The Next Biggest Thing

It’s probably already too late to figure out how many young savants have been labeled the next “LeBron” in their respective sport or pursuit and mostly futile to stop future ones from having to labor under that tag, but it does beg the question of whether the writer making the comparison is just being lazy or whether he’s also being stupid.

Sports Illustrated writer Tom Verducci, as well-credentialed of a sports writer as there is out there, mindlessly fell into that trap this past week when filing his fawning story about high school baseball phenom Bryce Harper. When I say fawning, I mean ridiculously down-on-your-knees for hours at a time ass-kissing, fawning. And when I say ass-kissing, I mean “if there anything else I can do for you now or in the future, just call, day or night, doesn’t matter, this goes beyond man-love” ass-kissing groveling.

To say that Harper is a richly-talented 16-year old ballplayer probably doesn’t quite put enough emphasis on the skills he has at such a young age. But to put him already in the same category as James, Wayne Gretzky and Tiger Woods as Verducci does is about as far over the top as you can get.

It’s a disservice to James, Gretzky and Woods to put their brand on a 16-year old kid who hasn’t accomplished much of anything outside of his confined world of high school baseball in Las Vegas. I get it, he can hit the ball a long way. He throws hard, too. He’s also a good catcher. He’s a man among boys and opposing teams don’t stand a chance against his awesomeness. That’s the short story of LeBron, too. But all that does is set the table for Harper.

That isn’t to knock Harper as much as it is to remind the Verduccis of the world that each icon to whom he compared Harper have actually done something at the highest level, something Harper won’t even begin to contemplate until a year or two more.

If Harper can make the jump directly from high school to the big leagues and then star immediately, as James, Woods and Gretzky did, then it might be time to consider where Harper’s accomplishments fit into the debate. Until then, everything else is premature. And before you send me your emails, I recognize that Woods went to college for a few years. But at the same time he was competing directly at the highest level and had entered several pro tournaments even as a collegiate.

No question that the story of a phenom makes compelling reading. Who doesn’t want to contemplate the future of a kid that looks so bright? But the sports world is full of cautionary tales of Harper-like kids that labored under can’t miss tags until crushed by the expectations of others to make even the most optimistic person cynical about the Harper article.

Harper may very well make it and Verducci’s article may be prescient, but let’s not anoint him the next anything except the next kid, like a million before him, that has a chance to make a decent living chasing around a little white ball.

But coming across like somebody’s crazy grandpa sitting in the corner mumbling something about socialism was not my intent. But this really isn’t a column about Harper or Verducci so much as it is about what it says about the state of the game, any game really. The story of Harper comes on the heels of a somewhat similar story in the New York Times about a month ago. This time the player’s name is Jeremy Tyler and his sport is basketball.

Like Harper, Tyler is freakishly talented at such a young age. Like Harper, Tyler feels that he can no longer compete against the mere mortals that inhabit high school ball. And, like Harper, Tyler is considering novel ways to jump start his pro career.

In the case of Harper, the idea was floated about his moving to the Dominican Republic to play for a year and then come into the major leagues as a free agent. Although his mother steadfastly denies it will happen, just remember that behind every stupid idea is a stupid agent.

In Harper’s case, it’s Scott Boras. It’s not known whether this Dominican Republic foray could even skirt the league’s rules. But if it can, Boras is just the creep to do it. And if Harper’s mom doesn’t think that Boras has the verbal skills to spin a tale that makes leaving high school early and playing in the Dominican Republic sound downright All American, then she needs to look up from her scorebook once in awhile. My guess, though, is that Harper’s parents already are well schooled in agent oiliness as one of the unfortunate hazards of raising the gifted.
Tyler, too, has thoughts of leaving his high school mopes behind and heading off to Europe. It will accomplish two things according to, wait for it, “advisor” Sonny Vaccaro, expose Tyler to better competition and avoid the NBA’s rule about having to wait until he’s at least a year our of high school before entering the NBA. Oh yea, there’s money involved, too.

My naïveté about the underbelly of sports dissipated somewhere around the time that the Indians signed Wayne Garland, so none of this comes as a surprise. But still, even these moves, or potential moves in the case of Harper, take this to a whole other level. Capitalism may be the best economic system, but it does have some downsides.

As I wound my way through Harper’s story, I couldn’t help but think how awfully far off the mark Verducci really was. Maybe it was Harper and his dudes that labeled him the next LeBron and all this talk is kind of cute. But it also underscores a certain level of sophistication that has crept into their conversations in a way that probably has robbed them of some of the charms of being young. Rather than see the point, Verducci contributes to it.

Buried in the Harper story were his goals, which I quote, are to “be in the Hall of Fame. Play in Yankee Stadium. Play in the pinstripes. Be considered the greatest baseball player who ever lived.” In that short burst, Harper has succinctly but sadly captured baseball in all of its economic dysfunction with the sophistication of someone that isn’t spending all his free time on Facebook.

Recognizing that he’ll likely end up on a dreg of a team at the outset of his career owing to how the baseball draft works, Harper first sets his sights on just playing in Yankee stadium. Even with the Yankees in a new stadium that has yet to build its own history, his sentiment is understandable. It’s the game’s biggest day-to-day stage.

But like the teenage gymnast in Jerry McGuire pretending to cry when on the phone with Jerry and coldly negotiating with Sugar on the other line, Harper demonstrates his worldliness and a bit of his own cockiness by then saying he wants to play in pinstripes. By that Harper means that when his accomplishments outgrown his current team’s ability to compensate him adequately, it’s off to the Yankees. That’s baseball’s unspoken but ever present dynamic.

Unfortunately, that’s also the way young phenoms now think and there’s no turning back. But I have a suggestion to Verducci. He should have read his own story more closely. It would have been far more accurate for Verducci to label Harper as the next CC Sabathia. That’s his story and his trajectory. For now James remains true to the team that drafted him. For now.

Market Forces

If the comments floating about regarding the signing of Indians DH Travis Hafner are any indication, baseball fans seem rather non-plused about the size of contracts that players are signing these days.


The general consensus is that signing Hafner was critical to the long-term (by baseball standards) future of the Indians. With that point, it’s easy to agree. Hafner is a fan favorite who does what most fans like best—mash. He is the kind of player that can be counted on to hit 30+ home runs and 100+ RBIs year in and year out. He also has a great batting eye, coaxes his fair share of walks by consistently putting together good at-bats and is a .292 career hitter.
But the fact that he will be paid more money in one year of his new contract than nearly every fan is likely to see in a lifetime hardly registers much of a blip on the radar screen these days. If anything, many consider the four-year $57 million contract a relative bargain and in the screwy economics that guide sports, it probably is.


Consider, for example, that the Seattle Mariners are on the verge of signing Ichiro Suzuki for a reported $18 million per year over five years. Suzuki is nearly four years older than Hafner and will be 39 when his new contract would expire. Ichiro is certainly a different kind of player than Hafner, to be sure, but is he $3.5 million a year better than Hafner? Maybe, but the kind of dollars Ichiro is signing for make it appear as though Hafner actually gave the Dolans a hometown discount.


Another consideration to this mix is New York Yankees lightning rod, Alex Rodriguez. Currently, the Yankees, with a fair amount of help from the Texas Rangers, are paying A-Rod on average $25 million a year over 10 years. However, A-Rod has the ability to opt out of the remaining three years of his contract at the end of this year, something that is appearing more and more likely. A-Rod certainly wouldn’t do that in order to make less elsewhere. According to his agent, Scott Boras, A-Rod will easily surpass $30 million per year going forward, if only because escalator provisions in his current contract essentially guarantee it. Thus, if he opts out, it will be with a fair amount of certainty that someone somewhere will pay him more. Again, A-Rod is a much different kind of player than Hafner. But is he twice the player Hafner is? Hard to believe, but that’s certainly a fair conclusion to draw when looking at the two contracts.
The point is not to just be another naysayer out there complaining about ever spiraling contracts. Presumably the owners only pay what they can afford. Or do they? The comments of Florida Marlins president David Samson on the Dan LeBatard radio show who called the imminent Ichiro signing “the end of the world as we know it” seem to suggest otherwise. That may have just been hyperbole by Samson, but only to make his point as he also called the contract a “joke” and “inexcusable.”


Of course, those same comments were made when the Rangers first signed A-Rod to such an unprecedented contract and while it’s still unprecedented, the Yankees essentially equaled it, if only for one year, by signing Roger Clemens this past season. In fact, those same comments are made by someone nearly every time a big-named free agent is signed and always have been.

What this really says is that baseball owners, left to their own devices, simply can’t control themselves. It’s why both the NBA and the NFL eventually went to a salary cap. It wasn’t too many years ago that Peter Ueberroth, as the commissioner of baseball, actually got the owners to work in concert to hold down salaries. The problem, of course, is that this was illegal and the owners had to make amends to the players because of this collusion. But at least he tried. Since then, the baseball owners have repeatedly caved at the bargaining table every time they’ve tried to convince the players to adopt a salary cap.


So the beat goes on, the salaries rise exponentially and the gross disparities in revenues and payrolls between ball clubs continues to stretch toward its breaking point, threatening the very foundation of the league itself. To bring this back around to Hafner’s contract, irrespective of whether or not the contract is a bargain by baseball standards, the fact remains that it represents a huge financial commitment by the Dolans who, to be charitable, haven’t exactly been known for their huge financial commitments to payroll. But give them their due in this case. They stepped up long before they had to and, as a result, the Indians will have the services of one of their foundational pieces for the next several years.


The real question comes whether or not they will have the stomach to do this all over again in the off-season for C.C. Sabathia. Like Hafner, Sabathia can be a free agent after next season. As noted previously, the White Sox recent signing of Mark Buerhle to a contract extension of $14 million a year is a good gauge of what Sabathia can expect to make. The two are near statistical twins. If anything, Buerhle has the edge. But the conventional wisdom among the locals anyway is that Sabathia is in for some kind of precedent-setting deal himself. Given the contracts of Clemens and A-Rod, that’s hard to imagine.


But if Sabathia and his agent see Buerhle’s contract as only the starting point in their negotiations, it will get sticky before it gets sweet because no matter what the Dolans might be willing to spend, Sabathia is likely to get more elsewhere. That’s just the way it is. The Dolans might be willing to deficit spend a bit in a given year but the chances of them being willing to deficit spend for several years is about as likely as Barry Bonds being able to fit into one of the caps he wore while with Pittsburgh.


Unfortunately, there really are no good answers to the rock and a hard place that Cleveland fans find themselves between. If the Indians had an idiot owner like Tom Hicks, they’d probably overpay for one or two players and leave themselves with an inability to field a credible team, kind of like the Rangers actually. On the other hand, with the Dolans, the Indians are always going to have owners that are justthisshy of having enough money to get the payroll to at least the middle of the pack, if not the average of the league. Consequently, there will always be a fair amount of hand wringing, whether it’s over someone like Sabathia or some other player who looks like a lead pipe cinch to bolt for the big money elsewhere.


Actually, there are good answers, it’s just that baseball owners, in general, lack the requisite courage to make them a reality. Baseball is in desperate need of a salary cap. The luxury tax, like the luxury tax in basketball, is only an impediment to folks like the Dolans. The big spenders will remain big spenders and the luxury tax just remains another annoying cost of doing business to them.


A salary cap, of course, isn’t the holy grail, but it levels the playing field. What it really does is make the job of managing the business of the club the difference between champions and also-rans. The reason the New England Patriots seem to defy football’s unending quest for parity is that Bill Belichick can manage the cap better than anyone else. His real talent lies in his ability to consistently properly value players relative to the amount of salary cap space they occupy, which isn’t an easy trick with such a large roster. Basketball is easier, of course, because of the limited amount of players but if not managed properly it can have disastrous consequences. Just ask any New York Knicks fan who continues to suffer under the massive mismanagement of Isiah Thomas.


But don’t hold your breath for that to happen anytime soon in baseball. The union is simply is too strong and the owners are too weak. They wouldn’t take the lengthy strike such an issue would engender because of the fear by the players that a cap is too much of a drag on salary growth. In the end, the owners will continue to placate themselves that they’ve somehow gotten to the same point with still another version of a luxury tap. And in places like Cleveland, they’ll remain clubs from which established players generally leave not stay.

An All Star Mess

Be honest. Did any of you actually ssee Victor Martinez’s home run live last night in the All Star game? Didn’t think so, which only proves the point that major league baseball’s self-described “midsummer classic” is not only boring, it’s inconvenient. (By the way, giving yourself a nickname is the ultimate act of desperation, like Michael Jackson referring to himself as the “King of Pop.”) Throw in the fact the game is also irrelevant and you have the Holy Trinity of reasons why the game has long since outlived whatever usefulness it once had.

Baseball’s All Star game was invented in 1933 by a Chicago sportswriter with way too much time on his hands. Since then it has served, ostensibly, to showcase the best talent in baseball in an annual clash between the leagues. One could argue that when there wasn’t interleague play as there is today, the All Star game was a bit more compelling because, outside the World Series, it was the only other time that the two leagues ever got together. Compare that to the NBA and NFL all star games. Because the two conferences in each sport always have played against each other during the regular season, there is no real novelty, for example, in seeing LeBron James play against Kobe Bryant or Peyton Manning going against Brian Urlacher.

But whatever appeal the novelty factor may have once had has long since left baseball’s All Star game. Now it represents that three or four day break during the regular season when most baseball fans find something else to do, like complain about their own team on sports talk shows or cut the lawn.

To most Clevelanders, the All Star memory most etched in their minds was Pete Rose barreling into Ray Fosse in the 1970 game, an injury from which Fosse was never the same thereafter. But all this really did was cement the fact that Rose was a jerk and Cleveland was cursed. It hardly heightened interest in the game overall. In fact, if anything, it gave the participants another reason to want to avoid playing the game altogether.

If you watch the game or any of the festivities around it, the most prevalent emotion among the players seems to be indifference. For most, all it really represents is an opportunity to achieve an incentive bonus in their contracts. To the actual all stars, having to play the game, even if just for the perfunctory inning or two, is more of an injury risk than anything else and deprives them of the three or four day break that most of their other teammates get to enjoy. That’s why so many players actually beg off playing each year with a variety of mystery ailments, like ingrown fingernails and the miseries. It’s like calling off work with a fake cold in order to go golfing.

There was a time when baseball’s All Star game was more popular. Heck, from 1960-1962, two all star games were played each year. But whatever appeal it may have once had has long since left the building.

No question the nadir was reached when the worst commissioner of any professional sport ever, Bud Selig, ended the 2002 game by declaring a tie after 11 innings when both teams ran out of pitchers. Of course, when that kind of thing happens during the regular season, which it does occasionally, managers are forced to use a position player on the mound. But apparently the thought of such a thing happening in an All Star game was too much for Selig to contemplate and so he ended a game in a way in which, by rule, no baseball game can ever end—in a tie. Of course, Selig need not have broken that rule. He could have, for example, allowed the managers to reuse a pitcher, a violation of the rules as well but less of an offense in an All Star game then simply ending it as if it had never taken place. As Selig noted then “this will never happen again.” It shouldn’t have happened at all.

But getting all discombobulated about the 2002 game is hardly worth the effort it took to write this sentence. The truth of the matter is that if Selig simply declared that future games were being cancelled due to lack of interest, the only folks who would get all weepy-eyed would be a handful of sportswriters who’d miss out on what amounts to a vacation at their employer’s expense.

If you think that assessment is harsh, consider that the ratings for the game continue to dwindle. In 1967, for example, a full 50% of the households with televisions were tuned into the All Star game. Last year, that number was 16%, which was actually 2% more than the year before when the All Star game hit its lowest ratings ever. It is certainly true that in 1967, a television viewer had basically three choices: ABC, NBC and CBS. These days, there are dozens and dozens of cable and satellite channels, not to mention the various on-demand channels, from which to choose. But it also is true that if given a choice, most do not choose to watch the All Star game. (The same thing is true as well with regard to the NBA’s all star game and the NFL’s Pro Bowl. In fact, both events suffer from such abysmally low ratings, it’s reasonable to assume that outside of hard core fans, most folks probably don’t realize that each sport does, in fact, have an all star game.)

Given the lack of fan interest, the real question is why does Major League Baseball (or the NBA or the NFL, for that matter) continue to put on this exhibition? Selig would have everyone believe that by putting home field advantage in the World Series as the prize for winning the All Star game, he has restored the luster to the game. That might be true if the only participants were those from teams leading their divisions at the break. But why, exactly, would Tampa Bay’s representative in any given year actually care about ensuring an American League victory in order to gain an advantage in the World Series? Certainly, if the ratings are any indication, and they are, the fans could care less.

One could do a google search and find about a million and one columns offering suggestions on how to improve the All Star game. To that I say, why bother? Improving the All Star game is like buying a buying a fat guy a new suit, as if that will make all the difference.

Rather than spend any more time trying to fix this mess, why not work on something worth working on, like reassessing the continued worth of interleague play and the unbalanced schedule. How about Selig using his “good of the game” powers as commissioner to either force the American League to drop the DH or the National League to adopt it? How about figuring out a way of making sure that playoff and World Series games don’t end at 12:30 a.m. in the eastern time zone? In other words, there are any number of more worthy things to fix about baseball.

In this regard, Scott Boras, the super agent, sent Selig a letter outlining ways to improve the World Series, which itself is suffering from a lack of interest. Boras would have the series expanded to nine games with two being at a neutral site, with cities bidding for the right to hold those two games similar to the Super Bowl. He’d also use that opening weekend at the neutral site as a forum for announcing all of the major award winners, such as Cy Young and rookie of the year, as well as announcing the new Hall of Famers.

Whatever one thinks of Boras’ suggestions or the hutzpah it took for him to make them, know this: he’s at least trying to actually bring some pizzazz back to the game. The same can hardly be said for Selig. In fact, the extent of Selig’s taste for innovation came and left with his decision of award home field advantage to the league winning the All Star game.

Thus for now and probably forevermore, or at least until Selig steps down, not much will change. The game will be played, no one will care, and columns like this will continue to be written. But if things continue as they are, soon it will be worth asking: If they throw an All Star game and no one bothers to show, will that mean it was never played?