Subway Series? Good for N.Y., bad for baseball
The reason baseball has fallen so far behind the NFL and the NBA goes beyond the disfigured skulls of the acne-scarred steroid generation. Fans want to see balance in their sport. They want to feel like each team has a chance even if some of that hope is part illusion.
While football's salary cap has defeated the problem, baseball still stubbornly sticks to its 20th century ideals and notions.
It is true that small markets in baseball can and have won championships, but it takes great luck to do so. Just recently the general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, J.P. Ricciardi, told the Toronto Sun that unless the Blue Jays can drastically increase their payroll from the $70 million range, baseball's equivalent of minimum wage, they had no chance to compete against the Yankees or Red Sox in the division.
"I'd have to say for the money we had to work with and what we got, we're probably doing as expected," Ricciardi told the newspaper, speaking of his third-place team. "I don't think you're going to win this division on $70 million. I don't think you're going to make the playoffs on $70 million.
"I think you can be competitive and you can have some good years, but I think these two teams (Boston and New York) with their payroll, it's going to be really tough to catch these guys if we stay at a $70 million payroll," he said. "It doesn't mean we can't be good, we can't compete. I just don't think you're going to see a chance to win 95, 100 games." He added: "I think we tell the fans the same thing we did this year. It's not like there is no hope, but the reality is that we can be competitive and, if everything goes right, we might find a way to get in the playoffs. But a lot of things have to go right for us to overtake these two teams. It's not sour grapes or anything. It's just the reality. We'll be competitive, but up to a point."
Fans know deep in their souls that what Ricciardi says is true. It's what kills baseball and World Series ratings and why another Yankees-Mets clash would injure baseball. It would only reinforce the perception that big markets are buying a championship and subsequently send many fans scrambling for something else to watch.
Baseball's refusal to change how it does business reeks of stubbornness and arrogance. The NFL is perky and pugnacious, while baseball smells like old cheese.
The proof of how big-market snobbery destroys the World Series is the television ratings from the 2000 Subway Series. The numbers in New York were huge but nationally, at the time, it was the lowest rated World Series ever, recording a 12.4 (the Nielsen rating is the percentage of television households in the country watching a broadcast, with each point representing about one million people.)
The Jeffersons reruns get bigger numbers. The Super Bowl can snag three or four times that.
When there was an all-California World Series in 2002, the series drew another record low, this time a tiny 11.9 share nationally. Same dilemma for baseball.
The lesson is simple. Big market series do not appeal to the nation as a whole, just to those big markets. The NFL, with its parity, has managed to draw the casual fan, which is why it has lapped baseball in terms of popularity, while baseball's big-market World Series teams appeal only to the hardcore baseball nut.
If there is a Subway Series, few outside of New York will give a hoot.
Television sets will shut down by the millions because fans won't care about two franchises that possess a combined payroll equivalent to the gross national product of Guatemala.
The Subway Series is coming. New Yorkers will be ecstatic. It could be another huge party.
The rest of the country?
Yawn.
They'll ask: When are The Jeffersons on?
