Salaries can be decrease, maybe drastically so, however so would ticket costs. And watching video games on tv or by way of on-line streaming can be a lot easier, as broadcasts can be carried solely by C-SPAN.
Revenues, although diminished, can be extra pretty distributed. I think about gate receipts and merchandise gross sales being block-granted to the native authorities within the cities wherein groups play, shoring up the coffers of many an ailing municipality. Public funding of stadiums would proceed, however as an alternative of being a cynical money seize by penurious homeowners, it will be a noble endeavor, accepted by the detached citizenry as a type of worthwhile cultural ventures just like the Smithsonian Establishment that governments are compelled to help.
Don’t confuse my intentions. I might gladly see Justin Verlander — as soon as a star pitcher for my Detroit Tigers earlier than being lured away by the Houston Astros — make $25 million a 12 months for enjoying a boys’ recreation, simply as I might fortunately pay Simone Younger, our best dwelling conductor, thrice that quantity for a single yearly engagement on the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. However the world’s classical musicians way back realized that the approach to life of figures just like the conductor Herbert von Karajan, together with his yachts and customized Porsches, was a product of a vanished age wherein the aspirational center courses felt that purchasing classical recordings was an obligation; so too should baseball gamers settle for that nine-figure contracts are a vestige of an older and nobler civilization.
We have to cease pretending that baseball has a broad-based enthusiastic following and start to see the sport for what it’s: the sports activities equal of gathering 78 r.p.m. data. Baseball is America’s recreation solely within the sense that jazz is America’s music or that Henry James is America’s literature. It’s time that we acknowledged this reality by affording baseball the identical approbation we reserve for these different uncared for cultural treasures.
It is perhaps a tough promote for some followers, however in the end a world wherein the sport not solely continues but additionally does so free of business pressures can be a merrier one. Amongst different issues, the league might abandon its doomed makes an attempt to draw extra viewers by mucking with the principles for further innings and introducing impure practices like pitch clocks, sign transmitters for catchers and the common designated hitter. A strict wage cap may very well be imposed to assist guarantee aggressive parity amongst groups.
And who is aware of? Simply as vacationers who would by no means consider themselves as fascinated about artwork go to the Nationwide Gallery or the Metropolitan Museum as a result of doing so appears suitably intellectual, maybe in the future they could go to baseball video games out of some inchoate sense that it is going to be instructional and enriching.
Lest there be any doubts, I ought to make it clear that I stand to realize nothing ought to my scheme be taken up by the related authorities. I argue from a disinterested place of affection, in sober recognition of baseball’s simple obsolescence.