America's Former Pastime

The New York Yankees gave baseball fans across the country 161 more reasons to hate the Yankees on Wednesday.

The Yankees have received nearly $850M in taxpayer investments from the city and state of New York and have recently asked the city taxpayers to pitch in another $259M to complete the new teams new stadium. Then the next day the team goes out and out-bids only themselves to offer free agent pitcher CC Sabathia a record contract of $161M over seven years.

Something needs to be done in baseball to change these spending methods, not just by the Yankees but all teams. Sabathia will make more per year in this deal than the entire Florida Marlin team made last year.

I understand that the Yankees are playing by rules and are not doing anything wrong. I understand that they have the money to spend, and that is exactly what they are doing. I do not understand two things about this. First, how can Major League Baseball can sit around, watch this spending, and not see anything wrong with it? Secondly, how are the taxpayers of New York not rioting in the streets about the Yankees asking them to pay more towards their new stadium, when the they go out and spend their money like they do?

This is not good for the people of New York. Yes, the Yankees ownership has the money and can afford to do this. I understand this. The Yankees ownership is also very dependent on the people of New York City to sell out the brand new, two billion dollar stadium that will open in April. Now not only do they want to the city to come up for more money, but they will also need them to by the tickets to their stadium, tickets that cost up to $2,500 a seat. In this current economic struggle that most of America is dealing with, this is a terrible message being sent by the entire Yankee organization.

Okay, let us move past the economy factor and look at why this deal is terrible for baseball.

Sabathia is from the west coast. He is currently building a house in southern California. The Angels, Dodgers, and Giants were all very interested in his services for the next few years. They were all offering him substantially less than what the Yankees originally offered ($140M). Yet, Sabathia considered these offers (the highest reported offer excluding the Yankees was $115M). Sabathia did not want to play in New York. He did not want to be a Yankee, but the Yankees upped their offer another $21M and he took it because nobody else stepped to the plate.

Can you blame Sabathia? Not at all, I do not think anyone can blame him. However, you can blame baseball.

Baseball has not been played on an even playing field since the 1994 strike. This move by the Yankees just shows how uneven that playing field really is. The story out of Las Vegas this week during the Winter Meetings was that GM’s were told to cut back because teams were cutting back their budgets due to the economy. Not the Yankees, they did not have any competition for Sabathia so they started out-bidding themselves. How can cities like Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Kansas City and Cleveland compete with a team like the Yankees unless Major League Baseball steps in and does something? Cleveland offered Sabathia a $72M deal for four years during this past spring training and he turned it down. Again, do not fault Sabathia, fault the system that he knew would allow him to make much more in the open market of free agency. These smaller cities just become farm systems for the bigger market teams like the Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs, Red Sox and Angels.

Look at the Pirates. This year will mark their seventeenth straight season with a losing record. This will set the all-time mark by any professional team in any professional sport. During this time, the Pirates lost players like Tim Wakefield, Bobby Bonilla, Barry Bonds, Doug Drabek, Jay Bell, Denny Neagle, Esteban Loaiza, Jason Schmidt, Jeff Suppan, Brian Giles, Oliver Perez, Jason Bay and Xavier Nady because they could not afford to sign them. All of these players have gone on to very successful careers for other teams.

A signing like the Yankees made with Sabathia give little to no hope to the smaller market teams and shows everything that is wrong with the game I love. And that is exactly the reason that baseball is no longer America’s Pastime.