I grew up in front of the T. V. watching bone-crunching hits and massive home runs in old Cleveland Municipal Stadium. I saw the last game the Browns played there and I started bawling like a blubbering idiot when they left the field. Back then sports were much more simple. The games were played for fun. There were no high-school kids bringing down the quality of NBA games, There werent any greedy me-first 19 year olds trying to sue their way into the NFL. Nor were there any teams spending 190 million dollars to buy a World Series like the Yankees.
But when the 1995 NFL season ended I was finally introduced to the most horrid part of sports… economics. Economics ruined my favorite game and economics had taken away my favorite team. The Browns werent just my team, they were Clevelands team. They were taken from us because Art Modell couldnt force the taxpayers to build him a stadium. He had enough money to help Cleveland build a football stadium we could be proud of, but hed rather make money. Never mind the rich tradition of football we have in Cleveland. Never mind the fact that we were a playoff team the year before. The new stadium was going to cost him money.
Thats when I realized that allegiances and loyalty dont matter to owners or players. The only thing that matters to guys like Modell is the almighty dollar. Football is not the only sports that has been ruined by recent economic changes. Baseball has had its own struggles with economics. It starts with the large gaps between large and small market teams. While some small market teams like the Florida Marlins, Oakland As and the Kansas City Royals have been able to perform well, most like the Devil Rays and Pirates stink. The most telling statistic that shows this gap is that the Yankees have a 190 million dollar payroll.
That is a full 40 million above the team in second. The team with the lowest payroll is the Tampa Bay Devil Rays at 20 million dollars. That is a full 5. 2 million dollars less than Alex Rodriguez! One player makes more than 25 players! It is also $170 million dollars lower than the Yankees. So what does baseballs Commissioner, Bud Selig, do about this problem? He doesnt propose some sort of salary cap like the NFL, he says that the MLB needs contraction. Contraction?! He wants low market teams like the Tampa Bay Devil Rays out of baseball so he can keep the Yankees winning World Series why would he do this? MONEY!
The Yankees draw more viewers and therefore more money. When forced to create a cap he proposed a luxury tax threshold of 120 million dollars. Which means that if you pass this threshold you have to however much you are over back. So because the Yankees are 70 million over at 190 million, they have to pay an extra 70 million. This would work well if the luxury tax effected more than four teams! The Devil Rays are a full 100 million dollars below the threshold. This is why I pine for the days of old. The days when I could blindly worship my teams. The problem is that the current state of sport has soiled this loyal fans mind.
