Baseball’s Rich-Poor Gap Grows

WASHINGTON — For those who scream that baseball has been divided down the middle into haves and have nots, these are wonderful days to gloat. Because they’re right.

The Orioles are a perfect example. In the past two months, they’ve made almost every slapstick front-office mistake imaginable. Yet, in the end, because their owner was willing to pay players almost any amount to save face, they’ve ended up with a presentable team and a plausible future. The Orioles have proved that, for an $80 million payroll, you can buy 80 wins.

For $65 million, they got Albert Belle, in whom almost no one else was interested at such prices. For $11 million and $12 million, respectively, they added Will Clark and Delino DeShields, of whom exactly the same can be said. For $16 million, B.J. Surhoff returned. For each, only one other team was bidding. Yet, the Orioles made the proper, though transparently desperate, decisions. Money prevented disaster.

The Orioles bought time. Now, they have a year or two for young players such as Calvin Pickering, Jerry Hairston and Ryan Minor to reach the majors. Until then, they should continue to thrive at the gate (come see Albert hit his 50 homers). That provides more money for more free agents next winter. Being rich means never having to admit you were a total rockhead. The ol’ master plan just got fuzzy there for a while, right?

No more valid criticism of baseball exists than the charge that teams can buy their way out of their blunders. At least the Orioles have company. So far this offseason, the first 30 players to sign contracts got raises of $65 million -- more than $2 million per year for each player, according to SportsBusiness Journal.

Of those raises, 75 percent were accounted for by just nine of the game’s 30 teams -- the Angels, Braves, Cards, D’backs, Mets, Orioles, Rangers, Rockies and Yankees. About seven other teams -- the Astros, Cubs, Indians, Red Sox, Padres, Giants and Mariners -- can still pay the freight in the money wars or will soon be able to with newly built ballparks.

However, that still leaves at least a dozen franchises that have to pick their spots to re-sign just one or two name players, the way the Reds clinge to Barry Larkin. Fans in Milwaukee, Montreal and Philadelphia know they can practically count the days until their bona fide young sluggers -- Jeromy Burnitz, Vladimir Guerrero and Scott Rolen -- get seduced away by the haves.

The bad news is that only 15 or so teams have a chance to dream of constructing a scheme that might, within two or three years, produce a world title. The good news? When half the teams in a sport can fantasize on a grand scale, that’s a lot of teams. Remember, baseball used to have a club, named the Yankees, with a habit of running off several effortless world titles in a row. The game’s imbalances have been much worse and for longer periods of time.

In its current state, baseball offers the potential for truly monumental regular-season battles between powerhouse teams. Three National League playoff teams had more than 100 wins last year. However, in the offseason, those same behemoths have a perfect stage for farce as they try not to get left behind in the free agent signings.

This winter, the biggest laughs have been going to the Red Sox, who lost Mo Vaughn, then couldn’t sign Bernie Williams, Rafael Palmeiro or Will Clark, and to the Dodgers, too. If Los Angeles doesn’t win the Kevin Brown free-agent derby, then new GM Kevin Malone will hear so many screams from the Murdoch brass he’ll think working for Peter Angelos was like being on a Prozac drip.

Still, for fresh day-in and day-out installments of Lifestyles of the Rich and Clueless, the Orioles may have provided the most entertainment.

After Baltimore had subtracted Palmeiro, Roberto Alomar, Eric Davis, Armando Benitez, Jimmy Key and Alan Mills while adding Albert Belle, Clark, Charles Johnson, DeShields and Mike Timlin, new general manager Frank Wren said, “(Last season) there was a somewhat lackadaisical approach at times. ... The changes we’ve made, they were planned and calculated to change the makeup of the club and the makeup of the clubhouse.”

Planned and calculated? In the same sense, perhaps, that Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow was planned and calculated?

The Orioles’ management style is best illustrated by the Palmeiro case. During the season, they didn’t want him. Except, occasionally, when they showed flurries of interest. After the season, when they dreamed of signing Brian Jordan, they actually came out and said there was little chance Palmeiro would be back. After Jordan became a Brave, the Orioles suddenly fell in love with Palmeiro again. In the end, they convinced themselves they’d sign him. When they realized they wouldn’t get him, they turned to Robin Ventura, but he signed with the Mets. As a result, the Orioles had to grab Clark to bat cleanup. Over the last seven seasons, he’s averaged 15 homers -- two more than Mike Bordick hit last year.

Here’s the kicker. After Palmeiro left, the Orioles blamed him for changing his mind! For six months, the Orioles couldn’t keep their story straight to Palmeiro for two weeks at a time. But he’s the ingrate.

“He blindsided us,” said Wren.

One of the Orioles’ biggest problem in recent years has been that owner Peter Angelos has more fabulous, fascinating, challenging, complex projects on his desk than Hercules could handle if he’d studied “The 30 Minute Manager.”

Angelos just earned several hundred million dollars for his firm’s part in the big-tobacco settlement. That alone constitutes a life work. But he’s also running the Orioles, tending to his race horses and his new farm, fiddling in politics and even planning a $150 million hotel near the Inner Harbor.

Anything else? Oh, nearly forgot. He’s going to buy the Redskins.

If he succeeds, the biggest nightmare wouldn’t be his decisions. It would getting him to find time to make decisions. Yet, in the end, indecision is a form of choice. As the Orioles have discovered.

That’s when it’s nice to have a big wallet. Thanks to Angelos, the human ATM, the Orioles should be no worse than last season and perhaps a bit better.

Maybe paying up is just another way of saying you’re sorry.