Serious trouble is brewing for baseball on both sides of the Pacific
this winter. Major league owners have decided that contraction is a viable
method to blackmail its host communities, while in Japan, the Yokohama
BayStars are now owned by a company that has a minority interest in the
Yakult Swallows.
These are troubling developments and owners on both sides of the ocean would be advised to brush up on their history before proceeding further.
From the 1890s to the turn of the century, both syndicate ownership and contraction occurred in the only major league of the time, the National League, with disastrous results.
Syndicate ownership, where one group owned controlling interest in more than one team, made for some of the worst baseball imaginable. An owner with two major league teams in his pocket would strip the less profitable team of its stars and ship them to his more marketable franchise. This system allowed some NL teams to operate farm clubs in the same league. The result was pitiful. This practice caused competitive imbalance of geological proportions. ! ! !
Following the 1898 season, the 10th-place Brooklyn franchise and the 12th-place St. Louis club each benefited when its owner brought in a boatload of talent from another team.
The Brooklyn owners took control of the Baltimore Orioles and shipped most of Baltimore's stars north. The revitalized Brooklyns were renamed the Superbas and won the league with a 101-47 record. Brooklyn finished eight games ahead of Boston--but that's only because the Superbas were forced to forfeit 16 games in which an illegally-acquired player appeared for them.
Cleveland's owners, Frank and Stanley Robison, followed Brooklyn's lead by buying the St. Louis franchise, stocking it with Cleveland's best players and renaming their new acquisition the Perfectos.
Though something of a misnomer, the Perfectos still managed to finish ahead of the fourth-place Orioles, who saw their four-year run of finishing no worse than second come to a screeching halt. Meanwhile, the Cleveland franchise came apart at the seams and the fans stopped coming altogether.
The Spiders, who forfeited pitcher Cy Young and manager Patsy Tebeau, lost a major league record 134 games.
Despite playing over .500 in 1898, the Spiders gave up in the second half of that season by playing 83 of their last 87 games on the road. The fifth-place finishers drew 30,000 fewer fans than Washington, which finished 52 1/2 games back in 11th place.
Still, until the Robisons hollowed the club out, Cleveland had been a competitive team. As they had in 1898, the Spiders stopped playing at home halfway through the 1899 season and, though it hardly seems possible, their attendance plummeted. In 1899, the Spiders drew just 6,088--the lowest in major league history.
Baltimore, which had been competitive on the field and at the box office had suffered an attendance drop in 1898 along with most of the league--only two clubs drew as many fans that year as the year before. But stripped of numerous stars and its manager, Ned Hanlon, the Orioles' attendance did not recover in 1899. Finishing 15 games behind the Superbas in fourth place, the Birds attracted a few thousand customers less.
Following the major league fiasco of 1899, the dim bulbs that considered themselves to be the game's leading lights decided to scratch four teams off the schedule for 1900. The owners clipped Cleveland, lopped off Louisville, wiped Washington off the baseball map and gave the term "Baltimore Chop" a new meaning by plucking the Orioles from the league.
This move cut the 12-team circuit to eight and opened the door for the American League to take over in Cleveland and Washington.
The AL originally moved into Baltimore, where the great John McGraw had remained after many of his teammates were transferred to Brooklyn. But the autocratic McGraw could not coexist with AL President Ban Johnson, who was even more of a dictator, and fled the AL for good in 1902. Without McGraw to anchor the Orioles in Baltimore, Johnson shifted that franchise to New York, where he foiled NL efforts to prevent him from finding a place to play.
By reducing the number of teams, the NL had not only left four markets open to rivals, but it provided those rivals with a number of free players. The AL picked up additional talent by raiding NL rosters and paying more competitive salaries.
The new league adopted more progressive policies. Johnson gave his umpires the authority to control the game and they did. Where the NL had had raised the level of gamesmanship and thuggery to an art, the AL cleaned up the game. The combination of vacant existing markets, available players and a more attractive product helped the AL become the attendance leader within a few seasons. The American Leagers outdrew their rivals every year from 1904 to 1925. ! ! !
The National League had survived challenges from several other major leagues to become the lone player at the top flight from 1892 to 1900. During that time unethical practices flourished and the game on the field deteriorated. As a result, a well organized and ambitious rival came in. And before you could say Walter Johnson, the new guys were a dominant force and the established owners were hemorrhaging cash in order to avoid losing all their best players.
Sure, the game is different now. But changes under the reign of Commissioner Bud the first have all but eliminated the distinction between the leagues. There is no more room for alternatives in the majors. And like their forefathers did before them, today's owners are trying to crassly ignore the fact that baseball's business depends not on the investors, but on the fans' interest in the game. By arrogantly abusing that interest, the National League was taught an expensive lesson in humility. Bud and his pals are just begging for a painful refresher course.
Lets hope they get the full measure that they are asking for. ! ! !
In Japan, the threat of syndicate ownership is now hanging over the heads of the game. Nippon Broadcasting System, which holds a small interest in the Yakult Swallows, has now bought a controlling interest in the Yokohama BayStars. Nippon Broadcasting's interest in the Swallows comes through it's shares in Fuji TV, a part owner of the Yakult club.
Fuji is first in line when it comes to obtaining the broadcast rights for the Swallows' high-profile home games against the Yomiuri Giants.
While there is little danger of syndicate ownership as long as Fuji's interest in the Swallows is small, it is a slippery slope that baseball can ill afford to tread on.
To emphasize his position in this case, Giants owner Tsuneo Watanabe has suggested that baseball could easily do without the Swallows and BayStars. Watanabe has said the Giants could abandon the establishment and set up a new league among the remaining 10 teams. This is the threat that Yomiuri owners sometimes make when there is a danger of the Giants not getting their way on some big issue, and it always gets results.
Rest assured, the structure will remain as it is and a reasonable settlement
will be achieved.
The Hot Corner appears each Thursday in The
Daily Yomiuri .