Sheboygan

By David Marasco

The snow has melted, Opening Day is here and baseball is in the air. And in what seems to be a tradition in recent years, we are hearing wailing and gnashing of teeth about how the large market teams will crush the small market teams. Big Bud also is talking about radical realignment. This gets people to thinking. One of the suggestions that gets batted around is the division of baseball by market rather than geography. Take the top X teams in payroll and put them in one division. The next X in another division, and so on all the way down to the Marlins of the world. In other words, let the big spenders go off and play against each other and let the rest of baseball in peace.

For some reason the market division plan appeals to many people. The big fish will be able to spend all they want and the little fish won't have to worry about being outclassed. But let's take a closer look at this idea.

Let's start with the theory that the Royals are hurting in the pocket and can't compete with the Yankees. OK, put the Yankees into the rich division, stick a bunch of teams in middle class, and then stick the Royals in the poor division. OK, next season the Yankees schedule will consist mainly of the Mets, Atlanta, Arizona and other big-spending teams. Sounds like some pretty good matchups. You could charge a lot of money for those games. In fact, by supply and demand, you'll be able to charge more money for both tickets and TV if you play in the rich division. No doubt the Yankees would be happy to play more games against the Braves and get rid of the Royals games. Bigger draw, more demand, higher prices, more money to King George.

Meanwhile, who is Kansas City playing? The Expos for one. Florida. How 'bout them Pirates? If the Royals are having money problems, then a schedule full of Marlins dates is the sure-fire way of packing in the fans and bringing in the cash, right? Nothing like selling your product when everyone knows you are in the slum division. "Come on down and see the worst teams in baseball!" Under this plan the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Sure, one of those low rent squads will make the playoffs, but will the fans really pack the stands for that pennant race? Heck, the Pirates couldn't sell out their playoff games when they had Bonds and Bonilla, can they do it when they have a bunch of nobodies?

Think about the two team markets. If the Giants put out the cash and elevate themselves to play a season with the Braves and Yankees, the A's better damn well put out the bread, because if they're only bringing the Twins to town the gate is going to look mighty bad. Can you really claim that this is better than the current system?

It's pretty clear that Kansas City doesn't want a calendar full of bozos, and won't trade those profitable Yankees games to play the Marlins. OK, there's another way of setting this up. Keep the normal schedules. You still get to play the Yankees or the Braves no matter how much or how little you spend. Your schedule is not determined by your payroll. But the standings are divided into divisions by payroll. In other words, instead of having six divisions based upon geography/history as in our current setup, do it by money spent on players.

Now come on, this is pure stupidity. Take the top six teams in payroll and let only one of them into the playoffs? Sorry, Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Arizona, whoever, only one of you can go. Oh by the way, second place team in the rich division, the Brewers won the poor division by beating out the four worst teams in baseball. Yep, they went 72-90, but your 103 wins won't get you into the playoffs because you are playing with the big boys. Heck, under this system the GM's main responsibility will be to make sure that the team doesn't move from its position of "top payroll in this set of five teams" into "lowest payroll in the next division," which presumably would be a harder road to travel.

Would anybody be dumb enough to actually try a plan like this? Well, it depends on what your aims are. Let's look at the very first season of the NBA. The NBA was a merger of the Basketball Association of America and the National League (no, not that National League, a basketball league). The year previous some of the best National League teams had jumped to the BAA, including the Lakers featuring George Mikan. What was left of the National League was for the most part truly small market. In an odd move (perhaps to quell anti-trust issues), the BAA invited what was left of the NL to join into the new NBA.

But it was a very strange merger. The NBA East and Central were for the most part the old BAA teams. The NBA West was for the most part the NL weak sisters. Now get this, teams in the East played East and Central games six times, and West teams only twice. Same pattern for the Central. The West played their own teams seven times, and of course, the other divison's teams twice. So the East and Central teams played 68 games, and the West played 62. But it gets even more strange. Syracuse, probably the only NL team the BAA wanted to poach from the watered-down NL, played the Western schedule, but was technically in the East (and won the East by beating up on the poorer West teams). For no good reason at all, Syracuse also got an extra pair of games against Indianapolis and Tri-Cities got an extra pair against Anderson. As they would say, that's Fantastic.

Needless to say, Sheboygan, Waterloo, Anderson and the far-west Denver did not survive. In fact, the carnage in the league also took out teams in Chicago and St. Louis. That's an important lesson. The NBA set up the schedule in order to let the little town franchises battle it out. Perhaps the wily Big-Time owners knew that endless Waterloo vs. Sheboygan matchups would kill interest in pro basketball in those two cities. What they didn't foresee is that the league would be seen as such a joke that basketball would be killed in places that should have been able to support franchises. Sometimes the acts of baseball owners seem suicidal, but a plan like this one is to crazy even for them. Right?