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Out of Left Field |
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 JASON GIAMBI ...from A's to Yanks for $17 million a year |
New York teams aren't eager
to share the wealth either
By STAN ISAACS
of TheColumnists.com
The spirit of Calvin Coolidge hovers over the Yankees
and Mets. Coolidge’s notorious comment, “The business
of America is business” echoed in press conferences at Yankee
Stadium and Shea Stadium as the fatcat Yankees and Mets unveiled
new acquisitions, the best that money can buy.
The Yankees wrestled Jason Giambi from the Oakland Athletics,
heaping more than $17 million a year upon him for seven years.
The Mets enriched their lineup with Roberto Alomar, Roger Cedeno
and Shawn Estes. New York Times columnist George Vecsey found
the good cheer at the Yankee conference to unveil the Giambi
deal so distasteful, that he wrote, “There is a reek of
obscenity in the cable television money the Yankees and Mets
are spending on players.” No hometown shill is he.
Mets general manager Steve Phillips expressed pleasure with the
large press turnout that greeted the introduction of Alomar,
Cedeno and a few others. When he was asked if he was at all concerned
about the charge that the Mets and Yankees had an unfair advantage
over most of the other teams because they enjoyed so much more
lucrative television contracts, Phillips said, “It’s
business. We play by the rules. I don’t feel bad about it,
nor should the Yankees, either.”
The rules, of course, favor the Mets and Yankees. Or at least
no fair rules have been put in play that would even the playing
field. Because the Yankees and Mets are in the most populous
markets, they command the most local TV money, which, in these
days, means cable TV money. There is equal sharing of the national
TV contract money, but that is a spit in the bucket compared
to the local TV money that goes to the teams in the biggest population
areas.
Compare baseball to pro football. The National Football League’s
largest pot of money comes from national TV contracts. By an
arrangement agreed on a long time ago, all pro football teams
share equally in those billions of dollars. This, of course,
allows a small market team like Green Bay to compete with a big
market team like the Giants, who play in a New Jersey stadium
but see themselves as representatives of the entire New York
metropolitan area.
If baseball teams were willing to share equally their television
money--meaning the bulk of the money that comes from local TV--it
would enable small market teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates to
compete on a more even basis with the Yankees. The Pirates lost
Barry Bonds, among others, to free agency because they couldn’t
pay him. As did the Oaklands with Giambi.
In baseball, the Pirates are the equivalent of Green Bay, but
they have no chance to compete well in the long run against the
Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers or Chicago Cubs, all huge TV revenue
teams. The Pirates lose money and, if you can believe baseball
commissioner Bud Selig, almost all the teams lose money.
That probably is worth a huge horselaugh, because franchises
keep being bought for humongous sums. But the logical answer
to the disparity in baseball is to share TV money equally.
The big teams are adamant about not doing that. Consider the
bleat of Mets co-owner Nelson Doubleday, a man born into the
Doubleday publishing fortune. Doubleday says he paid much more
for the Mets than the owners of the small market teams like Montreal
and Kansas City so he is entitled to a larger share of TV revenue.
The pro football people have a wider vision that that. The newcomers
who buy the teams in the larger-size markets don’t insist
that they should receive a larger share of the TV pot. They go
along with the original large-market teams who went along with
the concept of equal money for all, because all benefit in the
long run.
The Yankees have completed their orgy of acquisitions for the
next season. The Mets have a hole in their lineup and are looking
over their bankbook to see how much they can shell out for a
slugger like Juan Gonzalez. It’s business.
The Times’ Vecsey said he thought about old franchises like
Cincinnati and new ones like Kansas City, “with great baseball
traditions that cannot keep up. In the Bronx they were gushing
over their gaudy new presents. Somehow I had a case of the holiday
blues.”
Giuliani
Redux
There is need for a keen reappraisal of New York mayor Rudy Giuliani,
the sensation of the nation for his manly stewardship of New
York after the tragedy of Sept. 11--the man who should have been
named the next baseball commissioner. With New York suffering
in many sectors, Giuliani is justifying a new budget that would
make cuts in many social services that help the needy and the
old, but would allot millions to help build new ball parks for
the Yankees and Mets. The devil himself must be chortling about
Giuliani justifying loading money onto the Yankees the day after
they had heaped $119 million on a baseball player.
© 2001 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©
2001 by Jim Hummel.
You
can comment on this column or contact Stan Isaacs with an email
to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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