MLB a joke??

[JDubs]

As you can see here, the degree of the payroll imbalances is just about the same as it was 30 years ago.

The difference is that the O's have been lousy rather than good. The reasons for this are the O's, not MLB.

When the O's get good again, then FA's will want to come here, and other people can complain about us.

Other cities will have crappy teams, and their fans will complain about the inequities of MLB, but we won't care, just like we didn't care about it before, back when we were good.

Appears to be worth repeating.

[tvz1997]

I am a huge baseball fan and a pretty observant hockey and NFL fan, yet 90% of the sports conversations that I have but do not initiate are about the NFL. I get the "you're one of those guys" looks about my baseball fandom nearly as much as I do about my hockey fandom. Almost every good baseball conversation I have had over the past few years has been with somebody a decade or more older than me.

If you haven't already read it, Wright Thompson wrote a GREAT piece on how MLB is pissing its fanbase away: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=091005yankeestickets

[RShack]

Again the problem is not just the O's are not good.

That's exactly the problem from BAL's point of view.

If the O's were good, we'd be happy as clams.

Here's my guess: The reason you're bummed isn't because of MLB, that's just what you blame it on. The reason you're bummed is because the O's suck. So, tell me this: Am I wrong? If the O's were good and were in the post season most of the time, would you still be ticked off at MLB? Or would you be happily watching the O's kick the snot out of other teams?

The problem is the game has a severe economic imbalance, and 30 years ago free agency was not the animal that it is now. There really is no comparison.

What part of "there is indeed a comparison" do you disagree with? The diff between rich and poor teams was just about the same, it's just that the dollars scaled up, but the ratios are almost exactly the same: We can spend half of what the MFY's spend now, just like we spent half of what they spent back then. When it comes to payroll, the MFY's were twice as rich then, and they're twice as rich now. How do you get "no comparison" out of that?

The only thing that there's no comparison about is how much the quality of the Orioles changed, and the reason it changed is because of how the franchise was run. The O's getting bad had next to nothing to do with the MFY's spending money. The O's got bad because the long-time source of their strength, the farm system, was left to fester in disrepair. That's not MLB's fault, that's the fault of a string of 3 Oriole owners who presided over our descent into crapitude. MLB had nothing to do with it.

Now, I completely agree with the idea that MLB is run in a goofy and unfair way. But that's not the reason O's fans have been miserable. We've been miserable because of all the losing, and that's the O's own fault, due to how they operated for the last 25+ years. You can't blame MLB for that.

[Mad Mark]

The difference between the rich and poor teams is about the same as it's always been. The problem with that is that most of the "older" posters here (myself included) grew up in a period when the Orioles emerged as an exemplary franchise and the Yankee$ were mired in a period of absolutely inept ownership. Had CBS not purchased the Yankee$...had they been owned by someone with any baseball sense whatsoever the Orioles might well have spent the 60s as the "best damned (second place) team in baseball."

The competitive imbalance in MLB has favored the Yankee$ since the 1920s. They didn't "win" all of those 27 Championships they adore ramming down everyone's throat without a little help from their friends the Franklins. The solution to the problem however, is NOT A SALARY CAP. The solution is full and equitable revenue sharing.

[rhall]

I think I need to clarify a little bit. I'm still a die hard O's fan and probably always will be. But I used to be a MLB fan, watching every playoff game, every World Series game, I loved it all. Now with the payroll imbalances and every big time FA going to one of five teams it's just not the same.

I will agree the on field product I still love, it's still "baseball" as one poster put it,and I agree with that sentiment. I love the game, I no longer love the organization.

As far as the NFL comparison they couldn't be more different. The "attention span" comment is ridiculous. People love the NFL because good teams are good because they are well run, make good decisions, and build teams on a level playing field. You see organizations like the Steelers and Ravens typically competitive while the Bengals and Browns are not so much. Why is this?? Well it's not because one team has the ability to outspend the other, no it's one level playing field and each team has to build within those parameters.

With all that said.....Let's go O's:)

I disagree. The average fan, or casual fan, doesn't care why things are they way they are. They care most about the end product.

Competitive balance plays into that (I never said it didn't). But so does the way the game is played. What is the most common complaint about baseball from a casual observer? It's boring, too long, too much standing around, etc. The length of the game is an illusion if you don't think football games are too long, so looking at that as a whole, it sounds like an attention span thing to me. Our culture has steadily progressed more and more into a culture that demands constant and immediate entertainment, but that's another discussion

p.s. Sorry if I'm hijacking the thread by talking the average fan experience, as opposed to my own.

[DrungoHazewood]

I am a huge baseball fan and a pretty observant hockey and NFL fan, yet 90% of the sports conversations that I have but do not initiate are about the NFL. I get the "you're one of those guys" looks about my baseball fandom nearly as much as I do about my hockey fandom. Almost every good baseball conversation I have had over the past few years has been with somebody a decade or more older than me.

If you haven't already read it, Wright Thompson wrote a GREAT piece on how MLB is pissing its fanbase away: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=091005yankeestickets

I haven't read the article yet, but I think two long-term problems baseball faces are:

1) More entertainment choices.

2) Aging fanbase.

#1 has been offset, and then some, by population growth. A smaller percentage of people are baseball fans than 30, 50 years ago, but there are so many more people it hasn't mattered. At some point it might.

#2 is harder. Very few young people list baseball as their favorite sport. Baseball isn't seen as cool, and I think one problem is that it takes a tremendous amount of time to be a die-hard fan. You can watch every minute of an NFL team's schedule and spend 64 hours a year. The O's play 64 hours of baseball every three weeks. A full 162 game schedule is almost the equivalent of watching baseball 24/7 for a month. Even a kid has a hard time making that kind of commitment today.

[rooster1]

The only thing that is annoying about baseball is the redundancy of the playoffs every single year (Red Sox, Yankees, and Angels)

But I love following the O's throughout the season.