So Long Cowboy Up & Money Ball

Charlie Klein

That kid in the picture, well, he used to be me. Now I look like Jerry Manuel when Fernando Tatis strikes out for the millionth time this season (where is he at now, like 500,000 K's!?!). While in a conversation with a friend, I came to a sad realization my friends, I have almost no interest in baseball anymore. There's no fun in the game. No surprises. The teams that have the money are the teams that win the games. While the Yankees and the rest of the big spenders battle it out for world domination, I sit on my couch finding myself completely uninterested.

Maybe I have lost interest because my two teams, the Seattle Mariners and the New York Mets, are no longer at all involved in the races for October. That is a definite possibility. But at the same time the game has lost a bit of wonder, a bit of unpredictability that I used to always find an inherent quality in MLB. Instead I have to wait for next season to roll around or hope that maybe an underdog team can come out of nowhere and steal my heart. I just don't think that will happen this year.

Out of the eight teams that if the season ended would be playing playoff baseball, six are in the top ten in 2009 player salaries. The New York Yankees, who have the operating budget of a small country, make the seventh and eighth playoff teams (St. Louis and Colorado) look like thrifty clubs. When a team goes out and spends over $400 million on three players, it should come as no surprise that that team owns the best record in baseball. It was no genius move by Brian Cashman and the Yankees to sign aces C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett nor was first baseman Mark Teixiera a diamond in the rough.

It used to be that I could root for the Red Sox to defeat the mighty Yankees. I used to delude myself into thinking that the Red Sox stood for the everyman, the blue collar team that 'cowboy'd up' to defeat the mighty Yankees. And yet with their $122 million payroll it is hard to see them as that team anymore.

I guess I could root for the Rockies, since they have the lowest payroll, but nothing about them inspires me in the slightest. I understand that this may all seem hypocritical to those who know me well for two reasons. The first is that my two favourite baseball teams are in the top ten in terms of highest payrolls in the league. The second is that I support Manchester United, one of the biggest spending clubs in world football.

And yet in spite of those factors I do find it depressing that all of the money that has been put into sport, in particular baseball, has nearly ruined it for me. Once it became known that sports was a marketplace in which millionaires could be sustained as well as born, it became corrupt. The pressure on young men to become MLB superstars drove them to drugs that enhanced their performance. Enhanced performances meant enhanced pay packets.

General managers around the league may as well money ball themselves into irrelevancy. Remember what a smart bloke we all used to think Billy Bean was? Last time I checked, the Oakland Athletics were in last place with no future of finishing better and play in the worst stadium in Major League Baseball. So much for on-base-percentage and drafting college pitchers.

I'm sorry baseball, but I just cannot follow you anymore in 2009.