Fans pay the bills for MLB's huge expenses
By By Stan Torgerson / sports columnist
Jan. 26, 2004
There must be a lot of ex-drunken sailors among major league baseball owners. As in that old saying about throwing money around like a drunken sailor.
I mean no disrespect to sailors. I was one myself once for something over three years. As to the drunken part I will neither confirm nor deny.
But for years we've been hearing the owners cry poormouth about how only a very, very few are making any money. Expenses are too high and the attendance is too low. Their ballparks are too old and they need new ones. They must be built at public expense because they can't afford to do it themselves and their only alternative would be to pack up the bats and balls and move somewhere that appreciates them.
Some of the TV ratings for major league baseball are so small you have to wonder whether anyone is looking other than the player's mommas and pappas and other close relatives.
I listen to all this and then I read right here in this newspaper about some of the salary offers being made to mediocre players with mediocre batting averages or mediocre pitching records and it makes no sense. Heck, if they are one of the sports brightest stars it still makes no sense.
Ivan Rodriguez was offered $24 million to play baseball for Florida again during the next three years and turned it down flat. That's an average of $8 million a year for a maximum of 162 games. How dare they insult him like that? Detroit comes along and puts $40 million on the table for four years, that's $10 million a year if you're having trouble with the mathematics, and it still isn't enough.
At this moment Rodriguez is still waiting for a better offer.
Incidentally, Detroit lost 119 games last season so you can guess what their attendance must have been, but they still have found $40 million for one playerif they can get him for that.
Roy Halladay pitches for Toronto and pitches well. Last year he won 22 games and was named the American League's Cy Young Award winner. That's good stuff. But is it good enough for Toronto to agree to pay him $6 million this year, raise it to $10.5 million next year without knowing what kind of an 04 season he'll have, $12.7 million in 2006 and finally $12.8 million in 2007? What if he hurts his arm or gets smacked in the head by a line drive? Why doesn't the big money come after a big year and the rest be predicated on how he does this season and then the next and then the next after that? Haven't the Blue Jays got it backwards?
Shingo Takatsu has been a big name in Japan. He's never thrown a pitch in the American big leagues. The White Sox have signed him for $1 million right out of the box. He may not be able to pitch in the American Little League but he'll go home with his pockets bulging, regardless.
Then there's Kansas City lefthander Darrell May who won 10 while losing eight last year. His new contract is for nearly $5 million over the next two years which translates into $500,000 for each game he won in 2003. Let's see, nine innings in a game, if he starts and finishes which he certainly didn't do, let's say six pitches per batter at $500,000 per game works out tooh forget it.
The way major league baseball runs its business it could bankrupt Bill Gates in two years.
Agreed it's their business and they have a perefect right to bankrupt themselves if they so desire. But being foolish with their own money doesn't give them the right to demand the public spend tax dollars for a new ballpark or give them tax breaks or any other benefit the owner of the corner hot dog stand doesn't get.
And as far as the television networks paying higher rights fees in the face of declining audiences, it has become obvious that whatever fever baseball owners have must be catchy because TV negotiators have it too. Next step, pay television. Every time a boxing match appears on pay TV baseball drools in envy.
Someone is going to have to pick up these ever increasing costs. Go look in the mirror and see who baseball expects it to be.
