They’re behaving like a bunch of goddamn big government liberals. I’d be laughing if it weren’t so goddamn anti-American at its core. So, they’ve already decided to make it their job to mandate some goddamn steroid testing in Major League Baseball, and now they’re threatening to take away baseball’s antitrust protections simply because they don’t like one of the goddamn bidders for the goddamn Washington Nationals. Who would those commies dare raise such a goddamn fuss over, as quoted by the goddamn Washington Post (login)?
Major League Baseball hasn’t narrowed the list of the eight bidders seeking to buy the Washington Nationals and some Republicans on Capitol Hill already are hinting at revoking the league’s antitrust exemption if billionaire financier George Soros , an ardent critic of President Bush and supporter of liberal causes, buys the team.
You don’t get to call yourself a goddamn fiscal conservative if you believe the government should block a goddamn business deal just because you don’t agree with the buyer’s goddamn political beliefs (assuming that buyer isn’t breaking any goddamn laws, which this one is not). And you don’t get to call yourself a goddamn (language perverting buzzword alert) traditional values conservative if you want to destroy America’s pastime, which is what lifting the goddamn antitrust exemption would do.
So here’s your first goddamn commie quote of the day:
“It’s not necessarily smart business sense to have anybody who is so polarizing in the political world,” Rep. John E. Sweeney (R-N.Y.) said. “That goes for anybody, but especially as it relates to Major League Baseball because it’s one of the few businesses that get incredibly special treatment from Congress and the federal government.”
And your next goddamn commie quote:
Rep. Tom M. Davis III (R-Va.), who was a strong supporter of bringing a baseball team to Virginia, told Roll Call yesterday that “Major League Baseball understands the stakes” if Soros buys the team. “I don’t think they want to get involved in a political fight.”
As pointed to somewhere in the article, is the goddamn Congress going to get involved every goddamn time teams want to trade players? Every goddamn time a team wants to fire a goddamn manager? Goddamn, what hubris on these pigfuckers.
God, Sweeny is my rep. He’s actually dumber than the quote makes him sound.
Not that I’m familiar at all with this antitrust exemption thing, but how would revoking the exeption destroy baseball?
See this FAQ for history.
Baseball isn’t a profitable business as it is. Only about 6 or 8 teams are making money, as I recall. The pay structures are out of control, and would need to be drastically corrected for the league to compete in an open market. As things currently stand, the player salary market would correct itself over time, but not at the same rate it would in an open market. There’d be a window of opportunity of around five to ten years for a competitor to undercut MLB at every turn while MLB was paying out its existing contracts and whittling down salaries of existing talent to a reasonable level. A competing league could operate for at least a decade with drastically lower overhead. If that were combined with teams placed in strategic markets (think D.C. sucking away business from Baltimore), it could start a cycle that would break MLB’s back.
That’s just one hypothetical scenario that could play out, and it could be dead wrong. Hell, competition would probably be a good thing for MLB over time, but it would take a sunset clause on the antitrust exemption where the league was given time to prepare for the drastic adjustment competing in an open market would be.
It was probably hyperbole (in the spirit of 20GDpP Week) to say it would destroy baseball, but it isn’t unfair to say it could.
Well, I can easily imagine how it would change the management of baseball as we know it, but I don’t see how killing the exemption would be a bad thing in the long run. One could probably argue that it was precisely this exemption — combined with MLB’s regulations and manipulations of the market — that got the game into trouble to begin with.
My personal opinion is that sports is a strange thing, especially big sports. At some point when I was in high school, I turned from being a Braves fan to disliking the team, then later to just not liking big sports in general. The players are overpaid babies, fans get way too worked up over nothing, and benefits to the economy are generally doubtful. We’re not talking about the great American pastime nearly as much as we’re talking about yet another 20th century relic that our generation is going to have to deal with and fix.
Really… is this “pastime” all about playing the game, or watching it?
I’ve considered MLB’s antitrust exemption to be inane for a long time. I just take the position, as a fan of that 20th century relic, that revoking the protection suddenly could potentially damage the game even more than its own missteps have. Also, this whole discussion came up for the wrong reason, which I resent the two Congressmen mentioned above for.