Baseball is America. The timeless sport expresses much about what is great about the United States: the traditions, its timelessness, and despite the soaring prices, its family atmosphere.
Much about baseball is artificial: its whitewashed history, as John Thorn explains in
Baseball in the Garden of Eden; the cookie cutter retro baseball parks, which work in Baltimore and San Francisco but are dull just about everywhere else; and the players, who have beefed up on steroids and other performance enhancers while owners looked the other way.
Nevertheless much is great about baseball. It is a game that binds together families and friends. The game has given us color figures over the years, from Babe Ruth to Bill Veeck to Catfish Hunter. Ballparks like Wrigley Field and Fenway Park reflect their cities’ history. Dodger Stadium, of course, waxes mid-century cool. Whether you are in billion dollar Yankee Stadium or at a minor league park in Texas, the ballpark makes for a perfect summer evening or Sunday afternoon.
Major League Baseball has weathered the economic recession relatively well, but this season has posed mighty to some challenges. The New York Mets are in trouble because of their dealings with Bernie Madoff; the Florida Marlins have caught heat for duping taxpayers to pay $2.4 billion dollars for their new stadium the next several decades; and the Los Angeles Dodgers are caught in a pickle because their owners, who are in the midst of a divorce, treated the team like a home equity loan. Since these baseball franchises are privately owned companies, they are not required to open their books, but stadium deals, litigation, and interest payments together have
affected several teams. Creative accounting schemes have allowed teams to circumvent some of MLB’s financial rules, but the sport is in a bigger mess than it cares to admit. The teams and their clubby owners will not open the books, and because large-market teams end up subsidizing small-market franchises, fans could be in for a rude surprise this year. Baseball could use some serious lessons in
transparency and
corporate governance.
Whatever the outcome may be, the game will survive. An evening at Dodger Stadium (click on the picture above to enlarge) proves it.
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