Sunday, July 12, 2009

by Maxwell Taylor, special to USA Today

It was 2006, the St.  Louis Cardinals had just won the World Series and the completely talentless David Eckstein was named the MVP.  Despite this revolting development, the 2006 World Series was not the end of Major League Baseball.  Financial ruin was.

George Steinbrenner had long been blamed for a competitive imbalance in baseball.  In 2006, however, things got ridiculous.  Lacking another soul to sell, George decided that money would have to suffice.  To quote Jay Levin, “It wasn’t enough for their braying pig of an owner, a man who knew almost as little about baseball as the average seven-year-old and cared quite a bit less about the integrity of the game.  In 1998, when one of the all-time great clubs won 111 games and eventually a World Series, the Yankees had the largest payroll at $67 million, but that was only ten percent higher than the next club on the list, the Indians.  In the aftermath of that historic season, the Yankees pushed payroll up 30 percent to $86 million.  Then $92 million, then $112 million, then $126 million, then $152 million, then $184 million, then $208 million.”

With that uptick in spending, no one was left to compete with the Evil Empire.  Sure, the Red Sox gave it a run but a $170 million spending spree after the World Series ran the ownership group far beyond even what the automatons of the Red Sox Nation could stomach.  The Yankees dumped another $61 million into stalwarts like Kei Igawa and Miguel Cairo.  The New York Mets blew through $53 million and the Los Angeles Angels spent $126 million in a spree that brought them Fernando Tatis and the Eckstein-level useless Juan Pierre.  Quite simply, baseball was spending itself daft.

The first signs of cracking appeared when the Cleveland Indians spent money on Joe Borowski, a move clearly born of desperation.  The Brewers brought in Jeff Suppan and Craig Counsell and then realized that no one would pay to watch either of them.  The league was on its last legs.

Glib witticisms aside, baseball in America seemed too much a part of the thread of the nation to just go away, but go away it did.  Steinbrenner simply began to buy players that caught his eye.  Doing away with normal rules of free agency, Steinbrenner just transferred players he wanted.  David Ortiz, Pedro Martinez and Bartolo Colon cost a little over $200 million but that money spent was hailed by the NY Times as “brilliant management”.

The end wasn’t really all that dramatic.  In order to keep up with the Yankees, other teams floated ideas of raising ticket prices, of charging to bring a glove into the game and of charging more than $10 for beer.  Finally though, it became obvious that baseball was finished.  Mark Shapiro, a man respected by the world for his stance during the crisis, announced the end of MLB on December 7^th, 2006.  Helsinki was still to come, but the end was very much in sight.