"Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred says he is getting emails from fans concerned over the sport's lack of a salary cap following an offseason spending spree by the Los Angeles Dodgers." -ESPN
Yeah, too late now. The lack of a salary cap in Major League Baseball became baseball's biggest issue as soon as the Steroid Era ended. It has been a major issue in the sport since the 1980's.
But for 50 years, the biggest campaigner AGAINST the salary cap has been the New York Yankees. Do you know why George Steinbrenner isn't in the Baseball Hall of Fame? Because he didn't care about the sport of Baseball, he only cared about the Yankees. If Steinbrenner won the World Series by forfeit because he put the other teams in the league out of business, he would have been happy.
Let's go back and look at where the Yankees ranked in salary over the past generation:
1998: Second
1999: First
2000: First
2001: First
2002: First
2003: First
2004: First
2005: First
2006: First
2007: First
2008: First
2009: First
2010: First
2011: First
2012: First
2013: First
2014: Second
2015: Second
2016: Second
2017: Second
2018: Seventh
2019: Third
2020: First
2021: Second
2022: Third
2023: Second
2024: Second
Ironically, earlier this week, former commissioner Faye Vincent died. According to Ethics Alarms:
"Fay Vincent, the last real Commissioner of Baseball, has died and attention should be paid....(his) term as Commissioner of Baseball only lasted three years, from Sept. 13, 1989, to Sept. 7, 1992. The owners fired him because he was determined to block their efforts to force a salary cap on the players union, which he knew would result in a disastrous strike.
The owners re-made the Commissioner’s office as a tool of the owners and installed a particularly slimy owner, millionaire car deal Bud Selig, as the new “Commissioner.”
So, as the Los Angeles Dodgers have backloaded almost a billion dollars in salary over the next decade, all of a sudden, there's a salary problem in baseball.
From George Steinbrenner's Brat Son: "It's difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kinds of things that (the Dodgers) are doing. We'll see if it pays off."
Waaahhhhh!
Now don't get me wrong, there SHOULD be a salary cap in baseball, but not because the Dodgers constructed salaries in a way that the Yankees never thought of.
Spineless Puppet Rob Manfred isn't solving baseball's ills anytime soon....
I remember listening to Cleveland Indians baseball on an old AM radio in a tent in the backyard.
I haven't loved baseball in a long, long time.