An open letter to Baseball

I hesitate to use an endearment with you, but our lifelong history together makes it hard not to do so. Over the past few years, I find it more and more difficult to watch baseball, a sport I grew up loving more than my family and almost as much as my cats.

I loved you so much that I cheered for one of your lamest excuses for a team: the Texas Rangers because they moved to my city when I was an impressionable six years old. Now I find that my Rangers are a Big Market team with a bloated payroll, the third highest in the league. And you know what? The team has won its division three times, then tanked in the first round against the hated Yankees.

Therefore, I kind of chuckle at the idea that your sticking point is a luxury tax, basically a salary cap all gussied up. I think it will take a very long time before a luxury tax results in a fully competitive MLB.

A team like the Rangers can pay players a lot of money, but they can't seem to win. What sense does it make to penalize a team that's still losing even while shelling out $105 million per year in salaries.

Agents, being crafty, will find plenty of off-the-cap ways their charges can be compensated. If I were the players, I'd probably give in and agree that the luxury tax can kick in at $100 million in combined salary, which is what the owners want.

If I were the owners, I'd look the billion dollars I stood to lose if a strike deep-sixed the playoffs and the World Series and say that $130 million is doable.

The saddest thing is that the strike negotiations are more interesting than the game itself. It's possible I feel that way because I live far away from my team, but in these days of the 'net and satellite teevee, I ought to be able to follow them just like always.

I'd say that maybe I and not you have the problem; but I know you have problems over and above the strike rumblings.

Parity won't stretch the talent any further. There are too many teams and not enough pitching to adequately staff them. Parity won't make interleague play any less lame, and it won't do that much to stop players from moving around.

In all of this, I can't see that either the players or owners have considered the fans of the game. I'm sure some of them will sheep on back, but I don't know that I'll be one of them.

Not that it makes any difference to you, but without us, you're nothing but a bunch of fat guys with sticks and chewing tobacco.

Sad, isn't it?

before - after