World Series: who should get the trophy?

Great Debates
1

Those who have participated in my thread on the Two-Minute Warning in football will know that i like to rant about certain aspects of american sports that infuriate me. Well, here’s another one.

The Arizona Diamondbacks have just won the World Series (thank the fucking lord that the Yankees lost). Now i know that US sports is dominated by money and by egomaniacal team owners to an extent not seen elsewhere, but i am still astounded by the fact that these guys have played about 200 games of baseball through the summer in order to win the title, and the trophy then gets presented to some fat bastard in a suit.

Even if these owners are, on some level, essential for the existence of professional sports, can’t we at least leave them in the background when the victory honours are handed out? Everywhere else in the world, the captain of the winning team gets to collect the prize - anyone who has seen the victorious FA Cup soccer team walk up the steps at Wembley knows what a trophy presentation should look like.

2

The fat bastard paid a lot of money to buy into the league, get a stadium built, and and a lot of money to put together the team, and to bring ML Baseball to the city of Phoenix. He is the captain of that ship. He should be the 1st to hold the trophy.

3

There’s no particular reason that HAS to be the case, but the World Series trophy looks sort of fragile to me, I wouldn’t want it passed around anyway.

Now the Stanley Cup, that’s a trophy you can toss around. Apparently it ended up at the bottom of Mario Lemieux’s swimming pool once.

4

The Stanley Cup has been everywhere imaginable. One guy bathed his infant in it. I think some guys from the Rangers threw it in the Hudson river. Way back when, some guys left it on the side of the road and forgot about it for a few hours and had to go back and get it.

5

spooje wrote:

Oh, and of course he did all that as a pure labour of love, and with no consideration for the revenue that a professional baseball team might generate.

Also, if the trend in other cities was followed in Phoenix, the owner probably received huge subsidies and tax breaks from the city and/or state. If this did happen, then the citizens of Phoenix and/or Arizona have a considerable claim to some ownership of the team.

I’m sorry, but i can’t share your starry-eyed adulation for the super-rich. Not that i cry too many tears for multi-millionaire baseballers either, but they are the ones on the field and should be the ones holding the trophy.

The treatment meted out to the Stanley Cup, and the way the players carry it around the ice, is much more in keeping with the spirit of sports. Maybe that reflects hockey’s Canadan origins? Or maybe is just shows that hockey players are as violent with their trophies as they are with each other. Hockey rules, IMHO.

6

If you spent several hundred million of your own dollars, you wouldn’t be looking for help from the city to keep the business and team viable, would you?

Were you to go the additional mile and buy the best talent at enormous cost and be lucky enough to actually win the series, you wouldn’t be interested in holding the trophy, would you?

And your parents probably won’t want to take a look at your diploma after commencement…

will they?

7

I guess that was a crappy analogy since it is given to you but I have no problem with the owner being presented the prize first. Seems like it’s pretty much shared throughout the clubhouse afterwards. Seriously, what did you expect?

8

I always thought it was similar to who received the Best Picture award at the Oscars. The producers are the ones who hired everyone associated with the picture so they deserve that special recognition. A baseball club owner, more than anyone else, is the one person who puts a championship organization together.

9

Is there only one World Series trophy, passed from team to team each year? I would think there would be a duplicate trophy, or at least a plaque, that the winning team would get to keep and display to document that year’s achievement.

10

Yes, the fans should get “a piece” too.

When the Ravens won the super bowl and flew back to town, Brian Billig carried the Lombardi trophy off the plane and walked around to fans waiting at the airport. He held it out so fans could touch the trophy. (He never let go of it.) He said that the fans deserved, at least, the opportunity to see it up close and touch it. Nice touch.

11

Indeed, Spritle. Remember too, the last time the Packers won the Superbowl, with Reggie White jogging the trophy around the stadium for the fans to touch.

Now contrast that with the last time the Cowboys won, with Jerry Jones actually jerking the trophy out of Barry Switzer’s hands, and the players not being allowed to come near it.

I know which team I felt prouder of, and not just because I’m from Wisconsin. We’re out there cheering for the team, not the owner.

12

Profit may have been his motivation, but don’t forget the risk invovlved. As the owner of the Montreal Expos will tell you, you can lose a ton of money in professional baseball. The players get paid regardless.

Well it ain’t their trophy. It belongs to the owner to do with as he pleases, as far as I know. What are you, a communist?

No, sorry. In football and basketball, the trophy usually gets passed around a bit. As far as I can tell, it has to do with the fact that the MLB trophy is very fragile (as has been mentioned). The Lombardi Trophy (NFL) is just a solid hunk of metal – short of slamming it into a concrete wall or tossing it into a pit of lava, there isn’t much a player can do to it. The MLB trophy, OTOH, clearly isn’t designed for hoisting or hugging. It was designed for sitting quietly on pedestals.

13

Wow, that’s a gripping argument. I, for one, am thoroughly convinced.

14

Apparently, Dumbguy is unfamiliar with “humor.”

The throw-away joke at the end aside, what’s wrong with the statement?

15

mhendo wrote:

You’re just jealous.

16

Nope, there’s a new one each year. In fact, they seem to have updated the design of late. I know that the '85 trophy at Royal’s stadium appears to be about 18-24" in diameter, gold/bronze in color, and has a flag/pennant for each team around the base. The one presented to Arizona’s owner seemed to be more silver in color, and there was a metal ribbon/banner wrapped around the mini-flags positioned around the base. It was also much smaller in diameter (about 12"), and much taller.

17

Well, it seems as if i’m outnumbered a bit, so maybe presenting the trophy to the owner is what the majority of fans actually want to see. Given the fact that this is largely an issue of personal preference, and that there doesn’t actually seem to be much of a way to determine what is right, maybe i should have put the OP on the IMHO board.

I do have a couple of other observations to make, though.

VarlosZ wrote:

No, more of a libertarian socialist actually. My whole OP is based on the premise that money plays too much of a part in sports at every level. Now, i know that this might be inevitable, but it seems to me that the fans often get shortchanged as a result (see the thread that i linked to in the OP if you want to see my pinion on this).

I’ve only been in the US for a year, and am still learning about American sporting teams, but from what i’ve heard the closest thing to my ideal in this country is the Green Bay Packers. A friend told me that the team is owned by the people of Green Bay in some sort of public ownership arrangement organised through the city or the state. Is this true? Does anyone out there know exactly what the situation is with the Packers?

And i don’t deny that the trophy belongs to the owner. I just wonder whether it might not show a certain respect for the sport and for the fans to allow the players to collect it on the night of victory. The owner can hold it whenever he wants to after that.

And this relates to the broader argument some people have made about the business nature of the owner’s involvement. Sure, it’s possible to lose money in baseball ownership, like in any other business venture. Such ventures always involve a certain amount of risk. But if, as some have done, we start looking at this only as an economic issue, then surely some of my other criticisms become relevant.

For example, lieu wrote:

Well, if you adopt the free market approach taken by some on this board, then why should the city be expected to kick in? Surely, if you’re a free marketeer, you should not make your business decisions based on the availability of (local or state) government subsidies. As i said before, if the city does pony up a huge chunk of change and generous tax breaks, as often happens, then the citizens (taxpayers) have a proportional claim to part-ownership of the team.

It just seems to me that if people are going to defend the owners’ claim on the trophy purely by virtue of economic involvement in (i.e. ownership of) the team, then why not ask the owner to do what capitalists (and i mean large scale and small shareholders alike) generally do - take the profit or loss, and leave the running of the business to those they have selected for the job?

And if you want to now argue that many owners are also in it for the love of and respect for the game, then maybe they would show it a bit more if they let the players take credit for the victories.

I realise this is probably not going to convince anyone who doesn’t already agree with me, but it’s my two cents’ worth.

18

*Originally posted by mhendo *

Wrong. It’s not that we want that to be the case, we’re simply realists. It’s not a perfect wide wide world.

19

Well, he certainly borrowed a lot of money, anyway. I’m indifferent as to his celebratory role, however.