Category: Sports

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Mike Piazza Pie: Sports Economics

Mike Piazza now makes $91 million for playing baseball, for seven years. How on earth can they do it? Only 30 years ago, the entire New York Yankees baseball club was valued at only $12,000,000.

Well, it’s a free country. If a baseball owner wants to pay an athlete $17 million a year to play a game, why shouldn’t he?

They can pay Mike Piazza $91 million because fans continue to flock to the stadiums and plop themselves in front of their television sets to watch Mike Piazza play baseball. From that money, the New York Mets pays its players. And like every other business, they pay all their other expenses, like administrative staff, office space, scouts, managers, and rent or mortgage for the stadium… and taxes.

Well, wait a minute.

Yes, yes, the Blue Jays pay $11 million dollars a year in taxes on the Skydome. But who built the Skydome? You did. With your tax money. We paid $321 million to build the Skydome and then we rented it to the Jays for considerably less than it costs to operate it.

That is why the Skydome Corporation is now bankrupt.

This year, Hartford, Conn. is donating $350 million to the New England Patriots. And Maryland is donating $220 million to the Baltimore Ravens NFL team, and kicked in an extra $80 just to make owner Art Modell happy.

At least the Blue Jays paid their taxes last year. And so did the Expos. But the Cardinals and the White Sox, and the Red Sox, and the Reds, and the Dodgers, and the Rockies, and the Mets, and all the other teams? Not a penny.

How can that be? This is a multi-million dollar business! These owners are filthy rich. They pay their players absurdly extravagant sums of money to do what most of us would gladly do for nothing. And they don’t pay taxes?!

No, they don’t. They don’t pay taxes, because foolish citizens and even more foolish politicians have decided to use tax payer money to subsidize professional sports teams.

You see, Mike Piazza doesn’t care who he plays for. You do. You are a fan. You want your team to win. You are loyal to your team even if they lose. Loyalty is a good quality.  But baseball players have the loyalty of rats. If the New York Mets didn’t offer to pay Mike Piazza more money, he was going to go play for someone else!

But the New York Mets didn’t have enough money for Mike Piazza. How would the owners of the Mets make a profit if they had to pay Mike Piazza more money?

Well, they can cut other expenses, like those horrific stadium costs. But if the team cuts those costs from its budget, who is going to pay for it? Why the city, of course! But where does the city get its money? From property taxes. And where do property taxes come from?

Right– you. You with your $45,000 a year. You are going to give tax money to the New York Mets (if you are citizen of New York) so that they can give Mike Piazza an additional $4 million per year.

But the tax payer would think that is a dumb idea. So instead of the city giving a check to the Mets, it gives them a deduction on their taxes. And then it chips in for a stadium. And then it provides police and traffic services for free.

This is all no secret, by the way, though you would think it would be almost unimaginable that voters would be so stupid as to approve these arrangements. Sports Illustrated has been ranting about this devious little scam for years. A few smart politicians and journalists have caught on as well. And the voters in Minnesota caught on, and recently turned down a proposal to make a gift of a $100 million stadium to the billionaire owner of the Twins, who then threatened to move the Twins to some town with more idiots in it.

It is one of the biggest scandals in modern history: taxpayers subsidizing multi-million dollar contracts for spoiled athletes! And you just know that some of these same owners and athletes and sports journalists and politicians who approve of these arrangements would be among the first to complain bitterly about their hard-earned tax dollars going to a single mother on welfare. Freeloader! Parasite! Give us back your $500 a month and go find a job! Maybe you can park Mike Piazza’s spare Rolls Royce for him, if you’re good.

The problem is that too many cities give in to owner blackmail: build me a stadium or I move to a different city. And the city fathers weep and wail– “Alas, we cannot be without our sports team!” and issue a bond or debenture and build a stadium and forgive them their annual property taxes. Cities without sports teams plead with the Expos or the Twins: move here and we will give you millions of dollars. Millions of YOUR dollars.

And you voters stand for this??? You re-elect these guys? Are you insane?

The Baltimore Orioles, thank you, paid for their own stadium. Hurray for Baltimore! But they still don’t pay any taxes. [According to the Toronto Star of Nov. 29, 1998, the taxpayers paid $254 million for Baltimore’s stadium. When I find out who’s telling the truth, I’ll update this.]

Now, you will hear many supporters of these professional sport teams argue that the teams generate a great deal of revenue, including tax revenue, and attract jobs, and therefore, more than “pay for themselves”. Right. You can apply this argument to absolutely any business you like: banks, car makers, theatre companies, insurance companies, computer makers, anybody. They all generate revenue and taxes. Big deal. Pay your taxes and shut up.

And the issue has been studied: the economic benefits are grossly exaggerated, especially, as I say, compared to other possible investments.

The only solution is for all the cities to get together and agree that none of them will subsidize major league professional sports in any shape or form whatsoever. No subsidized stadiums. No tax concessions. No free police guards. Not even a parade (a long civic advertisement for the team). Tell the major leagues to conduct their businesses like everyone else: you balance out your income vs. your expenditures, and if you can’t afford to pay Mike Piazza $91 million, you offer him less.

Even better, the federal governments in both Canada and the U.S. should outlaw civic funding of sports stadiums.

 

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Blue Jays in 1998

Well, Cal Ripken finally sat down. He notified his manager 30 minutes before game time that, in his infinite grace and wisdom, he would sit out one game. Half of baseball was frantic. I even heard some sadly misguided fans talk about what a great, unselfish player Cal has been.

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Unselfish! What’s wrong with this picture: Cal Ripken tells his coach when he will and when he won’t play! For the record, aside from Ed Sprague and some no-name, Cal Ripken has the worst offensive stats of any third baseman in the league. I wonder if his manager thanked him for sitting out a game.

Anyway, we saw the “great” Cal Ripken live, in person, at the Skydome on Monday. There was some announcement on the PA and then everybody was supposed to stand up and cheer him. I stayed in my seat.

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We had decent seats, 15 rows back along the first base line, just beyond the infield. For four of us, that came to $117.00, including tax. Unlike most major league teams in the U.S., the Blue Jays pay their share of property taxes, $7 million for 1998.

We bought hot dogs and coke on the way, knowing we weren’t allowed to take cans of pop into the stadium. When I popped in one of the entrances to ask where we pick up our tickets, a nice man, a Jays official, offered to get us a cup for the coke. Very decent of him. You sometimes think professional sports organizations are rather tactless and ruthless about getting your money. They are, but at least the Blue Jays have the good sense to show a little decency here and there.

Most people spent the first twenty minutes in the dome looking at the jumbotron to see if the camera is zooming in on them. Fans in the nose-bleed sections will put on a show, take off the shirts, and dance. They have their reward. As soon as the game started, a steady stream of people began leaving their seats for the bathrooms or concessions. I estimate that I saw half of the first 30 pitches. A little boy to the right of us left his seat for the aisle, requiring us to stand up, 13 times. If I was his father, I’d tell him he could leave twice during the game, whenever he chose.

Shawn Green has an amazing ball-player’s body. If Norman Rockwell drew us a ball-player, and wasn’t joking about it, he’d come up with someone who looked like Shawn Green: tall, lanky, angular, with a whip for an arm and an easy, efficient gait. His cap sits low on his forehead just like a ball cap should. I love watching him.

Roberto Alomar, on the other hand, looks like a ballet dancer. Nothing wrong with that– he moves like a ballet dancer too. He’s probably the best all-round player in the game, when he’s not spitting at umpires. The home-plate umpire in this game, by the way, was the very same John Hirschbeck, and his strike zone is still pretty wide. Roger Clemens had 15 strike-outs on the night, not a few of them due to Hirschbeck’s generous zone. At one point, after a called strike that looked pretty low, Alomar turned to him and glared, but didn’t spit.

The Blue Jays are probably not going to make the wild card. At this stage, they would have to win all their remaining games and Boston lose all of theirs. Still, they have made a terrific race out of it after being more than 12 games behind at the end of July. The Jays have the major’s best record since July 31st, right after they dumped Randy Myers, Ed Sprague, Mike Stanley, and Juan Guzman. They were, supposedly, throwing in the towel, but something wonderful happened. Their “fall-back” outfielders, Stewart, Cruz, and Green did what many of us thought they would do two years ago: they ran down balls in the gap, hit the cut-off man, and brought some excitement into the field. They also began to hit up a storm, steal bases, and run up the pitch counts. Tony Fernandez, moved to third base where his defensive lapses don’t hurt as much, batted over .400 in September. Carlos Delgado is establishing himself as reliable RBI man. And Blue Jays pitching, including the young and untested Escobar and Carpenter, as well as the best pitcher in the League in Roger Clemens, began to smother opposition bats.

Everyone thinks the Blue Jays will do it next year. Well, hope springs eternal, but it is a known phenomenon that teams that improve dramatically one season often fall back the next. They would need to re-sign Canseco, but I doubt he will produce another 44 home runs, or survive the full season without injuries. Toronto’s pitching is solid, but I’m not sure that Person is going to be a great closer, and I wonder if Plesac and Quantrill can continue to work miracles out of the bullpen. Roberto Alomar has made it known he would love to play for Toronto next season. Alomar’s a cypher. What does he care about, other than baseball? Who knows? But he is, without a doubt, the best second baseman in baseball. If the Blue Jays were to sign him (he is a free agent at the end of the season), I would bet they will do very well in ’99. Alex Gonzalez is solid defensively, perhaps one of the two or three best shortstops, but he needs to cut down on his strikeouts. Behind the plate, the Jays are solid, if unspectacular. Santiago could have a great season. Then again, he could bat .240.

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Jays in ’99? Possibly. Jays in ’00? Given the same line-up with two more years of maturity– almost certainly.

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Cal Ripken Sit Down!

Cal Ripken is a decent player. I don’t think anybody would seriously mistake him for Brooks Robinson, but he used to hit pretty well for a shortstop. But his range was never very good, so they used to let the grass grow long on the Baltimore infield to slow those hard grounders down so Cal would have a chance at them. People used to say that he made up with intuition what he lacked in speed– as if speedy shortstops at the major league level didn’t have any intuition. Then they finally moved him to third base where his limited range was less of a liability. And he’s still a fairly decent hitter. Well, 12 home runs this year isn’t all that special for a third base man… I think Ed Sprague, God help us, has more.

Cal Ripken’s real claim to fame, of course, is the streak. Everyone in Baltimore, and sometimes around the league, raves about THE STREAK. Even Sports Illustrated, which usually has more sense, occasionally chips in with a little tribute to the STREAK.

And what is this streak? Consecutive hits? Consecutive 30-home-run seasons? Consecutive successful stolen bases? Consecutive game-winning RBI’s? Consecutive put-outs? Consecutive at bats without striking out? Consecutive games without an error? Consecutive games played without the use of steroids?

Nah. You see, those kinds of streaks actually help your team win victories. No, no, no– Cal Ripken’s streak is for showing up at consecutive games. That’s right: he shows up. More than 2,600 games in a row by now. Hey, there he is again, Iron Man Cal!

And interesting point here is that nobody else is even close. Why? Because IRON-man Cal is so much more durable than other players, and such a consistent hitter that he deserves to be in the line up every day, whereas poor old Mark McGuire has to sit out once in a while to stay effective?

Nah. Because no other manager in baseball is allowing any other player to develop such a streak. They don’t want it. They are deliberately sitting players out once in a while– even Mark McGuire– just so they don’t get any ideas in their heads about setting a new streak. The truth is that a streak of consecutive games played doesn’t help your team win, and, in fact, may even hurt your team’s chances. Your manager is forced, every day, to work his line-up around the one immutable fact of your streak. Try out a new, promising third-base man for a game or two? Oops, can’t. Try a left-handed batter against this strong righty? Not today, or the next day, or the next week. See if a bit of rest puts some juice back into his line-drives? Oh no, can’t break up the streak!

I told some friends about five years ago that I didn’t think Baltimore would ever win a World Series as long as Cal Ripken kept his streak going. So far, I’ve been right. Why? If Ripken is a decent player, and he is that– though he is vastly over-rated by most– why does the streak hurt the team? Baseball has become very competitive in the past few years. Teams like Cleveland, long the doormats of the AL, have built themselves into contenders. To maintain such a high level of competitive performance requires that the complete focus of the team be on one goal only: winning as many games as possible. Ripken’s streak robs the Orioles of that kind of focus.

Ripken, by the way, is not the saint he pretends to be. He’s smart and says all the correct things to reporters, but he’s also a prima donna who often travels separately from the team and stays in separate hotels. He pulled strings to get his brother, Billy, the job at second base– he hit about .200 with no power. The owner of the Orioles, Peter Angelos, loves Ripken and let his father manage the team until it became rather clear to everybody that he was in way over his head. Then he had to be fired, which created a lot of tension with Cal, and again disrupted the team’s chemistry.

Cal says, why should I sit out when I can still play? I got news for Mr. Ripken: there’s about 10 million other guys who all think they can play too, including your brother Billy. Until the Orioles show that they are willing to make decisions around the success of the team, instead of one player’s selfish statistics, the Orioles, and their fans, will be losers. If I became manager of the Orioles tomorrow, the first thing I would do is tell Mr. Ripken that the streak is over.

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The Sacrifice Bunt

The Sacrifice

Time and time again, if you are a baseball, fan you will see the following: a team comes up to bat in the late innings of a ball game. The lead-off batter gets on base with a walk or single. The next batter comes up and the manager instructs him to “sacrifice”: bunt the ball to the right side of the infield for a sure out in order to advance the runner to second base. If he succeeds, the colour commentator will rave about him “getting the job done” and “advancing the runner”. After the next two batters strike out and fly out, no one ever says, “Gee, I guess giving up that out on the sacrifice was pretty stupid, eh?”

Does the sacrifice bunt make sense? It must work. Almost every manager in the league does it, often two or three times a game. If everyone does it, it must be right.

The sacrifice bunt emerged as a strategy at a time in baseball history before there was such a thing as a designated hitter. Late in a close game, if a runner got on and the pitcher was the next batter, it made sense, because:

a) pitchers didn’t hit very well (a .200 average was considered good), and,
b) pitchers didn’t run very fast, making them very susceptible to the double play, and,
c) it was usually a good time to bring in a relief pitcher anyway. But nowadays, American League teams use it just as often.

It is possible, with a bit of computer programming and lots of free time, to create a “simulation” of thousands of baseball games. I set up such a simulation once to test the theory that the sacrifice bunt is a stupid strategy. I ran thousands of games in which, after the sixth inning, every time the lead-off batter got on, the manager used the sacrifice bunt. Then I ran the same series of games with no sacrifice bunt. Since there is no way of knowing which hitter exactly is coming up to bat in these situations, I created an average team with a set of batting and on-base percentages that reflected the abilities of a normal range of players.

It didn’t surprise me that the second simulation showed many, many more runs scored than the simulations using the sacrifice bunt. Consider this: the following batter, in most situations, will have an on base percentage (hits + walks) in the neighborhood of least .325. So roughly 1/3 of the time, he will advance the runner anyway, without giving up an out. The next batter has the same 1/3 chance of advancing the runner without giving up an out. And so does the next. And… here is the key point… so does the next batter. Without a sacrifice, you still have three outs to work with. With the sacrifice, you only have two. How significant is that? Consider some other factors. The next batter will, of course, often hit a double, a triple, or a home run instead of a single. With the runner on first, the first baseman has to hold the runner on, leaving a gap in the infield. The pitcher is often distracted by the runner. A fast runner has a chance of stealing the base anyway– I saw Tim Johnson use a sacrifice when he had Alex Gonzalez– a good base-stealer–on first. Finally, with the runner on second and one out, if the next hitter is “hot”, he will get walked anyway, setting up a potential double play. And don’t forget that without a runner at first, the first base man doesn’t have to cover the runner.

I’m not saying the sacrifice never works. But a lot of people make the foolish assumption that the odds of getting the hit you need to score a run are roughly the same after a sacrifice as they are before. In fact, they are substantially less, because one less batter is going to get a chance to drive in that run, and because the sacrifice ensures that the “batter” following a lead-off single or double invariably “hits” a single. In other words, over a season, or even a short series, the sacrifice will fail to achieve it’s desired objective– scoring a run– far more often than simply letting the next three batters do their job.

Well, if a sacrifice is so stupid, why do managers do it? The answer is simpler than you might imagine. Consider the World Series Champions of 1992 and 1993, the Toronto Blue Jays, who were managed by Cito Gaston. I don’t think anybody in this world would think that Cito was a smarter manager than Bobby Cox, one of the shrewdest skippers in the league. Why did he win? He simply put good talent on the field and let them play the way they were capable of. He put Roberto Alomar at second base and watched him make unbelievable fielding plays. He penciled in Devon White in centre field and watched him swallow up every fly ball hit there. He had the finest defensive third baseman in the league that year in Kelly Gruber (’92), and he had terrific pitchers, including Henke, Ward, and Wells, who didn’t give up a single run in relief until the final game. He won in spite of his questionable management. He won in 1993 in spite of the idiotic managerial decision to let Jimmy Key leave as a free agent and so they could retain Jack Morris, who contributed nothing to the 1993 victory. He won because Paul Molitor, John Olerud, Roberto Alomar, and Devon White, had terrific years.

Well, what exactly, then, is the role of the manager? The role of the manager is to call for the sacrifice bunt. What if the sacrifice bunt is a stupid strategy? Then what would the manager do? Send for the closer in the 9th inning of close games?

It’s like the famous question asked of Keith Richards, of the Rolling Stones: “Why don’t you sing more often?”

Keith replied, “then what would Mick do?”

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Sports and Taxes

Let’s see if I understand the logic of Gary Bettman.

He spoke to the Canadian Club in the luxurious York Hotel in downtown Toronto. He said this:

Cities are bidding to try and get franchises away and they’re willing to build buildings and they’re willing to not tax because they understand that there is an economic and an intangible value to having professional sports teams.

According to Bettman, the Ottawa Senators, who pay the least in Canada, a mere $3 million a year, in taxes, pay more than 20 U.S. teams.

So Bettman wants you and me, brother, to contribute our tax dollars to the Ottawa Senators, the Montreal Canadians, and the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the other Canadian teams, so they, in turn, can pay Wendell Clark two or three million dollars a year to sit in the press box, play golf, and once in a while show up in uniform to play hockey.

Are we nuts? Is he nuts?

Well, no, the truth is Bettman is pretty smart. As he points out, 20 U.S. teams pay less than $3 million a year in taxes, and get all kinds of other taxpayer sponsored concessions, like stadiums, parking, highways, and traffic police. From the point of view of professional athletes and the owners of professional sports teams, he is very smart indeed.

If someone came up to you and said, “Hey, would you please give me some money, so I can hire some athletes to play baseball?” you would probably say, “Well, how much do you need?” And Mr. Bettman would reply, on behalf of all sports owners, “Oh, about $60-70 million.” You might come to your sense about this point and say, “Why would any sane person pay someone that much money to play baseball?”

Why indeed.

This is madness, insanity, and incomprehensible idiocy. But it goes on and on and on.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation also reported that the Canadian Government has extended more than $11 billion in “aid” to corporations over the past 15 years (1982-97). Of the $11 billion, about $2 billion is not likely to ever be repaid. Remember that the next time you hear a politician or business leader talk about those “lazy” welfare cheats and their scandalous $365 a month.

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Instant Insanity

These are just a few of the items that convince me that our society is going insane at an increasingly rapid pace.

1. The Paula Jones/Monica Lewinsky/Whoever-else-you-want-to-add scandal in the U.S. The self-proclaimed most powerful nation in the world allows its leader to be handcuffed by the most idiotic court case in the history of the U.S. Right now, they are arguing over whether or not Clinton looked “sternly” at Paula Jones, and may have held the door shut for a “split second” after making sexual advances to her. These people– Kenneth Starr, the Senate Judiciary Committee, Orrin Hatch, the media, are INSANE. Hatch in particular should get an Oscar. There he sits, with a straight face, shamelessly wringing his hands about how tragic and awful that the president had sexual urges— while knowing full well that the entire scandal has become nothing more than a conservative putsch. The media collaborates in a black comedy of farcical proportions, pretending that this is all serious, important stuff. What do these men say privately after the camera is turned off? They must cover their faces and laugh like banshees… “I can’t believe they’re still swallowing this stuff.”

2. Kevin Weber, who stole–let me get this right– FOUR chocolate chip cookies from a restaurant in California, will serve 26 Years to Life in prison for the offense. I am not kidding. 26 years to Life!! At a cost of at least $35K a year, California taxpayers are going to put out about $1 million dollars to convince themselves that they’re really a lot safer now that Kevin Weber is off the streets. This is INSANE.

The first time I read Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, I thought he was exaggerating. He wasn’t. He lived in California at the time he wrote it. Weber is 34. The judge in the case had a chance to review the sentence after the Supreme Court ruled that judges still had some discretion in sentencing under a 3 strikes law. The judge insisted that society is served by this monumentally stupid decision. Yes, MONUMENTALLY STUPID. It makes you want to throw yourself off a cliff. Especially since the media is far more interested in whether or not Bill Clinton looked “sternly” or merely “firmly” at Paula Jones, before opening the door for her to leave his hotel room, than whether some people’s lives are pointlessly destroyed by idiotic laws..

3. A lot of research has been done on Repressed Memory Syndrome lately. It is now very apparent to any reasonable person that no such thing exists. We don’t know for sure if some of the alleged sexual abuse that people claim to have “recovered” memories of really occurred. But where we do know that such abuse (or other trauma) took place, researchers can’t seem to find anybody who can’t remember it. In other words, there are no scientific, rational grounds for believing that such a thing as repressed memory exists, and there never have been such grounds. Nevertheless, dozens of innocent people continue to rot in jail because some prosecutors and police forces refuse to admit they were wrong. [added July 2004] In other words, where there is relatively indisputable evidence that sexual abuse did take place, you would think that a percentage of these victims would have no memory of the events. That is not the case. In every case that we know about, the victims do have a continuously existing memory of it. I’m very interested in reading about it if someone has evidence otherwise.

4. After Mary Kay Letourneau got sentenced to seven years in jail for having sex with a minor (her student, in grade school), and bearing his child, she went and did it again. And now, once again, she is pregnant with his child.

5. Latrell Sprewell, a basketball player, physically attacks his coach, twice. An arbitrator has just ruled that he shouldn’t lose his job, or his $17 million salary, because of his modest indiscretion. Meanwhile, Mo Vaughn, a ball player for the Boston Red Sox, gets off after refusing a breathalyzer test. And don’t you think for one minute that you will get treated differently just because you’re not a rich famous ballplayer!

6. The last time trouble started with the Serbs, the Europeans kind of stood around and talked and talked while tens of thousands of Bosnians were “cleansed”, tortured, raped, and murdered. So trouble starts with these same Serbs in Kosovo, which is 90% populated by Albanians. What does the EU do? Wring it’s hands some more, talk, and talk, and talk, and hope that nothing awful happens. After Bosnia, it is hard to believe that anyone is going to do anything to stop the slaughter.

7. A woman in Hamilton Ontario is suing the hospital that safely delivered her twin babies because it failed to provide a “pain-free” birth. At one point, in between deliveries, she demanded that the doctor stop the process unless she could eliminate the pain she was feeling. Why are taxpayers subsidizing this insanity? Why didn’t the judge toss this one out on it’s ear within the first five minutes? [July 2004: The judge did eventually toss it out.]

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Sports Economics

Everybody knows that salaries for professional athletes are completely absurd, but nobody seems have any rational idea of what can be done about it. The basic argument against doing anything is that if people want to pay $55 to sit in a huge stadium and watch a bunch of spoiled athletes shoot hoops or shag fly balls or run into each other, what’s to stop them? It’s a free country.

Ah, but it’s not that simple. There are rules by which all businesses in the U.S. and Canada must operate. Most of these are good rules, designed to prevent collusion and restraint of competition. But professional sports do not abide by these rules: they have an exemption, granted by the government. The solution to the problem of outrageous sports salaries is really very simple. You remove or modify the legal exemption. Bang. Done.

Few people understand what the meaning of this exemption is. The meaning is that professional sports teams are not subject to the usual rules of competition, even though they are for-profit businesses. They are allowed to cooperate together to form a single league with a de facto monopoly over players and venues. In exchange for this exemption, the leagues are supposed to provide a commissioner to ensure that the interests of the sport are served. In reality, in practice, all the commissioners serve only one interest, that of the team owners. New franchises are handed out like lollipops because the astronomical entrance fees are divvied up among the established owners.

What would happen if the exemption were abolished? It would take a while, but we would begin to see minor leagues flourish again and some of them would grow into genuine competition for the Majors. Most medium-sized towns would be able to support a professional team because, with a multiplicity of smaller leagues instead of one, exclusive, big league, players salaries would decline to a rational level. And instead of a very small number of black athletes emerging from the ghettos to make it very, very, very big, we might have a large number of black athletes playing on a large number of professional teams, making a decent living for themselves, and helping bring business to their home communities with medium-sized stadiums, where fans will also actually get a decent view of the game.

We would have to kiss goodbye to the concept of “THE” Major Leagues. Big deal. And no more publicly-funded stadiums, one of the most insane ideas of our time (why are we taxpayers subsidizing the outrageous salaries of professional athletes?).

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Allen Inverson

Allen Iverson is a point guard on the Philadelphia 76ers. He is possibly the most promising young talent in the game. The Sixers pay him $9.4 million over three years, but he also receives endorsement money from Reebok. It costs $54 a ticket to watch Allen Iverson play.

Iverson grew up in Hampton, Virginia, in the ghetto, in a dilapidated house that was frequently unheated because his mother, who was 15-years-old when he was born, could not afford to pay the bills. The house reeked of backed-up sewage.

As he grew up, Allen watched friend after friend die violently in gang turf wars. Allen’s father served time–for stabbing a girlfriend–as did his step-father. But Allen was born with a gift, and he worked hard to perfect it. He starred in high school basketball, and then for two years at university. Then he hit the big time: the NBA.

Now that he is a millionaire, Iverson has moved his mother, his sisters, his aunts, his uncles… just about everyone in his extended family, and his girlfriend and two children of his own, into decent housing outside of Philadelphia. He also supports two full-time body-guards.

Who is after Allen Iverson? I don’t know. But every important person has a body-guard.

Allen Iverson served some time in jail when he was in high school because he was in a bowling alley when a riot broke out between some whites and blacks. The police arrived and arrested four blacks, including Iverson, and none of the whites. He was alleged to have thrown a chair that struck a woman in the head. He received five years in penitentiary even though he had no previous convictions and insisted that he had left the alley immediately after the trouble started. His conviction was later over-turned upon appeal and erased from his record.

Did you read that carefully? A young black man with no previous convictions received a 5-year sentence for allegedly throwing a chair at a woman during a fight in a bowling alley. Five years. Isn’t that a little harsh? What does five years in prison do to a young man like Allen Iverson? What do you have when he comes out? Do you think that when he comes out, he will say to himself, “Whoa! I’ll never do that again!”

Allen’s high school friends can’t afford the $54 it takes to see Allen play, but Sports Illustrated reports that some of the white men who can afford it heckle Iverson mercilessly.

What does Allen spend his millions on, after supporting his extended family? Incredibly tasteless, ostentatious jewelry, a red Jaguar for his mother, a Mercedes Benz for himself. Whatever he wants.

This is the face of the modern pro athlete. Everyone I know complains bitterly about the absurdly excessive amounts of money these athletes are paid. When we find out what they spend that money on, we are sometimes shocked at the waste and extravagance. We are disappointed that they don’t seem to put the money back into the poverty-stricken communities they came from.

Salaries for professional athletes entered the realm of absurdity years ago. Everyone seems to know it, but no one seems to know any way to stop it. And they keep going: the latest contracts are for over $100 million. This is beyond idiocy and absurdity: it is pure madness.

But the story of Allen Iverson should give us pause. It is one thing for comfortable, middle-class whites to stand appalled at the state of affairs in professional sports; it is quite another for a black-teenager from an American ghetto. For many of these teenagers, their only hope of leaving their poverty behind is either drug-dealing or professional sports. In some ways, Iverson’s huge salary is his payoff for suffering years of abuse and degradation.

Consider also the case of Latrell Sprewell, who assaulted his own coach, P.J. Carlesimo. The team and the League did the right thing, for once. The team terminated his contract and the NBA suspended him. Astonishingly, an arbitrator over-ruled both, shortened the suspension to six months, and reinstated his $17 million contract. Once again, we are beyond the realm of the unusual and into the realm of the completely bizarre. If you physically attacked and injured your supervisor, do you think you would be merely suspended? Where would you find an arbitrator dumb enough to reinstate you at full salary?

Given the general weirdness of all this, is it so hard to believe that the CIA deliberately encouraged drug-use by inner-city blacks, or that the budget deficit was the result of a conspiracy among bankers, investors, and the military, to convince the general public that government spending was out of control and force social spending down while continuing to line their own pockets? If you carefully analyze the changes in tax law over the past twenty years, two things are clear:

  • a huge chunk of the deficit spending went into the pockets of military contractors and suppliers (think of the infamous $450 hammers charged to the Pentagon)
  • a huge chunk of the taxes that will pay off the deficit is coming from the pockets of hard-working, average citizens, because of all the tax cuts and deductions that benefit the rich
  • the budget deficit did not hurt the rich one little bit. While you and I were constantly told that we had to lower our expectations, cut back, and make sacrifices, accept down-sizing, because times are tough, the rich continued to increase their own salaries and profits, sometimes by astronomical sums.

What has this got to do with Allen Iverson and basketball? Just part of the general weirdness of our economic system, that’s all. Millions of people go to work every day. They spend hours and hours working hard, doing various challenging tasks, and thusly they generate enormous wealth. Where does this wealth go? Well, we know that you and I are getting about the same amount we got twenty years ago, maybe a little less. On the other hand, professional athletes, heads of corporations, and Al Dunlap– the man who is famous for taking “down-sizing” to extreme heights in the name of shareholder profits–are all making way, way, way more than they used to. Bank profits are way up. Microsoft is making a bundle. Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Madonna…. In 1990, the average NHL salary was $200,000. Today it is $1.1 million. When was the last time you got an increase in your pay?

Money moves around. We ought to pay close attention to how it moves around. There is one thing that is resoundingly clear about the way it moves around: pretty well anybody who can take more, will take more. There is no restraint on human greed. Some people regard unions as greedy. That may be true, but the difference is that unions distribute wealth far more widely than corporations do, and history tells us that the more widely and evenly wealth is distributed, the safer and healthier a society is.

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Olympian Rip-off

According to Avery Brundidge, the Olympics “embraces the highest moral laws. NO philosophy, no religion preaches loftier sentiments.”

Well, if the highest moral law is “he who has the gold, makes the rules”, then he’s right.

For all the hype, the Olympics is nothing more than a two-week long commercial with athletes. During the first few days of competition, I would estimate that there was about three minutes of competition to about three hours of meaningless chatter about scandals and politics and about twelve hours of commercials. Someone with more patience should sit down with a stop-watch and get the actual figures.

During an important curling match, the CBC actually cut away for commercials while rocks were being thrown in the late ends of an extremely close semi-final match between Britain and Canada. It’s almost as bad as ABC News Nightline. Could anything have made it more clear what the Olympics are really all about?

There will be some great competitions, no doubt, and men’s hockey is shaping up to be one of the best. On the larger ice surface, we might actually get to see some skating, passing, and stick-handling. Why did the NHL agree to this? Don’t they realize that viewers will be appalled when they are forced to watch the ridiculous thuggery of the NHL again after this treat? Maybe that’s why they announced there will be a crack-down on clutch-and-grab tactics after the Olympics.

As for figure skating and ice dancing, if everyone knows that the judging is decided on the basis of back-room politicking, why can’t anybody seem to do anything about it?

The reason why is simple: the International Olympic Committee is the personal fiefdom of Juan Antonio Samaranch, the former youth fascist, who runs the organization with an iron fist behind walls of secrecy. He appoints new members to the committee. He controls the purse strings. And he is accountable to no one.

This kind of structure should not be able to survive the modern era. Most large corporations have begun to realize that without clear lines of accountability, they cannot be competitive. Everyone is too busy covering their own rear end to serve the genuine interests of the company.

When Ross Rebagliati tested positive for marijuana at these Olympics, someone should have looked at the receipts for the Atlanta games. As Dan Morgenson pointed out in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, 9,000 cases of beer, 1,800 cases of wine, and 600 cases of liquor, were delivered to Hyatt Regency hotel for the benefit of the 106 members of the International Olympic Committee. Hypocrisy run amok!

All of the world’s national Olympic Committees should meet together this year and announce that a new structure must be created by a committee elected from the National Olympic bodies. The first task of this committee will be to create a code of conduct which all of the national bodies must subscribe to or suffer ineligibility. This code of conduct must stipulate that the committees are accountable to the athletes they serve and to the supporting community. This code should set a fixed ratio of “officials” to athletes to attend each sporting event. All officials must be legitimate representatives of their sports– not sycophants of some politician or general.

The second task will be to set up a new International Olympic Organization with a board that is democratically elected from among all the member national bodies. No nation will be allowed to nominate from their own country. At least 50% of the board members should be elected directly by the athletes.

The third task will be to impose stringent limits on the amount of Olympic dollars that are allocated for administration and promotion. Nobody knows what the exact numbers are, but nobody doubts that a huge proportion of Olympic spending is devoted to the comfort and pleasure of the same idiot officials and appointees who decided that Ross Rebagliati should lose his gold medal because of trace amounts of THC in his blood.

Finally, the baloney should be removed from the selection process for hosts for the Olympic games. Once again, everybody knows that the process is incredibly corrupt– officials are almost handed suitcases of cash by representatives of contending cities– but nobody seems to have the guts or the means to stop it.

We have seen the U.S. press become hysterically obsessed with the salacious but insignificant scandal of Bill Clinton’s undisciplined sexual urges. Millions of words and thousands of hours of television program have been devoted to this non-news story. Compared to the Monica Lewinsky story, the way the International Olympic Committee operates is a major scandal of outrageous proportions. The only way it will ever get on the front page, however, will be if Samaranch hires himself a lovely little intern…

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Black Eye for Canadian Athletes at the Olympics

CBC Radio just reported on a “visit” by Canadian Olympic athletes to a Japanese elementary school near Nagano. This event had been planned months ago and the school had been told that even Wayne Gretzsky and his wife might show up.

Well, the only people who showed up were a few Olympic Committee Functionaries and Atina Ford, an alternate on the Canadian Women’s Curling team. The entire event became a dismal embarrassment to all concerned. The children had prepared elaborate gifts and ceremonies, and games designed to include the honored athletes. The teachers had brushed up on their English and arranged an assembly and invited parents.

Atina Ford saved the day to some extent. She is a teacher by profession, and she quickly gathered the children around her and got some games started and had the children laughing and clapping. The Japanese were exceedingly polite and gracious, but there was no hiding the crushing disappointment, especially among the staff of the school who had been preparing for the event for three weeks.

I surprised myself at how ashamed I felt about the behaviour of the Canadian athletes, far, far more ashamed than I did about Ross Rebagliati testing positive for marijuana. In the back of my mind, I think I understand how busy their lives are and how it must feel to have everyone clamoring for a piece of you all the time. But this story twists a knife in your guts. Maybe it’s because we do know how busy our athletes are: signing endorsement contracts, going to parties, receiving congratulatory calls from the Prime Minister, posing for pictures, exchanging Olympic paraphernalia with other athletes, meeting with their agents, their trainers, their personal chef, or whatever… and none of them had a few moments to spare for a group of hopeful Japanese school children?

I just know that when our athletes find out about this humiliating situation, a number of them will step forward and immediately schedule a visit to the school as soon as possible. If they do, we’ll know they really do have class, and all will be forgiven. If they don’t, I know what my strongest memory of these Olympic games is going to be.

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What’s all this blather about how beautiful and elegant and graceful the figure skaters are? As far as I’m concerned, Joan McCusker of the curling team is the only goddess on ice at these Olympic games.

 

* * *

The Canadian men’s hockey team is far more dominant than I think most people give them credit for. I’ll go on record: they will stroll into the Gold Medal. Remember, you heard it here first.

March 8, 1998: Obviously, I was wrong. However, I will observe that Canada lost to the eventual champions, Czechoslovakia, by the slimmest of margins. Then they lost an embarrassment to the Fins, but did anybody really believe the Canadians cared deeply about the Bronze medal?

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The Canadian women’s hockey team deserved to lose, but I wish they had won just so I wouldn’t have had to watch the U.S. women actually sing their national anthem after receiving their medals. Don’t they know that you’re supposed to just move your lips up and down vaguely so, just in case anyone accused you of patriotism, you could always say you were mouthing the Lord’s Prayer or just chewing gum instead?

Anyway, Women’s hockey should not be an Olympic sport. There were only two countries in serious contention. It was a medal giveaway for the U.S. and Canada. Come back when there are at least six contenders.