(Ed. Note: Doug Pappas is the chairman of SABR’s Business of Baseball Committee and a highly-regarded analyst of the game’s economic issues. This is the first of a series of pieces he will be doing analyzing the game’s finances.–JSS) Shortly before Commissioner Bud Selig’s testimony before Congress on December 6, Major League Baseball released the…
I’ll give baseball’s owners some credit, since they are actually going to come somewhat clean on the money they make. How clean they come will determine how well they fare in the next round of labor negotiations, and to what degree they seize the villain’s throne in the eyes of the fans. ESPN.com reported yesterday…
This is hard. I knew when I signed up to continue this column that it would be a chore to write a thousand words about the Royals every week, but I didn’t think it would be this difficult. Trying to comprehend Shaggy’s lyrics is easier. Even after taking a week off to recuperate from Thanksgiving,…
A fascinating season of immense accomplishments … a riveting post-season capped by an implausible Game 7 in the World Series … postseason awards that confounded the experts … what better way to cap off the 2001 baseball season than voting to determine whose face will grace a plaque in Cooperstown next summer? Yes indeed, it’s…
THE WORST IDEA EVER MARCHES ONWARD "Did we miscalculate? No. Do I think we should have started this earlier? No. After Sept. 11, I wouldn’t have had the unmitigated gall to interrupt the playoffs and the World Series with this." —Bud Selig, commissioner of baseball "It’s the system. It’s a very easy answer. I have…
Plenty of small items to clean up amongst the mess that is baseball today: First, contraction. At this point, it seems safe to say that baseball won’t be eliminating any teams before the 2002 season. The lawsuits currently pending will slow the process enough to kill it by means of a pocket veto of sorts….
At this writing, there’s something of a consensus that Jason Giambi is going to sign a big contract with the New York Yankees, something like seven years and $119 million total. Signing the first baseman is the Yankees’ top priority this offseason, and they’ve thrown the most money and the most attention at him of…
Baseball’s exemption from antitrust laws–which prohibit actions that unreasonably restrain competition–stems from a 1922 Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that antitrust law did not apply to baseball. The rationale was that baseball games were local affairs, not interstate commerce. The Supreme Court upheld the antitrust exemption twice, first in 1953 and again…
I know I’m supposed to be really worked up over Ichiro Suzuki being voted the American League MVP by the Baseball Writers Association of America, and initially I was. Ichiro, for all his positives, wasn’t the best player on his team this year, wasn’t one of the five best players in the AL, and got…
The laughter has finally died down. It was less than four months ago that Allard Baird stood before the baseball world and announced that he had traded one of the best right fielders in the game for Neifi Perez. In one of the great non sequiturs of all time, Baird claimed that because the Royals…
THE WORST IDEA EVER, CONTINUED "St. Louis is closer to Minneapolis than Milwaukee is. Are the [Boston] Red Sox going to benefit if Montreal is contracted? No. I don’t think the Brewers would gain, either. It’s so outrageous and not worthy of comment." —Bud Selig, commissioner of baseball, on the potential conflict of interest between…
On the final day of the 2000 season, Tampa Bay General Manager Chuck LaMar called manager Larry Rothschild into his office, or so the story goes. LaMar was all set to fire Rothschild, but a twinge of conscience overcame him after his manager sat down, and, as in a scene from a bad movie, he…
(Note: With production having started on Baseball Prospectus 2002, The Daily Prospectus will run on an irregular schedule through February. Look for two to three columns per week in this space.) On Sunday, Mark McGwire confirmed the rumor that he had not signed the extension of his contract with the Cardinals, and would instead retire…
Wade through the stream of codeine-affected consciousness with me today: From Peter Gammons’s ESPN column, Saturday, Nov. 10th: "Players and their lawyers don’t understand this, but the fact is that the national economy has to have a dramatic impact on the market. Before this week, club marketing offices have been told to expect a downturn…
Hand Bud Selig and the owners of Major League Baseball a loaded gun and they will successfully shoot themselves every time. Some time on Tuesday morning, someone handed Selig an Uzi and several rounds of ammunition. Unfortunately, he survived…and held a press conference. What we got was even more disgraceful than the worst scenarios any…