Sorry, Boss, You Can’t Say No to This One

Headline: “Players’ Union Files Suit Against Baseball Owners, Charges ‘Conspiracy’ Against Signing Free Agents.” We take you now to the offices of Moe Gull, beer and shipping magnate and principal owner of the New York Junkers major league baseball franchise. As we look in, the team’s attorney, F. Plea Bargain, whose nickname in the legal community is Overruled, is approaching.

F. Plea: Boss, we have a big problem. You know those $30-million worth of free agents you didn’t sign this year? Well, you may have broken the law.

Moe Gull: There’s a law that says Moe Gull has to give away his money?

F. Plea: There’s a law that says you can’t collude with other owners for a common deceitful purpose.

Moe Gull: Collude? I wouldn’t have lunch with those thieves! What do they mean, collude?

F. Plea: It means you got together and decided no one would bid on a free agent.

Moe Gull: No one would bid on a free agent? I got $60-million worth of free agents. I got free agents I’m paying through the year 2036. And we still finish sixth. I’ve got free agents I’m paying millions to who haven’t thrown or caught a ball in years. I got one free agent I gave my children’s birthright to who tore his rotation cuff and is now living down in Florida in condos he bought by the gross. I ask myself why I didn’t buy condos in Florida instead. All I got out of him was hospital bills.

F. Plea: That’s just the point, boss. The fact that you did it then and don’t do it now is prima facie evidence of collusion.

Moe Gull: Stop with that hic-haec-hoc business. Who do you think you’re talking to, Cicero? Talk English! What do these guys mean, collusion? Don’t they check the standings? Don’t they read batting averages? How many high-priced free agents were in last year’s World Series? Did a free agent win the batting championship? The Cy Young Award? Do they ever?

F. Plea: The players’ association says that’s irrelevant. They say the commissioner of baseball organized an illegal agreement to stop signing free agents.

Moe Gull: The commissioner of baseball told us 21 of the 26 franchises were losing money. What is that, classified information? What are we running here, a business or a society for making .500 pitchers independently wealthy? Have we got an obligation to put banjo hitters in Rolls-Royces? You know how many beer trucks I could have bought for what a sore-armed relief pitcher cost me last year? Last year, hell, the next 20 years!

F. Plea: The players’ committee points out that, of 63 free agents, only five were signed by teams not their own. That smacks of conspiracy.

Moe Gull: That smacks of common sense. You look down that list of free agents? That’s the oldest body of men this side of the House of Lords. Some of those guys couldn’t play at the office picnic. What are we, Medicare?

F. Plea: The union will want to award damages to any free agent who has been passed over in any collusive action.

Moe Gull: How about awarding damages to any owner who signed a guy who couldn’t get a third strike past Helen Keller and is now in the swimming-pool business in Nevada? And still getting paid? How about indemnifying an owner whose first-string lineup was in the penitentiary on opening day?

F. Plea: But that’s not a response to their grievance. We have to address the absence of high-dollar offers this year.

Moe Gull: Tell ‘em Babe Ruth only made $80,000 in the best year he ever had--and he hit 60 home runs and batted .356 and his team won the World Series in four-straight that year. Tell ‘em Ty Cobb never went to free agency. Tell ‘em making a 25-year-old secure for life never made a Hall of Fame player yet. Tell ‘em to tell me where it says in the Constitution I got to throw my money off the back of trains.

F. Plea: You’re missing the point.

Moe Gull: I’m missing the point! All I’m missing is the poorhouse. Tell me, does it say in the Constitution I have an obligation to agents, too? They get their money and never hit a home run or pitch a shutout. Come to think of it, neither do their clients half the time.

F. Plea: We just have to face up to the new realities.

Moe Gull: And one of the new realities is that throwing suitcases full of money at free agents is killing baseball. We should be spending the money on farm systems, renewing the sport, filling the pipelines with tomorrow’s greats, but we don’t dare because if we spend a lot of time and money on a kid and he becomes a star, we lose him to some moneybags owner who buys the product that we developed. We end up with nothing.

F. Plea: Still doesn’t answer the charges of collusion and conspiracy.

Moe Gull: Look, I’ll show you collusion and conspiracy. Just put Dwight Gooden on the open market and 26 owners will conspire to kill each other to get him. But don’t tell me 26 otherwise sound businessmen have to conspire not to buy any more overage, overrated ballplayers, guys who can’t hit, throw or catch a curveball any more. Owners are free agents, too. One of the rights we have is to spend our own money any damn way we see fit. It used to be a fundamental right in this country. If they’re going to start forcing people to buy something they don’t want or need, I’m getting out of baseball and opening up a used car lot.