Yes, it is a huge longshot.
But I don't know what club owners have in mind to keep this from ending up as another fiasco...and judging by past history, they don't know, either.
Total major-league attendance had been rising pretty steadily from around 1975, when it was just under 30 million, to 1993, when it hit a new high of about 70.3 million.
Then came the strike. The majors did not get back to that number until they drew 70.6 million in 1998, the year of the great, McGwire-Sosa Home Run Fraud Race.
After reaching an all-time high of 79.5 million in 2007, though, attendance began a slow decline, even before Covid.
(In good part, this was due to team owners repeatedly REMOVING seats from their ballparks, in favor of luxury boxes, suites, and tony bars and restaurants—making them a luxury destination.)
Still, in 2026, attendance was at 71.6 mill, after several seasons of moderate rises. And I assume that all prices are much higher than they ever were.
For the owners to destroy this growth, fighting for a salary cap they don't need, would be madness. But that's our club owners for you!
Would the owners be able to staunch a players' league, should one arise, by threatening to ban advertisers?
I don't know. If there is a players' league...what will the owners do for players? Even if they find enough scabs, won't the advertisers prefer to advertise on broadcasts of what will be easily the better league?
Carl J. Weitz mentions how Rush Limbaugh and other denizens of right-wing radio threatened advertisers into boycotting liberal Air America back in the day. But Rush and friends still had a product—albeit a noxious one—to offer in Air America's stead.
(By the way, as someone who was occasionally a guest—and, for one week, even a substitute co-host on Air America—I can attest that its problems went well beyond that. It was, for one thing, badly run—there would be entire, ten-minute gaps in broadcasting, filled only with ads. And...people of the liberal/left persuasion just didn't listen to talk radio. I sure as hell knew nobody who did.)
The big fight, I think, would be over who gets to use the ballparks. I have no idea what the contracts say, and quite possibly our elected officials were stupid enough or venal enough to give complete control to the owners.
But if they didn't...
Will all these cities, which have already foolishly forked over so much money to build these ballparks, really be content to have them sit idly, generating no sales taxes and no subsidiary revenues?
This could be their—our—big break—a chance to become a full partner in the game with the players, and grab back a lot of that public money.
I know, I know. Unlikely.
Most of the players are right-wing greedheads, too, and when it comes down to it, well, to quote Elvis Costello: Money talks/ And it's persuasive.
But still. We seem to me to be at a dead end in this country. Everything has got to change—the rip off that professional (and even college) sports are now, along with the rest.
Just getting the thought out there—just getting the idea out there—that there might be a different way is, I think, worth it.
I listened to Air America. In fact, I subscribed to Sirius just to do sp. It was on some 10-watt AM radio station in Manhattan and was usually very hard to hear because of the weak signal. At least on the Fairfield County, CT coastline. I've been a listener/viewer of Thom Hartmann for at least 20 years. I particularly liked his Friday noon segment "Brunch with Bernie" Sanders. And there's a new guy (to me) named Brian Shapiro who broadcasts from Vegas. He also has a podcast. He doesn't let MAGA morons slide with their mostly ill-informed comments.
ReplyDeleteYes, Air America had many problems that led to their demise. Numerous originators and execs resigned shortly after launch, if I remember correctly. And there was constant turnover. I don't remember who funded the project, but I do remember it was a married couple. I think Al Franken was the biggest draw. Rachel Maddow too, although she was kinda unknown at the time. I never thought Janeane Garofalo was sexy, but her show content shared with Sam Seder changed my opinion.
And hey, just call me Carl.
You know, if they were to blacklist advertisers, two can play at that game. There's nothing to stop those advertisers from blacklisting MLB forever. Hell, I think blacklisting advertisers would cross the line with me. I'd never have any more to do with MLB, if they did that.
ReplyDeleteThere are legal implications too. That would be tortious interference with contract. And would run afoul of anti-trust laws. There's no way they should be allowed to get away with that. In today's crazy Trump politics though, they probably would get away with it or at least attempt it. We're one step away from fucking losing freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Bill of rights? What rights? You got no rights except what scraps the Clown-in-Chief throws off his groaning table.
Yeah, I thought Janeane was kind of sexy. I ran into them up at the Democratic Convention in 2004, in the old Boston Garden. I had credentials from Harper's, though I wasn't there to write anything; we had too long a lead time.
ReplyDeleteThe bright lights who ran the party then had not deigned to give Air America a spot in the media boxes—even though they were the only electronic media in existence then that was completely for them.
So before and after the best speakers, I'd come down and hang with Janeane and Sam, who I knew through a mutual friend. They were stuck at a table in North Station, where I remembered going in to see the Yanks-Sox all through my childhood. Really a surreal experience.
They'd interview me from time to time, but it was all kind of dismal. Then, at the end of the night, that ass Terry McAuliffe, head of the DNC at the time, would sweep by on his way to his limo and give us a big wave and smile. Awful.
Great experiences, Hoss! Fuck Terry McCauliffe! I blame him for the Dems dancing with the big corporations and trying to become Republican lite.
DeleteThanks, Carl!
DeleteThe Democrats have spent years living up to their motto, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." If the party could just keep from shooting itself in the feet, and learn how to communicate effectively with people....yeah, well, that hasn't happened for years.
ReplyDelete"Most of the players are right-wing greedheads, too." And that is the problem with a Players League, Hoss. They, too, are assholes. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. I don't think the players have a problem with how the owners do business, they just want a nice-sized chunk of the returns. So I think the players, if they ran their own league, would probably ape what the owners have done in almost all respects: maximize ROI, run roughshod over the middle- and lower-class fanbase, keep monopolistic practices in place, etc.
We have met the enemy, and it's not just the owners. It's everyone involved. The whole of professional sports is not there for the benefit of fans, it's only that some are better at hiding that than others.
You may be all too right, JM.
DeleteJohn Montgomery Ward, the brilliant mind behind the original Players' League, in 1890, wanted it to erase the color line, and sign Black players. Most of his fellow players voted that proposal down, alas.
I think a players' league would be a wonderful thing, it could be better for everyone involved, which is why we will never have it. Institutional inertia is enormously powerful. When people in North America, and sadly increasingly the rest of the world, think of baseball, they think of MLB. MLB has a century and a half of history to exploit, they've got massive global publicity, they've got the connections with politicians, media, and business, and they've got deep pockets. If any wildcat league pops up, it will be aggressively ignored and silently crushed by the enforced indifference of everyone involved in baseball. Any players who join will be blacklisted and any organisations that might do business with it will be cut off from MLB's deep pockets.
ReplyDeleteUltimately, I just don't think the players and ownership are that far apart. MLB is a massive cash-generating swindle, and there's more than enough that a small cut of that cash will keep the players happy. They just have to put up a semblance of a fight every few years to ensure that the small cut doesn't get reduced to a tiny cut.
As stated, I love the idea and would love to be wrong about this. I'd love it if the players to refuse any compromise with ownership, if owners were so blinded by greed and incompetence that they kill their own golden goose, and if MLB shut down and made room for a better, more decent baseball. I just don't see any of that happening.
You're most probably right!
DeleteUltimately, I don't think it will happen, either, Kaiser. But please keep in mind that the players have pretty much won every previous strike/lockout in the Marvin Miller era and beyond.
DeleteThe awful cartel known as MLB can try whatever they want, but if they don't have the players, they're not going to win anything. Also, I think there is now widespread discontent with MLB for the same reasons we regularly talk about here.
And, for the first time in a long time, there are signs of "alternatives," such as the Savannah Bananas...
Don't get me wrong: the last thing I want is major-league baseball reduced to a sort of Bananas comedy show. But just saying that people are pretty fed up with the status quo.
DeleteAgain, I think you're probably right, Kaiser, and that there is so much money now for both sides that they'll cut a deal. Maybe a salary cap with a bunch of exceptions, and expanded rosters and more teams, to ensure there are more spots for players...something likely to dilute the quality of the sport even more.
But who knows? In the past, most of baseball's most self-destructive labor fights have come when the sport was enjoying new highs of popularity. With both the owners and players, more money seems to act like chum in the water with sharks, so we could see an extended lockout anyway.
Never underestimate the role of stupidity in human affairs!
Good stuff Hoss.
ReplyDeleteAnd now, back to another day as a Yankee fan...
GROUNDHOG DAY!
Thanks, Bitty!
Delete