Bob Costas is welcome to explain two things then:
Just how is the perception of teams like Seattle, Cleveland, Oakland et al. going to be that their teams cannot win when, in fact, their teams DO win? Come on, let’s get real here. I think Oakland fans have hope and faith that the A’s can win. They’ve seen them win.
Do you really think Browns fans thought their team had any chance in hell? The cry “Break up the Yankees!” was no joke.
Sadly, DC may indeed be stupid enough to do that – wait, the federal gubmint would be chipping in hugely on that deal, too. I saw the proposal – amazing that someone can ask for such a handout. The private owners propose to pay some, maybe, of the stadium development costs (and none of the rest, such as land acquisition, infrastructure, etc.).
**RickJay **,
ME: This is bad for baseball because it turns away potential fans who believe the local ( losing ) team can never be winners.
Just my 2sense
I think this line’s mostly filler. - Willow [from Buffy The Musical]
Rick Jay
I am becoming a bit unclear about what is a big market team and what is a small market one. I had thought of Cleveland as a big market team, but you consider it a small market one. The link helpfully provided by dangerosa supports your position. So I don’t know - if there are other factors besides size of metropolitan area, I don’t know what they are (they may be some intangible ones, that will of course be subject to much dispute. I seem to recall that Atlanta is considered to have a large potential revenue base due to their affiliation with TNT).
Another example of a small market team unloading players would be the Seattle Mariners unloading Johnson, Griffey, & Rodriguez in successive years. I would think their phenomenal success in the past year is due to lucky acquisitions of Suzuki and to flukey performances of Boone et al.
But again, I am now unclear as to why some teams are classified as small market and some as large market. So I can no longer maintain a definite position with regards to the issue until this is clarified.
One question about historical success: when was the draft instituted? It may be that the true era of competitiveness was after the draft began but before free agency (if there was such a tiime).
Fans of LOSING teams believe their teams can get better and win. I honestly don’t know any baseball fans alive right now who have given up on their teams, and believe me, I talk to a lot of them. Hell, even EXPOS fans are convinced the team can win if it isn’t contracted. Lots of Kansas City fans have given up on Allard Baird having a brain and lots of Tigers fans think the Tigers will take years to recover, but I don’t know any fans who say “My team has no chance of becoming good because of economics.” Anecdotal evidence, of course, but I would like to see evidence such fans exist, and are more numerous than they were in 1953. There is certainly no RATIONAL reason for fans to believe that, since small market teams do as well now as they ever have in 125 years of professional baseball history.
Besides, you don’t even understand what I’m saying. Costas isn’t saying “losing teams breed losing fans,” he’s saying thyat some franchises are economically disadvantaged so they have no chance of winning. Once again, I will ask: WHICH ONES??? What team is so economically disadvantaged it cannot win? Show it to me. I’ll buy Montreal; now, who else?
It proves he’s wrong. Costas claimed that many fans now feel their teams have no chance, and that this was not the case before. (Well, that’s what it was claimed, in this thread, he said.) He’s wrong.
IzzyR:
You’ve fallen upon one of the most important points; the notion of “small/large market” is played with by the owners to present a situation that doesn’t exist. Cleveland’s a small market team and always has been, and eleven years ago - I am not making this up - many, many sports journalists, as well as the Commissioner and the owners, came right out and announced that Cleveland was such a poor market that it could not possibly succeed (without salary caps, of course.) The oft-quoted Bill James, himself a skeptic like me, said that the Indians had given up any hope of fielding a competitive team and that “The Cleveland Indians are the canary in baseball’s coal mine, and the canary just dropped off his perch.” Eight years ago Toronto was said to be a gigantic supermarket buying championships; now they’re presented as a poor market. It’s all bull, of course; Cleveland’s still a small market and Toronto is still large (larger, anyway; they’re about middle of the pack), and the difference in their fortunes is due to their own management decisions. In the 80’s and early 90’s the Blue Jays ran their team really, really well, and the Indians ran theirs poorly; after 1993 the Indians ran a tight ship and the Blue Jays fell into chaos.
In order to further their agenda, baseball owners will ALWAYS define “large market” as being “a team that is winning” That way you can always make the circular argument “Look! All the winning teams are large markets!” which of course is just saying “all winning teams are winning teams.” I remember sportswriters in 1995 saying Cincinnati was a large market. (!) It’s hilariously illogical but it scored PR points. If you define a large market team in a meaningful fashion - “a team with a larger potential for revenue than the average team as a result of the size of the local market” - you will find that the connection between market size and success is tenuous at best. I’d actually say that large markets DO have a slight advantage, but no mroe so than they ever have since 1901, and maybe even less, since baseball now has structures in place for drafting amateurs.
RickJay,
Again you fail to come to grips with my posts. I’ll try an even more simplified paraphrasing to make it clear.
ME: Some aren’t fans of losing teams because they believe they can’t win.
YOU: Fans of losing teams believe they can win.
Hopefully the bolding will help you understand that we aren’t talking about the same thing.
As for the StL Browns, I’ve conceded that their fans didn’t think they could win. How does this affect my point exactly? Again note that I am not talking about fans. Rather I am discussing potential fans. I’ll also concede that potential fans were turned away by the perception that the Browns couldn’t win. So what? As described here the financial problems seemed localized. Why would people in other cities with teams that didn’t have those particluar financial difficulties believe those teams couldn’t win? What does this have to do with the small revenue teams of today? It seems to me that you are in a big hurry to negate the point that you aren’t looking at the big picture. I read over the Senate Testimony I remembered. It turns out I misremembered. Mr Costas’ statements only touch upon the point I attributed directly to him. This paragraph seems to fit here though:
It really is just my 2sense ( damn my untrustworthy memory )
Don’t know why that link didn’t work. C&Ping the following URL gets me to the page:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/useftp.cgi?IPaddress=162.140.64.21&filename=74416.wais&directory=/diskb/wais/data/106_senate_hearings
That didn’t work either. Now I’m at a loss.
I see, so now we have to find people who aren’t fans at all but who would be if the imaginary barrier to success was removed.
Show them to me. Let’s see some evidence. Today’s reality doesn’t support Bob Costas’s claims.
Then it would appear your initial point was in error, anyway, so my counter to it hardly matters.
And I would argue that that is exactly the case today, absent contraction. Small market teams can win. The fans know it. Fan support is going up, not down. I see no evidence that there is a huge base of disaffected people who refuse to become fans because their local team is systemically prevented from winning.
It depends on the design, of course (and the cost of the land). According to http://www.ballparks.com, Enron Field in Houston was a relative steal, coming in at only $250 million. Safeco Field in Seattle cost more than half a billion bucks. All the other new domes built in the last ten years fell in somewhere between those two extremes. (And Minneapolis needs a dome.)
(NOTE: Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg cost a mere $138 million in 1990, but the Devil Rays did not play there until 1998 after $70 million was spent on renovations. However, the Trop has all the character and charm of a shopping mall.)
No proposals for Minnesota have included a dome. In fact, outdoor is a very important feature of these stadiums. The original stadium plan had a retractible roof, but not one that would keep freezing tempertures (or 100 and humid) out. It was estimated at (IIRC) $450M. Current proposals do not have the roof and come in around $250M.
We (apparently) hate our dome and (apparently) love outdoor baseball. And outdoor park will (supposedly) draw more fans than the dome even in April (brrrrr!) or late September (brrrrr!) or in the rain or in 100 and humid.
Hey, if the St. Paul Saints were outselling the Twins (and they were in 1997 and 1998 for at least a couple games), must be the stadium, right? Probably not the cheap beer, loud music, tailgating, pig on the field, massage and haircuts in the stands, hometown (hey, St. Paul gets a team!) support and horrible (but league winning) baseball played by the Saints.
I don´t know anything about baseball but this thread reminded me of an interesting article in Slate about the NFLs salary cap. It is an economists view of how it works (and doesn´t work). I hope it helps the debate.
http://slate.msn.com/?id=84859
/Coil
**
Recently on SportsCenter, ESPN showed the revenue statistics for the 5 lowest teams in MLB. The Twins made apporximately $58 million last year. Their payroll was $18 million. Even if the $20 million in luxury tax is applied to that, the Twins still made $20 million! I don’t care how much money the Yankees make, $20 million is a LOT of money.