Baseball is America’s pastime. Despite the NFLs meteoric rise as America’s most popular sport, and the global expansion of basketball, baseball remains uniquely American in more ways than most people generally realize.
For one, baseball is “Americas Pastime” because it has been around longer than football. The exact origins of baseball are debated, but historians agree that it has existed since the early-mid 19th century. In a way, American and Baseball grew up together, and will be forever intertwined. The dog days of summer, hot dogs and cold beer, and watching a baseball game have become an enduring image of American culture. The image of the hard working American also has parallels to baseball players, whose 162 game schedule is unrivaled by any other major sport.
The following analysis is much less nostalgic and much more economical. It is inspired by the fast-approaching beginning of the 2013 MLB season, and a recent report by Forbes which states that the average value of MLB baseball teams rose by 23% last year, the “biggest year-over-year change in valuation ever calculated by Forbes magazine”.
“In its report, Forbes, which has been tracking the league’s finances since 1998, revealed that the money that all teams made from the $450 million sale of the Montreal Expos in 2006 was invested in hedge funds that are now worth more than $1 billion.
“The value of a team used to be about a team itself,” Forbes executive editor Michael Ozanian said in a phone interview with ESPN.com. “Then it shifted to the stadium value and then to the television deals, and now it’s more about what’s not on the field at all.”
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Is there any other sport that parallels the U.S. economy so? I think not. Both represent capitalism in their purest forms. America is one of the strongest pro-market advocates of all the world powers. MLB has the most free market-driven amongst major sports.
In baseball, there is no salary cap, and competition is protected through a redistributive luxury tax system. In the U.S., as in baseball, the open market determines someone’s wages, and poorer parties are compensated by redistribution of wealth to help ensure equality (who does this better, the U.S. or MLB, is open to debate). Other major sport’s wages are also determined by market forces, but are influenced in general by salary caps, which distort market values.
The MLBPA is the strongest of all the players unions. Strong unions, believe it or not, used to be a bastion of American wealth. The MLBPA was perhaps too strong, to the point where regular steroid threatened the integrity of the game. Just like in America, vested interests continue to hold sway until the system is “brought to its knees”, and only then is real reform discussed (in baseball it is PED testing, in the American economy financial and tax reform).
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Baseball as a sport exemplifies American ideals, and as a business mirrors the U.S. economy. Teams increased value represents not an increase in popularity of the sport, but savvy off field investments by teams.
How would you feel if your team lost lots of money in the financial market and it affected the on-the-field product? We already saw this to a certain extent with the Wilpon-Madoff debacle, but most people assumed this was an isolated issue—the recent Forbes report suggests perhaps all teams are more vulnerable to financial market shocks than we may realize.
But restricting team’s investment opportunities would be decidedly un-American. Perhaps MLB should put a limit on the amount a team can cut it’s payroll from year to year, ensuring that off-the-field investments do not affect the product a team puts on the field?
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Most people will not care about this issue unless it affects them directly—out of sight out of mind. Mets fans were outraged that their team’s payroll took a hit when the Wilpon’s lost money in the financial market. I would also not be surprised if eventually we find out the Marlins salary-dump was somehow linked to losses not directly related to baseball activities.
Perhaps investment in financial markets is an unstoppable force, and that any entity that has a large amount of capital—including major sports organizations—will naturally be drawn to it. I do not know if the commissioner’s office has the power to regulate how owners invest their profits even if it wanted to.
Banks have to have a certain amount of reserve cash to back up their assets, known as a reserve requirement. Perhaps the commissioner’s office should institute a similar policy to ensure that financial market fluctuations do not affect the integrity of the game. Or should the system stay as it is, and address teams financial woes on a case-by-case basis as it currently does ?(such as the Dodgers MLB managed bankruptcy)
Normative Narratives 