BASEBALL IS DEAD WITH THE SAME BAD OWNERS — SO PLEASE IGNORE THE WHITE SOX
The clock ticks toward a Dec. 1 deadline, and after a gnarly proposal for a salary cap and a floor, the sport has no chance if several madmen — including Jerry Reinsdorf and Arte Moreno — don’t sell
The only way baseball survives is if cheap owners are banned. How does that churn as an opening salvo about labor warfare, merrily unloading the terrifying creatures known by too many burned customers? If there is any chance in hell that the Players Association would accept an annual salary floor of $171.2 million — to accompany a cap of $245.3 million — a dozen teams must increase payrolls in a mad rush.
By a whopping $617 million.
Why not relegate them to the Greed League, the real G League, in a drama that already sickens our souls?
We’d just dump the men who own the White Sox, the Reds, the Guardians, the Athletics, the Rockies, the Marlins, the Brewers, the Twins, the Pirates, the Cardinals, the Rays and the Nationals. They would include Jerry Reinsdorf, who never has spent above $75 million for a free agent in Chicago, and Bruce Sherman, who rarely has pushed the payroll beyond $100 million in Miami. If the sport has any chance against the NFL and NBA, trim the swill.
Until they are seized and booted, or exposed to probes by government agencies, why continue a warped, wacko industry? The so-called idea is to allow competitive headway by spreading local TV revenues, allowing the Dodgers to subsidize smaller teams with their $334 million a season. That is mass insanity, if someone would please confirm that owner Mark Walter is fine with the new condition. Whatever the plan, the players have no interest in ever agreeing to a cap, and for 30 owners to inject their horrid scheme months before the Dec. 1 deadline of the collective bargaining agreement, you’d have to be a fool to seriously follow the game.
My friends say the White Sox are a decent story. I have to remind them: The team lost 324 games the last three seasons and should not be followed by anyone with a functioning brain. The only reason Reinsdorf is still involved, at 90, is to push the union for a salary cap. All he’ll do is prompt a lockout of the players, which could lead to his second dismantling of the sport in 33 years. Imagine baseball canceling a World Series back in 1994. If it happens again, call the coroner. “It's not like '94, where there was nothing else to do. It's not just, 'Oh, baseball's here.' No, there's a lot of other things to do than just watch baseball,” a concerned Bryce Harper told ESPN.
The Sox have a so-called replacement owner, Justin Ishbia, but he may or may not take over by 2034. Chicago’s sports media are too soft to demand Reinsdorf’s ouster, unlike the Los Angeles Times, which is pushing hard for Arte Moreno’s departure as Angels owner. His final mistake was telling the Orange County Register that fans don’t care about winning, according to a team-generated poll. “They want affordability,” Moreno said. “They want safety, and they want a good experience when they come to the ballpark. Believe it or not, winning is not in their top five.”
Columnist Bill Plaschke wrote what I would write. “Now it’s time for you to go. Sell the team,” he wrote about Moreno over the weekend. How many times have I said Reinsdorf should be hitched on a one-way train to Arizona? No one with a voice does the same in Chicago, where writers and broadcasters assume Jerry will call their bosses and try to fire them. He is a snake of the worst kind, slimy and grimy. Yet, perhaps because South Siders have nothing else to do with their lives, 29,435 showed up Saturday night and 28,764 on Sunday afternoon. The Sox are 32-27, which only would draw laughter in New York and Los Angeles given their all-time losing seasons.
If fans keep showing up, they’ll pray for a .500 record or a wild-card race. Then their team goes away in early December and might not return for a very long time. The salary cap, remember, is the pride and joy of the Players Association — “something generations of players have fought against,” union interim director Bruce Meyer said.
He added in a statement: “The last time the owners made such an explicit push for a cap — over 30 years ago — it led to the longest work stoppage in MLB history. Our members have fought against cap systems because they harm players at all levels, erode or eliminate contractual guarantees, pit player against player, lead to more work stoppages, not less, and get worse for players over time. Caps don’t lower ticket prices for fans, eliminate tanking or ensure teams are run with equal competence. They suffocate competition by offering owners an all-purpose excuse for inaction and mediocrity.”
Meyer is referring to Reinsdorf and Sherman and so many others. They are the problem with MLB. If they unloaded teams to better billionaires, no one would complain about the lack of a salary cap. They would spend — the winners would do so wisely — and we’d no longer have economical dopes. Said Meyer: “Owners are not seeking to cap their profits or asset values, only player salaries. This isn’t out of generosity or a desire to protect the game’s well-being. It’s a play to control costs, increase profits and maximize franchise values — all at the expense of players past, present and future.”
Don’t worry about finding the collective $617 million, Greed Leaguers. The players will keep saying no, no, no and no, forever and ever. But, hey, go White Sox!
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host.