Baseball needs to share the wealth

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Arlie Rahn

You need to look no further than last season's Florida Marlins to see that theory in action. After fielding an 80-82 team in 1996, the Marlins bulked up their payroll with players like Bobby Bonilla, Kevin Brown, Moises Alou, Devon White and Al Leiter in 1997.

The result? A World Championship.

Still doubting the effect of a payroll on success? Take a look at this season's teams. First and foremost we have the New York Mercenaries, er, Yankees. With a cool $63.5 million in salaries, the Bronx Bombers have coasted to a 114-48 season and a 2-0 advantage in the World Series. Yet out of the 26 players on their opening day roster, only six were home-grown. Just looking at salary dump trades and free agent pickups and you get six of their nine starting hitters and three of the team's top four starting pitchers.

But before you Padre fans start gloating about your "small market" team playing with the big boys, you might want to check that San Diego roster. The Pads have only two home-grown players on their roster and have a payroll of over $45 million. If you look at the teams that finished over .500, only one (Anaheim) had a payroll of less than $45 million. In fact, the discrepancy between the "haves" and "have-nots" has gotten so bad that Greg Maddux makes more in one year ($9,600,000) than the entire Expos team ($9,162,000).

So what is the result of all this? You have three teams consistently in the league finals (Atlanta, the Yankees and Cleveland) and one wild card that decides to spend a little extra money and is therefore given a one-year membership in this elite "Playoff Club" (San Diego, Florida, the Cubs).

But I'm not here only to rant and rave about the problems of baseball, anyone can do that. I am here to propose a viable solution: Revenue sharing and a salary cap.

You need to look only to the NFL to see its success. In any given week in the NFL, Chicago can beat Dallas, Buffalo can beat San Francisco and even the Detroit Lions can beat the Green Bay Packers.

Here's how the plan works: All 30 baseball teams send a portion (say 20 percent) of their profits to a common pool. The league then breaks up this large sum of money into 30 equal portions and sends one portion to each team. Next, a team cannot begin the regular season until its team payroll is less than a common number (say $45 million). This would force 14 teams to trim their payroll a bit, but only four would need to cut it by more than $10 million.

Now, while this is simple in theory, and even makes sense, baseball probably would not accept it with open arms. First, the player's organization would scream bloody murder because the average player salary would drop to the near-poverty level of $1,800,000. Next the owners of the big markets would cry and moan that revenue sharing would rob them of their much-needed profits. After all, how can you survive when your revenue is cut from $70 million to $65 million?

But once the initial outcries subside, baseball would regain that competitive edge it had in the '70s and early '80s. Teams like the Yankees, Braves and Indians would still have an edge because they can afford to spend the $45 million, but teams like the Pirates and Tigers would have the revenue to steal an occasional star from the big boys and actually re-sign some of their young talent. Some drama might actually creep into the playoffs and cities like Kansas City, Milwaukee and Philadelphia could actually participate in a playoff race.

Now all we need is for the players and owners to put the good of baseball over their own personal gain. Well, let's just say I won't hold my breath.

Arlie Rahn is a senior majoring in systems engineering. He can be reached via e-mail at Arlie.Rahn@wildcat.arizona.edu.