Cappin’ America’s Pastime: A SportsChump-J-Dub Pitch and Catch (alternate Point-Counterpoint: Does Baseball Need A New Kind Of Cap?)

Introduction by SportsChump:

Let’s start this whole thing off with a riddle.

Two men walk into a bar.  One is named SportsChump, the other J-Dub.

They run up a hearty tab.

At closing time, which one of us reaches for the check first?

The obvious answer would be SportsChump as he’s the resident bartender and J-Dub has alligator arms or insert whichever “J-Dub is cheap” joke you want here.

I jest for it goes without saying that when my blogging partner and I finally meet in person, we’d both need to cash out our 401Ks to cover the amount of liquor consumed.

I bring up the whole spending/not spending money argument because that’s what one of our nation’s finest institutions is about to do, all egalitarian-like.  Major League Baseball’s new Communist Manifesto.

And it’s about damn time… I think.

After all the bemoaning the American people have expressed about baseball, who knew the commissioner’s office was listening all along.

That’s right, America.  The Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Cubs, Cardinals and Red Sox will no longer be able to spend to their heart’s content.  Baseball is about to set a monetary curfew, a cap if you will.  They’ll institute a floor as well, meaning teams that don’t spend will now have to.

Not long ago, as in literally like yesterday, the rich teams could spend what they wanted, how they wanted, on whom they wanted and there was not a damn thing the smaller market teams (every other team but them) could do about it except cash in their revenue sharing checks and thank their daddies for their allowances.

That’s all about to change, allegedly.

The NFL and NBA’s quest for parity and, uncoincidentally, the end of the modern dynasty, has resulted in increased television ratings, at least in the NFL’s case.  Not to be outdone, the latest NBA Finals were the most watched since 1998, thanks in no small part to Knickerbocker magic. 

These are salary-capped sports.  While a league still needs star power to draw, it could be argued it’s unfair that one team hoards that advantage simply because it can afford to based on the market within which it resides.

Imagine the Knicks being able to sign LeBron, Curry, Durant and whoever else they wanted in their heyday simply because there were no checks and balances.

I don’t know that making baseball “fairer” by demanding the poor spend more and the rich spend less will make me watch the sport any more than I already don’t.  Although as someone who roots for one of the more frugal, er… poorer teams out there, it would be nice to see them finally spend some coin and hold on to a player who has earned his keep.

While discussion and even implementation of a cap is admirable, it seems baseball has become reactionary.  While I get that listening to customer demands is a successful way to run a business, Augusta does just fine abiding by their own rules and telling everyone else to fuck off.  We’re going to charge $1.50 for pimento cheese sandwiches and there’s nothing you can do about it.  It’s their draw and part of their charm.  And before you think that’s not an apt comparison, both Augusta National and Major League Baseball are two of America’s most-deep rooted sports institutions who have traditionally blazed their own trail albeit occasionally behind the times.

Baseball, however, has become Burger King in their latest commercials where the CEO boasts “We listened to you,” changing their business model at the request of the consumer, cleaning up their restaurants nationwide (what a concept!) and no longer serving swamp meat.  But I ask you how many Americans still eat Burger King?

I’ve talked to “knowledgeable sports fans” in the past who didn’t even know baseball had no cap.  These people are no longer in my circle of trust. 

So, I ask you, Dubs, if and when baseball implements a cap, will this even matter and will it be good for the sport?

J-Dub:

Welcome to today’s episode of “Pot Calling The Kettle Black.” A jewish guy calling a black guy cheap is just an argument between two penny-pinchers who never hit anything above the “5%” tip button on Apple Pay. The best part is one of those guys works as a bartender who conveniently suggests cashing out retirement plans to cover a liquor tab, knowing full well he would expect a tip for doing little more than keeping the ice cubes cold.

Despite that, cashing out your 401K to pay a bar bill is about as dumb as the idea of a salary cap. Chump hit the proverbial nail with his “Communist Manifesto.” The problem is whether we’re talking about a salary cap or communism, the biggest lie about both of them is the myth of egalitarianism. 

I explored this when I broke down how the NFL salary cap actually works. The details might have changed over time, but the concept is as strong as ever. Regardless of the sport, a salary cap is anything but a “hard” number thou shalt not exceed. Instead, it’s a complex series of variables lumped into a mega-algorithm meant to make spending on team salaries seem “fair.”

Here’s where the lie gets a slogan. Every time you hear the term “competitive balance” in the salary cap conversation, you’re being sold the bilgewater that equality in spending translates to equality of outcome on the field. One need look no further than the very same NFL to see the exact opposite is true. Tell me how many times in the past six years the Super Bowl has featured the Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers, or Kansas City Chiefs?  Conversely, Jerry Jones is literally the guy who turned NFL franchises from million to billion-dollar investments, and never met a salary cap with which he hasn’t been “toes barely in bounds.”  How many times have the Cowboys been a Super Bowl squad in the last 30 years?

Baseball salary cap or not, the game will be the same; he who manages his resources best wins. Look no further than the two-time defending champ Los Angeles Dodgers. They outflanked the confiscatory Commie-fornia tax system by figuring out how to defer salaries so big-money players will go there. If they can beat the government, don’t you think they can get around a salary cap?

We can get into the reasons why this idea is bubbling up, but the question was will this be good or bad for baseball? My answer is neither; the team with the best accountants and talent scouts wins now, and will win then.

In other words, if you want a salary cap, stop selling me this “egalitarian” bullshit. Now, if you want to talk about how this really is just a lame-brained attempt by stupid-ass owners from chasing themselves up the money tree, we can have that conversation. Just be prepared for me to point out a salary cap is little more than collusion with a lawyer’s seal of approval.

SportsChump:

So, you’re telling me if I go into a Burger King, I may find an employee with a smile and a neatly pressed uniform behind the counter but eventually stumble into an unkempt lavatory in the back that still stinks to high hell.

Got it.

Thank you as always for pulling back the curtain, Mr. Oz, and for once again reminding us how the sausage is made.  This is why the perennially rosy eyed me looks to my embittered counterpart for grounding.

While the Dodgers may still win three of the first four titles in the new cap era thanks to Magic Johnson’s shrewd, high-priced accountant, don’t think for one second when a small market team (finally) wins the Series, Baseball won’t celebrate its “New Era” with a hearty “See? We fixed the game.” slogan.

They might even parade the ghost of George Steinbrenner out there to congratulate them on their win.

Just kidding. Not even a Steinbrenner hologram would be caught dead doing that, opting for the Isiah Thomas/Victor Wembanyama walking off the court in defeat without even so much as a handshake.

So then why all the fuss?  Is this much ado about nothing or are the people who think they’re smarter than us throwing out a line to see what they can catch?

Conclusion by J-Dub:

Well, first I must congratulate you for finding a way to reference both Shakespeare and Digital Underground’s 90 hip-hop meisterwerk The Humpty Dance. But whether you struck out or homered in a Burger King bathroom, we’re talking about baseball. Today as we write this, we’re by default talking about the upcoming collective bargaining agreement…which will determine what actually happens with any proposed salary cap. That means this is all much ado about nothing.

Nothing is going to change.

There’s three groups at the bargaining table; millionaire players, multi-millionaire “small market” owners, and the now-demonized billionaire “big-market” billionaire owners debating the sharing of their collective golden goose. Regardless whether the topic is limiting the length of free-agent contracts, banning deferred money deals, or even the aforementioned salary cap, the reality is everybody in one of the three groups comes to the table with a wish list, and nobody gets everything they want. No matter how fat the goose, there still only two drumsticks, and somebody has to save the neck for Cousin Eddie.

That brings to the answer to Chump’s “fuss” question. There once was a day when deal-making was more of an art and less of a show. Now it’s festival of noise. Blaming that on the cameras of the CorpoSport media or those who play to them is the proverbial “goose or egg” question. That’s what ClickBait Sports Network is all about; finding ways to keep asking the same question and disguising the same answers with a manufactured layer of importance.

That’s why it takes a pair of quasi-geriatric bloggers to set the record straight here. We  don’t give a shit who gets the neck. We just want sports on our TVs, and we want those sports to be worth what we pay to see them. We’re the ones who put the gold in the goose, and at the end of the day, everybody knows that…even if they need the occasional reminder.

There’s an old saying about something being “as American as baseball and apple pie.” Money, sports, and sex are universal, but all of those things are linked by their consistency…people will always want them.

That’s never going to change. As long as there’s bats, balls, and Burger Kings, people gon’ do the Humpty…even if they have to take the occasional neck.