted Turner swallows his tongue or not;

- The team with the best record should get home-field advantage, rather than a semi-predetermined team (who may still not get home-field, dependent on which division the wild card comes from);

- Games are long and slow and perhaps some players and umpires might actually do some things to speed them up (the smart money says no, like always);

- We don't like Marge.

As you can see, for the most part this gang of mental giants is letting the national pastime blow where the breeze takes it.

Why?

Because they keep making money. Why do something like hiring a strong commish or forcing umpires to enforce the actual written rules, or something even bigger like formulating a future for the game, when all they have to do is sit back, collect the cash, and keep banning Marge Schott and Pete Rose?

It's all gonna come crashing down one day. When a season ticket in the upper deck costs more than a down payment on a house, and games are four hours long and mostly consist of Albert Belle moving in and out of the batter's box, and when network TV baseball announcers are finally so vapid that even casual fans take notice. It may not happen overnight, but it'll happen. But there's a way to save Major League Baseball (and with it, the sport itself) from this fate: change it. Shake it up. It's not too late - in fact it's just the right time.

How?

See that bit at the top where it says "an ongoing series"? There are so many ways to improve baseball, we likely won't get around to all of them before the end of the season. Good thing strikethree.com is open all year. For today, we'll look at the obvious.

A commissioner, a new commissioner, is a no-brainer. So much so that the owners themselves can even feel it. What they don't want to do, however, is hire a strong commish. They want a lap dog who'll look out for the best interests of the owners of baseball teams rather than the best interests of baseball. What they need is another Judge Landis, who can force the Boys of MLB (a term we'll use instead of the already-hackneyed "Lords of Baseball") to talk about real issues, like revenue-sharing and community service and hot dogs that cost less than $3.

Bud Selig wants that job so much he can taste it, and the other owners want him, despite his proven track record of ineffectiveness. Players won't listen to him. Umpires won't listen to him. Most of the fans who know of him don't like him. The folks in Milwaukee wouldn't even believe him when he claimed he had gathered enough cash to pay his share of Miller Field. Yet, he's what the owners want most - a figurehead and nothing else. What they're doing with the interview process is looking for a candidate who appears strong-minded, but will go along with the Boys' wishes, and that's why they can't find anyone.

The solution? Get a candidate who is a proven manager but has his own ideas, like Lee Iacocca (I can see the headlines now: "Cubs the 'K-Car' of MLB?") or a Paul Tsongas-type politico with enough brains to keep the boat afloat while subtly changing course. However, like any twelve-step program, it begins with admitting you have a problem, and that's something these owners aren't likely to do.

Then there's the matter of revenue-sharing. You bet it has to happen. When a guy like Steinbrenner has mismanaged his team in a way that would bankrupt most companies, yet still manages to turn a tidy profit, any claim that he has a "right" to keep every penny is so much acrid smoke from spinning Michelins. Let him keep the ballpark revenue and 60 percent of the local media money, but the rest goes in the pot. An NFL team could play in a cow pasture and still turn a profit, because of their pooling of revenue. Baseball ascribes to the "I got mine, Jack" ethic, which is fine for the venture capitalists who own teams, but not so good for the people who line up in December weather to buy tickets.

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