THE FINANCIAL POLITICS OF REVENUE SHARING
What is the purpose of a bureaucracy? To sustain and maintain the bureaucracy. Nothing more. Nothing less. It is a structure that is built solely for the purpose that all may prosper in equal measure. Major league baseball has become such a bureaucracy.
It is, in effect, a self-contained monopoly with money as its sole reason for being, and the membership has very quietly and deliberately orchestrated dealings that seem to be random and unconnected, but are in fact, a carefully disguised and elaborate series of manipulations of their marketplace that is designed solely for mutual enrichment of the membership and not about winning.
Success and winning is a product that must, in this particular bureaucracy, be distributed like so much scattered bird seed. It is a conspiracy in which no one member of this very exclusive club has any advantage over another and competition is a quality to be frowned upon.
There
may be the appearance of competition, especially during the regular season, but
in the end, there are subtle and ongoing manipulations that determine on a
rotating basis who will have hope of winning and hope is one of the key
elements of this charade. At its core is the principal of revenue sharing.
We
all remember the Yankees teams from the 1995 through 2000 that won four of the
six World Series and two of those were clean sweeps. They Yankees were dominant.
This was bad for business.
During those five seasons in the late 1990s, none of
the 14 teams in the bottom half of payroll spending won even one of the 158
postseason games played. Every World Series was won by a team with one of the
top seven payrolls. This was also bad for business.
While I won’t get into the details of how disastrous
this has been for the Yankees, who are only a minor cog in the greater realm of
major league baseball, I will go so far as to suggest that revenue sharing has
destroyed any chance of the Yankees ever being the dominant team we enjoy from
our collective history. Those days are over, and the Yankees ownership is
actively complicit in this conspiracy to make money for all, owners and players
alike. They are all participants in this annual fraud.
Consider this: the Astros tanked for nearly a decade and were rewarded with a championship in spite of the common public knowledge that they were deliberately losing for the sole purpose of acquiring higher draft picks. What allowed them to do this was revenue sharing. While they were losing, revenue sharing was the device that allowed them remain profitable.
The
Orioles are next in line. Kansas City has already had their championship, as
the Cubs have had theirs (and god knows they waited long enough for it). Now,
each of those franchises has a history to be proud of. This success-sharing is good for business. On
the other hand, there are franchises that are led by the perennially inept owner/management
teams, such as those in Pittsburgh, and Anaheim, for example, that will live in
the basement while lining their pockets with revenue-sharing cash. Revenue
sharing has removed any incentive for many teams to even attempt to win, and
winning, as I said earlier, is no longer a prize to be coveted.
Now for the Yankees. This particular Steinbrenner is a
member of the boy’s club and he has been generous in propping up the club – and
by club I mean the MLB club, not the Yankees club. He is less interested in the
Yankees on-field success than in ensuring that MLB remain profitable and by
extension, his own private profitability. He defines success by a different
metric. For, as long as the Yankees APPEAR competitive, he will remain
profitable and thereby increase the value of his franchise. The Yankees have
become a franchise in the same way that he would own a McDonalds franchise.
There is just no way the Yankees burger is going to be any better than a
Pittsburgh burger but it will be proportionally more profitable, and turning
out a profit is his measure of success.
Steinbrenner has aided and abetted this criminal
conspiracy in many ways:
They Yankees absorbed the contract of Giancarlo
Stanton, thus allowing Miami to become profitable in the wake of their sale.
You know why Jeter resigned? He wanted to win while the other owners only
wanted to remain profitable. Derek Jeter will never be a welcome and satisfied
member of the MLB boys club because he has a competitive fire in him that is
inconsistent with the goal of mutual profitability.
I would even go so far as to suggest the Yankees
absorbed A-Rod’s contract so that the Rangers could remain profitable, and I
believe, since the dawn of the century that the Yankees have been in collusion
with all the other owners and the players union to make MLB profitable and none
have any interest in winning. Competition is a thing to be frowned upon.
The Yankees absorbed Josh Donaldson’s contract so that
the Twins could sign Carlos Correa. I have no doubt that many other similar
dealings in the past twenty years can be attributed to this strategy. The
Yankees financial muscle has been used in this century as leverage to spread
the wealth among the thirty franchises in MLB and Steinbrenner has tacitly
agreed to this arrangement as long as the Yankees APPEAR to be a constantly
dominant and winning team. Appearances
are everything. It is very good for business.
To Yankees fans everywhere, it is maddening to see how
a once mighty team that currently sells itself as a “championship-caliber team”
is nothing more than a chimera. They see through the distant haze of history
that these once mighty pinstripes are nothing more than prison bars that
obscure the one simple fact of life for them today: it was the dominance of a
team in the nineties (that did nothing but consistently win at the highest
level) that has created the successful mediocrity that confronts them today.
The days of the New York Yankees being a force to be reckoned with are over,
having given way to the commonplace motivation of profit brought about by
revenue sharing. The desire for profitability has ruined the Yankees forever.
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13 comments:
Extremely well said, and 100 percent on point, Duque.
I implore you to send this in to the NY Times or the Washington Post as a " Letter to the Editor" or, if you have any pull, as a guest editorial!
It was written by Dick Allen and well written at that.
One would think that the other teams would show their thanks by tossing the Yankees a bone or a WS Trophy every once in a while.
Ah, yes, Doug.....I didn't see the attribution. Thanks for the clarification!
Dick, see above, LOL.
I largely agree with you, Richie "Call me Dick" Allen. I am no fan of cartels, or parity, as some of you may have noticed.
BUT...I would say that the revenue-sharing arrangements do not NECESSARILY relegate the Yankees to not trying their utmost to win. I think it's also the particular attitude of HAL, the bloodless computer at the head of the franchise.
Ironically, we see an alternative in the Mets' new owner, your standard, Wall Street scoundrel...but a man who wants to put his ill-gotten gains to work for the simple joy of winning.
Unfortunately, none of us are so young that we will ever see the Steinbrenner family divest themselves of our favorite ball club. But unlike teams in smaller markets, there are many, many, many other entertainment venues in NYC. A winning Mets team—and, who knows, maybe even winning Rangers, Giants, and Knicks teams (I know, I know, farfetched. But still!) could throw off HAL's careful calculations to the point where he is FORCED to really compete, in order to get back to a profitable metric.
Hey—stranger things have happened!
I am still waiting to hear that Judge and Rizzo will be donate their salary for each day that they are unable to play because they refuse to be vaccinated and can't play the Jays.
Please tell me once again how you love the fans.
Their salaries should be withheld and then donated to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation to give "special" homes to real heroes.
I know, don't laugh too hard or you will tweak an oblique and not be able to type for 60 days.
BRAVO BRAVO BRAVO Dick Allen, what a tremendous & well written piece,,,,, it also clarifies why I've become profoundly complacent about the future of this Yankee team
I read the piece, and wanted to nitpick it to death.
But........if it quacks like a duck, and poops like a duck, it's probably a duck.
This explains things better than most of what we here at IIH have come up with.
Hal isn't stupid, he's wicked smart.
Brian Cashmonkey isn't terribly ignorant, he's following orders.
This, however, leads you to other conspiracy theories:
a. Did they hire Aaron Boone to win championships, or to make bad decisions with key games on the line?
b. Did they hire Joe Torre to LOSE (in 1996) -- and were surprised and shocked at how well he did? After all, his managerial record was atrocious b4.
c. All of the miserable batting coaches, 3B coaches, and pitching aides -- and the medical/training staffers -- are they intentionally hiring the worst that can be found?
What a can of woims.
It’s The American Way!
And thank you Dick Allen for this beautifully written piece!
JFB....
a) They hired Boone because he came cheap.
b) In 1995, George still owned the team and he wanted to win at all costs. But he tried to go cheap with Showalter (2 years @ $ 550,000 per). Between that salary, which Buck deemed insufficient and some embedded clauses he felt George included which were one-sided toward the team, he rejected the offer. That combined with the fact that Bob Watson as the Yankees GM had recently worked with Torre in St Louis, recommended Joe to The Boss. No other candidate was interviewed in person. "Clueless Joe", infamously dubbed by Daily News reporter Ian O'Connor, was hired to manage the team for 1996.
c) No, the Bloated Front Office is incompetent and really doesn't give a shit. They only care about making money.
Agreed 1000000%
You absolutely nailed it, Mr. Allen. There's a great big ghost whose initial is "G" and it's ambling all through this mess but if I can connect the dots I guess almost anyone can. I think, though I don't know him, that you are right about #2. His resignation speech was as big a scream at all this as he's ever made, despite its civil tone. People with hearts know. Anyone who gives a damn about anything knows. Not another penny for this. Bring the porch, a radio, a setting sun, John, and Suzyn. That's where I belong anyway. Thank you again, sir.
Sell the team!!!
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