From Major to Minor
Commissioner Bud Selig and the owners of baseball continue to operate the business as if the minor leagues and the expanding cities of the sun belt states didn't exist. Why Washington is another boneheaded Bud play, and why Montreal should go minor.

Brian Ross
Sr. Editor
Minor League News

OPINION

The boneheads of baseball strike again. First it was the owners' contraction talk back in 2001. Even if they came at it from the wrong way, the players' union saved baseball from the shame and stupidity of pigeon-holing the Expos and the Twins for failure rather than finding solutions to the problems.

The Twins survive. The Expos have been dealt like trading cards. Humming "Ain't Got A Home" they became the Israelites of the National League, sold into a souless slavery of modern baseball's corporate universe as a league-owned team.

Unlike Moses, however, Commissioner Selig's announcement of the MLB decision to put the Expos in Washington, D.C. has parted the sea only to lead the children of Montreal, by way of Puerto Rico, back into Egypt.

Perhaps there is something sadly appropriate about dispatching one of the most beleaguered teams in professional baseball history to the city with the worst reputation as a baseball town.

Be it the Nationals or the Senators, the curse of the baseball gods has, with the notable exception of one championship year, always been upon teams who have called the nation's capital home. Washington, D.C. is to baseball what the Sahara Desert is to water skiing.

The last incarnation of a team in the District had more crickets in attendance than fans. Worse still, the Orioles, who have arguably the best field in the game, Camden Yards, cannot help but be affected by a team within 35 miles of their crib.

The Commish's answer? Buy off Peter Angelos, owner of the Baltimore Orioles!

The greater D.C. area is not New York, though, despite the population growth Selig cited since the Senators left town to ride the range in Arlington as the Rangers.

What has been reported as the bonus-bag of gifts to shut-up the obstreperous O's owner sets a terrible precedent that will damage the credibility of the sport and make future relocations impossibly costly.

If Sacramento grows to the point that it can host a major league club, will the league be paying off the Giants? Perhaps this rule should be retroactive: The Dodgers should go back and ask for compensation for the Angels promotion into the majors.

Pure and simple, this was just lame brain policy. Commissioner Selig fancies himself to be the architect of a new baseball. A piece of advice, dear sir: Like all architects, get yourself a good engineer to work out the details, before you bring the whole superstructure of baseball crashing to the ground.

The commissioner's hand-picked ownership group did make the cursory look at some minor league cities. Their choices were just bizarre, unless the only thing that they went by was interest from a few multimillionaires here and there who called into the commissioner's office.

Portland, Norfolk and Las Vegas, three of the talked-about contenders that are PCL and International League (AAA) cities, made the short list.

Norfolk is too far away from the suburban explosions of Virginia on the DC side. If you want to call Portland a major league town then you'd better be prepared to have the MLB committee handling relocation to look at Barstow, California and Schaumburg, Illinois as well: The Pacific Coast League is doing an Expos with the Portland Beavers while they work out the former franchise owners' overly optimistic projections for that minor league club.

Sin City might seem like a winner from the outside. Their mayor, who has been blowing off AAA baseball in town while he was slathering at the prospect of luring major league baseball to town, faces a bigger problem than the traditional gambling worries. There is just too much distraction from all of the other entertainment opportunities in town.

Vegas' best hope for a major league club would have been for Sigfried and Roy to buy the Detroit Tigers and move them to the MGM Grand. A few sequins on the home uniforms, better lighting and music, pitch the ball through a ring of fire and you've got a show that's F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S.

Cities with other major league franchises and good baseball followings, like Memphis or Sacramento, might make more economic and geographic sense, but didn't rise into the discussion. If cities like Austin and Tucson keep growing, they may well be points of major league relocation in the next five years.

As I've pointed out in a previous editorial, "flipping" cities has to be the survival strategy, not shrinkage. Montreal is on the decline? Memphis is expanding. MOVE. If the new stadium doesn't help pull Pittsburgh out of the death slide in ten years? Austin is growing like a tumbleweed.

More Respect to the Fans

The fans of Montreal deserve better than the 'Deliverance' that they got from the owners of major league baseball. True, that process began years ago. Canadian fans who can tell baseball from hockey (It's those round, straight sticks, eh?) have known this day would come.

More than 31,000 of the elb loyal turned out to watch the Marlins cream the future [Insert Washington Team Name Here]. A sad goodbye with no hope in sight of having the nation next door's pastime grace their city.

Commissioner Selig needs to be as concerned with the fates of the cities and fans in the markets being left behind as he does about the next, hopefully more lucrative, major league market.

If baseball is to be the world sport that it can be, MLB needs to take on the coda of the Marine Corps.: No fan left behind.

Let the International League be a bit more international: Montreal may be Spam and Molsons to major league baseball, but it's caviar and champagne dreams as a AAA town.

Lest those who think I bash Bud too much think well of me, we have to give some of the credit for North of the Border baseball's woes to the Canadian government. Their tax schemes are not big lures for players from other countries. The departure of the last AAA team, the Edmonton Trappers to Round Rock, Texas, leaves the major league Blue Jays, a Northwest League club, and three indies. Way to go, politicos. Fans have another recourse to see baseball return to Canada: The ballot box.

Baseball has, without question, the best developmental system of any sport. That system provides a showcase to excite fans in the larger geographic region about prospects. It also outreaches with a competitive, live version of the sport to people who, by MLB's current reckoning, are only a "television" fan base.

Bud, you don't need contraction; You need reorganization.

If the AAA down to the Rookie teams of each franchise were within two hours flight time of each club, you would energize the fan base for the major and minor league clubs tenfold. Fans hundreds of miles from the major league club care about the people that they watch in their local parks.

Baseball should look at what it can do to leverage the minor league systems to maximize the markets for both local clubs and the parent team in the major city. If you want them glued to the tube, hook 'em in the home towns.

What happens when a major city stops being one? Look for minor cities that have become capable of sustaining major league baseball.

The population overall isn't shrinking, it's shifting. It took baseball fifty years to acknowledge that land grants and manifest destiny had opened up little states like California as a viable market.

Major League Baseball will not survive another fifty years if it doesn't adjust to some of the sunbelt cities that are exploding, and cater to them. Watch the traffic in the minor league ballparks in the cities with explosive population demographics.

MLB also needs to find minor league solutions for cities like Montreal where there is a passion for the sport, and a shrinking number of fans to sustain a sports business. Given their slippage into the number two spot of the big four sports, they can ill afford to disaffect any fan.