THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 22, 1994 TAG: 9412220639
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE ADDIS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
This baseball strike has become terribly confusing.
The wealthy people - the owners - have formed a group that looks suspiciously like a union and are lobbying hard for artificial wage and price controls.
The other wealthy people - the ballplayers - have a union that sounds more like a Chamber of Commerce, extolling the virtues of hard work and free-market capitalism.
It's enough to make Karl Marx pitch a hissy.
Any wealthy person - even a vain and stupid bumbler - can buy a baseball team at $95 million, sell it a few years later at $120 million and be congratulated for his business acumen. No one would dare suggest a limit be placed on how much an owner could profit on the sale of a franchise - no ``capital gains cap,'' if you will.
But the owners want to put just that sort of cap on how much the ballplayers can earn.
Owners wring their hands about red ink, about revenues barely covering expenses. They tend to change the subject at the mention of how fast the value of their teams has grown.
The annual net income of a ballclub, like the dividend from a share of stock, is only part of the financial picture. On Wall Street, the real money lies in the growth of the stock's base value.
And the value of baseball franchises continues to grow because there is strong demand for teams and a heady flow of television advertising money.
The supply has not grown to meet the demand because the owners are allowed to artificially depress the supply - the number of teams available. This occurs because the government has long allowed baseball owners to operate a legal monopoly, for ``the good of the game.''
In a truly free market, the owners' actions would be defined as conspiracy and restraint of trade. They would be subjected to large fines, lengthy stays in jail, and intermittent buggery. Instead, they become lions of society. George W. Bush, managing partner of the Rangers, was even elected governor of Texas.
A lot of us would admit that many of the players are grossly overpaid. But how serious a problem is that?
There are 28 major league baseball teams, each with 25 players. That means there are 700 adult males playing major league ball during the regular season.
Let's assume that half of them - 350 - are grossly overpaid.
The population of the U.S. is roughly 260 million. Since women so far have not been allowed to play in the majors, divide that number in half, leaving 130 million males of all ages. The result? Just 350 of that number - fewer than one in every 3 million American males - is a grossly overpaid baseball player.
As they say in Washington, this is not a situation that has broad societal impact. It's certainly not a problem that should allow us to turn loose a corps of beaver-toothed bureaucrats to chew on the framework of free enterprise.
What's so troubling about a system that gives you, your kid, your nephew or your neighbor a 1-in-3 million shot at becoming a grossly overpaid baseball player? It's a far better bet than Virginia's Pick 6, where the odds are 1-in-7 million. And ballplayers get to chew tobacco, wear tight pants and date movie stars.
If you were able to bet one dollar on either proposition, which would you choose?
Jealousy drives our anger at the players' salaries. It is strange, though, that we reserve this jealousy for sports figures. When was the last time we complained of Jack Nicholson drawing $15 million for a couple of months' work on a Malibu Beach movie set? Or Marlon Brando's $7 million paycheck for what is politely called a ``walk-on'' part? (Though in Brando's case it's more of a ``waddle-on.'')
Jack and Marlon don't risk their careers dodging 95 mph fastballs, either. They get a stand-in for the rough stuff.
Part of this jealousy results from a little ``watch the birdie'' ploy by the owners: They want you to think that the oppressed working-dad fan is carrying the freight for those huge salaries. Adjusted for inflation, though, baseball ticket prices aren't all that out of whack over the past 40 years. Advertising dollars are fueling the salary spiral.
There's no denying that a lot of ballplayers are whiney and spoiled and do stupid things. But the fact that a handful of them get obscenely rich is no reason to allow the owners - or the government, for that matter - to start noodling around with the free-market forces that determine the workers' salaries.
The last guy to try that was a lefty for the Reds. He played in the old Nationalist League under the name of V.I. Lenin.
His franchise collapsed in 1991. Maybe you read about it. It was in all the papers. by CNB