Holy Web of Deceit, Seligman!

by The Crank

What's weirder about this scenario -- the fact that Major League Baseball claims their project to make second base into the happy meal prize for Spiderman 2 was the product of careful market research when clearly they hadn't bothered to test the idea with a single focus group of fans -- or Bud Selig claiming "I'm a traditionalist" while trying to pimp the promotion?

This is what The Czar said yesterday:

"One thing about our rules, you can't start to bend them."

This said the same day he wanted to completely violate baseball's (written) rules against markings on the bases. You can look it up in the sections of the rule book and the major league code on field conditions.

Of course, he was talking about baseball's territorial rules, not Spiderman 2. And this is one of the most patently false things to come out of a leader's mouth since the former owner of the Texas Rangers claimed Saddam was buying Yellowcake from Niger. You can bend the rules if you can make them up as you go along, which is what baseball has always done as far as "territory".

You see, Mr. Selig yesterday also visited the Oakland Coliseum for the first time since he became commissioner. I'm not making this up. It took him over a decade to look into the actual physical circumstances and facilities of a franchise he has used as the embodiment of poormouth "small market" franchises (the Bay area, combined, is the fourth largest in the country; split into three parts, all three would be in the top 15). And he took the occasion to basically torpedo any chance the A's would be able to move from the dumpy coliseum and the poormouth city of Oakland to the tenth largest city in America, San Jose, and one of its richest in per capita income even after the dot com bust.

You see, the Giants "territorial rights" to San Jose were granted in 1992. It wasn't some plan to save baseball in San Francisco. It was to allow the Giants to move to San Jose, back when the club was stuck at the 'Stick and was rumoured to be heading to Tampa- St Pete. It was more than a rumour: it was a done deal, and baseball, fearful of the embarrassment of losing one of the marquee cities in the country from its roster, did what it could at the time to move things along. As it turns out, it wasn't the addition of Santa Clara county to the Giants' already arbitrary territorial rights, despite the fact that Oakland is marginally closer to the county than San Francisco is, that saved the Giants. It was a new ownership group, the one that built Pac Bell (excuse, me SBC Park) with mostly its own money, that kept the Giants in San Francisco. Only, I might add, after voters in Santa Clara county previously declined to pay for a ballpark with taxpayer money, turning the Giants back to Plan A, build in San Francisco.

I can hardly blame Peter Magowan and company from wanted to hang on to San Jose. It's emblematic of the real fear of competition, and the desire for guaranteed profit, among baseball owners that they somehow think the A's franchise would trounce them with a new facility in San Jose. Trust me, no matter how wonderful a park they might build down there, it can't compete with the location the Giants are in. Brian Sabean has been as masterful as Billy Beane at getting his team in the playoffs. And the ballyhooed debt burden the Giants carry for SBC won't be a problem after Barry Bonds retires unless attendance falls off by half. Do the Giants think that poorly of themselves and their city and ballpark that they think without San Jose they won't be able to compete?

The fallacy, of course, they seem to believe is that baseball isn't its own best marketing tool. The game, not, say, cheap promotional tie-ins or kiddie playgrounds at the ballparks. They buy into the idea that two teams close in a market have to divide up that market -- instead of two great teams being mutually reinforcing. Magowan has cited the statistic 60% of the corporate sponsorships for the Giants come from Silicon Valley. Ahem, where exactly do you suppose the fans and support come now for the team that plays at Network Associates Coliseum? Nothing will change - fans from all over the area will still be split between the Giants and A's, only now the fans that live North and East of SF will find it easier to get to the Giants than the A's, in our hypothetical San Jose A's universe.

But you can't get blood from a stone twice. Getting a new ballpark -- this ain't going to happen in Oakland. It might happen in San Jose, the city around which Silicon Valley flows, which supports the San Jose Sharks quite nicely and supplies a fair number of fans to both Oakland and SF games.

San Jose is more than an hour south of San Francisco. Oakland is nine miles away from SBC Park. If the commissioner wants to investigate inequities in Oakland's mausoleum football stadium vis a vis the Giants, he need only look at the artificial lines the commissioner's office draws, then somehow treats like they were written in permanent marking ink made out of holy blood.

Baltimore? Halfway between Philadelphia and Washington, at a time when there were two teams in Philly and one in Washington. What gives the Orioles the sacred "right" to the territory of Washington?

Chicago has two ballparks on the same train line. The Brewers are as close to the Chicago market as Oakland is to South San Jose. You can get from Yankee Stadium to Shea Stadium with two transfers. But New Jersey is "Yankee" territory, according to the territorial rules. As is all of upstate New York, even though Boston is as close as Buffalo, and Buffalo is closer to Toronto.

It's all very arbitrary, and much of the "lines" are mere artifacts of happenstance. Yet the Commissioner says he can't change the rules. Heck, he can't even bend them!

Baltimore was "granted" territorial rights to Washington by a fiat well after the second Senators' franchise departed in 1971. The Giants' "rights" were granted in 1992. In both cases this was done with a wave of the wrist by the incumbent commissioner.

Baseball is run by a weird sort of politburo, and I take the contrasting stories about Spiderman 2 and the non-existent "rules" the Commissioner cites as to why they can't let the A's try to move to a new park in San Jose together as evidence that MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL IS STILL COMPLETELY CLUELESS ABOUT MARKETING AND MARKET ECONOMICS.

If they don't even bother with a focus group about an issue like putting advertising on bases, why on earth should we think they've got the genius of territorial rights figured out?

Because Bud says so.