Baseball Between the Numbers by Jonah Keri

Author:Jonah Keri [Keri, Jonah;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465003730
Publisher: Basic Books

Does Baseball Need a Salary Cap?

NEIL DEMAUSE

Perhaps no two words in baseball generate as much controversy and emotion as “salary cap.” (“Designated hitter” might be a close second.) Depending on whom you ask, a salary cap would either save the game, destroy the players’ union, provide hope for small-market fans, pervert the free market, or create a tangle of red tape that would turn every trade deadline into a battle of wits among dueling “capologists.” Whenever owners and players have to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement—the next tussle is scheduled for after the 2006 season—discussion of a cap is sure to follow. Mere mention of the c-word usually throws a giant wrench into labor talks and raises fans’ fears of another 1994.

The concept of a cap sounds simple enough. Every team, whether the Yankees or the Devil Rays, is given an annual salary budget, and no team is allowed to exceed it. But as actually practiced by pro sports leagues, salary caps come in a million flavors: hard caps and soft caps, franchise-player exemptions, and luxury taxes. Each tweak to the system runs headlong into the economics of unintended consequences.

Before we can determine whether a salary cap would fix baseball, we have to decide just what it is about baseball that we want to fix. Taxes and caps have been suggested to cure various ills, including payroll inflation, high ticket prices, and competitive imbalance. Let’s take them one at a time.

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