At some point in my formative years, I heard the phrase “hope springs eternal” used in relation to baseball Spring Training and until recently, I never questioned the connection. Since then, whenever I have heard the phrase uttered, I assumed the utterer was talking about Spring Training.
Of course, now I’m old and smart, and I know that “hope springs eternal” are the first three words in Alexander Pope’s poem, An Essay on Man. The poem was written in 1733, before baseball was even invented. Although to hear some Cubs fans, you’d think that was the same year the Cubs started training in Mesa. But I digress.
Despite the fact that I now know the origin of the phrase, I can’t help but associate it with Spring Training. After all, at the beginning of Spring Training, all team’s are tied for first and fans from each team have reason to hope that this is the year their boys of summer will bring home the prize. Well, at least that’s how it’s supposed to be.
The truth is that fans for several teams know that their teams don’t stand a chance of making the post-season, let alone win a World Series championship. That’s not how it’s supposed to be in professional sports. The rules of the sport are supposed to make the playing field even — or as even as possible — for all teams. In this respect, baseball fails miserably.
Once again in 2010, the team with the highest payroll (Yankees) will outspend the team with the lowest payroll (Pirates) by more that five times. Not only does that not create an even playing field, but it creates a situation where the lowest payroll team has absolutely no chance of competing. Under baseball’s current rules, the Pirates are simply fodder used to fill out the schedule.
And the Pirates are not alone. They are joined at the bottom of the payroll ladder by the Nationals, Rangers, Athletics, Marlins, and Padres. All teams that have very little chance of posting a winning record and virtually no chance of making the post-season.
I can hear the naysayers now saying that the Rangers were competitive in the weak AL West just last year. That’s true, but the AL West is better this year and the Rangers will likely not be as good.
The naysayers also point to the Marlins who, despite league leading low payrolls have won two World Series titles since 1997. Again, true, but the Marlins are the exception. If it takes a miracle for a team to rise to the top, then the playing field probably isn’t very level.
Many fans point to the Yankees for outspending every other team. I am not a Yankee basher, at least not in this context. Baseball is flush with money. At a time when other sports are seeing their revenues decrease (some substantially), baseball actually saw an increase in revenue in 2009. Attendance was down, but revenue was up. In fact, according to Maury Brown at The Biz of Baseball, MLB’s revenues hit a record $6.6 billion in 2009.
That means that teams have more revenue sharing money coming in for the 2010 season. Even so, teams at the bottom of the payroll ladder continue to spend less on payroll than they receive in revenue sharing.
At one time, I was in favor of a salary cap for MLB that included a minimum amount team’s had to spend on payroll. I was never completely comfortable with the idea of a salary cap, but I couldn’t think of any other way to even the playing field.
Then last November, I ran across a column by Jayson Stark of ESPN.com in which he did a fantastic job of explaining the problem and offering a solution. In his article, Stark pointed out that as many as 10 teams (one-third of all MLB teams) receive more in revenue sharing and TV/radio rights (local and national) than they spend on payroll. (That figure is up to 13 of the 30 teams based on 2010 projected payroll figures)
In my original post on this subject, I explained Stark’s solution to the problem like this:
Stark then offers a solution than I like much better than my original salary cap solution. Stark suggests that MLB continue to tax the highest spending teams just as they do now, but also start taxing the lowest spending teams. Set payroll parameters that discourage the wealthiest teams from spending their competitors into oblivion, but which also encourage the “poorest” teams to spend the money they receive from the central fund, revenue sharing, and local TV rights to improve their teams and to compete on the field.
As Stark points out, this proposal will not cure all of MLB’s ills, but it will improve competitive balance and the play on the field. And once competitive balance is established, many of MLB’s problems will seem much less important.
For years, the NFL has bragged about the parity they have been able to achieve. On any given Sunday, any one team can beat any other team in the NFL. Not so in MLB. Every year, there are teams that don’t stand a chance of being competitive, let alone have hopes for the post-season. Instead of creating parity, MLB has created a parody of what a competitive, well-run league should look like.
For fans of two-thirds of the teams in MLB, hope springs eternal again this year. Some teams may be long shots, but at least they stand a chance. Not so for the other one-third of teams. Before the season even gets started, they are out of the running. For fans of those teams, “hope springs eternal” doesn’t hold any special meaning. It’s simply a line from a poem.
