| Baseball Business |
October
2002 |
Twins' Success Shames Owners
The game of baseball is a thing of beauty, played all over the world, and beloved by boys and girls just before they discover the opposite sex. The business of baseball is an ugly thing run by greedy people who claim to love the game, but who are, in fact, just lousy business men.
Take the case of the Minnesota Twins. Just a couple of months ago, they were candidates for "contraction," a euphemism meaning dissolution, as were the Montreal Expos. Why? Well, said the owners of baseball, the Twins weren't making money in the relatively small market of Minnesota, and therefore, couldn't compete with teams with far deeper pockets like the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Constantly outbid by richer teams for talent, there was no way for them to win and become profitable.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the World Series. The Twins won their division, and survived the first round of the play-offs against the Oakland A's (another small market team that allegedly can't compete). Meanwhile, the Yankees bowed out in three straight games.
What happened? It seems that expensive players do not equal quality teams and on-field success. Yet the fans are only interested in the latter. Winning is what sells tickets, T-shirts and loyalty. If the Twins win the World Series, and if that franchise really is losing money, then the only reasonable conclusion is that the owner is incompetent. If so, he should be fired.