Baseball Is Not <i> That</i> Resilient

All right, Miss Blue Eyes, get out the fax machine and let’s send one, a New Year’s greeting to Bud Selig. What? Oh, he’s the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, the interim commissioner, he’s kind of in charge of baseball right now--if anyone can be said to be in charge. Address it personal, but not confidential.

“Dear Mr. Selig:

“We don’t know each other, but I like to think we have something in common: We both love baseball.

“It’s on that subject I’m addressing you.

“Baseball is the most resilient of games. Not even a fixed World Series could kill it. It’s also the most traditional of games. It is handed down from grandfather to son to grandson. It is an heirloom sport. It is more of a family game than any other. Most of us saw our first sporting event with our fathers in a baseball park. Football, basketball, tennis, hockey--no other sport can make that claim.

“It’s always been a bonding sport. And I don’t mean only male. No other sport holds the generations together the way baseball does.

“I get the feeling all that’s in jeopardy.

“I don’t know what you guys are doing to my game. But, whatever it is, stop it.

“Lots of things you can’t help. Runaway free agency, for instance. When that first came in, lots of people predicted it would be the ruin of baseball. It wasn’t.

“But because it hasn’t yet, doesn’t mean it won’t.

“The whole thrust of baseball used to be--and is--fan identification. My-town-can-beat-your-town. My-players-are-better-than-your-players. The distinction is blurred. I mean, who is Jack Morris’ team or town? The town that wins the World Series is the town that has Jack Morris last.

“The fans are confused. The players aren’t, so to speak, ours anymore. They’re them. A player is a corporation, not an individual. Babe Ruth was the Yankees. Stan Musial was St. Louis. Reggie Jackson will make the Hall of Fame this year, but where is he from? Oakland? Baltimore? The Yankees? The Angels? The Toronto Blue Jays won the championship of all baseball last year. But who is the hometown hero? Jack Morris? He won the championship for Minnesota the year before and for Detroit a few years before that. David Cone? He was pitching for the New York Mets as late as August. Dave Winfield? He was with the Angels the year before. He’s with Minnesota now.

“These aren’t heroes, they’re just migratory workers.

“They said, under free agency, the rich would get richer. It hasn’t happened. Yet. But how would you like to be the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates? In the last couple of years, you have lost Bobby Bonilla, Barry Bonds, Doug Drabek and John Smiley, to say nothing of Sid Bream and Jose Lind. How long do you think you can hold onto an Andy Van Slyke?

“What do you do about it? Simple. You do what football does. You share the revenue. You don’t sit idly by while the Yankees gross $90 million a year from outside revenue while the Seattle Mariners and Pittsburgh Pirates gross $36 million. The have-nots could hold their players in the old days of the reserve clause. They can’t anymore.

“Why should the Yankees split their take in a major market with teams in lesser markets? Easy. They need the Seattle Mariners and the Milwaukee Brewers as much as these teams need them. They can’t make money playing intrasquad games.

“Baseball’s fan base is eroding. I don’t know whose fault this is, but baseball can no longer count on the orderly progression of fan interest from father to son. Your own mouthpiece, Dick Ravitch, said the other day that ‘the population is changing. The new population has demonstrated no interest in baseball.’

“Basketball is their sport of choice. Followed by football. They did not ingest a love of baseball with their father’s beer. They have to be enticed into it.

“An old familiar litany is creeping into the discussions of the game of baseball. It is too slow, too old-fashioned, too sedate. It has no slam dunks, no Air Jordans, no violence. People want snuff movies, not leisurely, stately musicals.

“We’ve heard this before, but this time the signs were on the wall. The television ratings for the World Series were down 11%. The networks, who had tossed $1.8 billion in the pot for the televised rights to baseball, reported they had taken a bath. “Monday Night Football” was alive and well, but World Series games that started at 10 minutes to 9 were having trouble holding off Roseanne Arnold.

“Owners cry they are losing their shirts. Then, guys who bought teams for $10 million a few years ago are selling them for $100 million today. The game charges new franchises $95 million merely for the license. Players cost extra. The average salary in the game is $1 million. Baseball doled out contracts totaling $230 million to 36 free agents in one weekend at Louisville this fall.

“Still, the facts are, 18 of the 26 teams showed attendance losses. The product isn’t selling in some places.

“The union, of course, scoffs at the management laments, citing insincere ‘poor mouthing.’ But that’s gamesmanship. I suspect the buggy whip local thought the carriage trade was lying to it at the turn of the century, too.

“A salary cap would seem to be a good answer to this. Like Hollywood celebrities, ballplayers would have to demonstrate their worth at the box office. It works for basketball. For a stated cut of the pot distributed in salaries, the athletes put a lid on salaries. It might save the golden goose at the expense of the eggs.

“Arbitration is a joke. Normally, it’s a question of whether the player will get the 60% raise or 100%. Either way, ownership loses.

“The pay scale is obscene. But it always has been. Still, it’s hard to swallow. You think an astrophysicist out of work and living in a trailer wants to read about a high school dropout signing for $40 million? Or the guy struggling with a 9-to-5 job in a car wash wants to read about a seven-time loser to drug addiction who signs for $4.2 million, a 250% increase in salary? If cocaine can do that for you, where can you get some?

“You can see the game has big troubles. And a lot of it because it doesn’t have a commissioner. Every sport needs a commissioner with broad powers. Look at what happened to sports that didn’t have one--boxing, horse racing, tennis.

“The unceremonious unloading of the commissioner was as unpretty a sight as the game has ever visited on its public. I mean, if you want a lackey or a commissioner who, when he talks, you can see Jerry Reinsdorf’s lips move, just get one you can put in a trunk overnight.

“Obviously, owners don’t know what’s good for the game. They should get someone who does. A commissioner should be a buffer between the fans and the owners. They should hire someone with clout to save the game for them--or from them.

“If he can put in a salary cap, stop the migration, give the players a 50 or 60% stake, they will, in effect, become part of management. Maybe they will do something for the game. Like promote it, give autographs some place besides a $20,000 card show. He can remind the players that their sport owes its very existence to the fans and the media and that, without them, it would return to its sandlot origins with an audience of friends and families of the players.

“How does baseball respond to all this? It threatens a lockout for this spring. Exactly what the republic needs. A labor war between competing groups of millionaires. Cobwebs on the turnstiles.

“The game’s image is badly tarnished. It needs imaginative work. Instead of ‘Take Me Out To the Ball Game, I Don’t Care If I Never Come Back,’ the national pastime’s anthem might be, ‘Take The Old Ball Game, I Don’t Care If It Never Comes Back.’ ”