The Twelve Year Rain Delay: Why a Change in Leadership Will Benefit the Game of Baseball
2004; Albany Law School; Volume: 68; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0002-4678
Autores Tópico(s)Sports, Gender, and Society
ResumoIt breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. (1) [E]xamining the business of baseball is like looking at the sun, you can't do it for very long before you have to turn away. (2) INTRODUCTION Baseball is a beautiful game. Despite the recent surge in the popularity of professional football and basketball, baseball is--and will always be--the greatest game ever played. Baseball is so graceful and elegant that even the United States Supreme Court could not resist professing its love for the game and its players: [T]here are the many names, celebrated for one reason or another, that have sparked the diamond and its environs and that have provided tinder for recaptured thrills, for reminiscence and comparisons, and for conversation and anticipation in-season and off-season: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Tris Speaker ... Rogers Hornsby ... Jackie Robinson ... Honus Wagner ... Satchel Paige ... Three-Finger Brown ... Cy Young ... Smokey Joe Wood ... Roy Campanella ... [and] Dizzy Dean. (3) The beauty of the game lies in its relationship to numbers. Baseball is played and revered worldwide; yet no matter where it is played, it remains a universal game of numbers: a baseball must weigh between five and five and a quarter ounces, (4) ninety feet separate each of the four bases, (5) and the pitcher's mound lies exactly sixty feet and six inches from home plate. (6) Baseball also revolves around statistics. (7) Fans of the game pride themselves on knowing the stats of the single season strikeout leader, (8) the all-time hits leader, (9) and the player with the highest single season batting average. (10) The most important numbers in baseball, however, have nothing to do with on-base percentages or earned run averages. The most important numbers in baseball are expressed in terms of dollars and cents. Baseball is a business. As sad as that is to say, it is true. Fans once attended games at places like Comiskey Park, Tiger Stadium, and the Polo Grounds. (11) Now they force themselves into tiny seats at advertisement-laden and dreadfully named stadiums such as Comerica Park, Network Associates Coliseum, Citizens Bank Park, and Minute Maid Park. (12) Corporate renaming of ballparks, which has been a staple in the world of sports for nearly a decade, is one of the many ways the business side of the sport overshadows the game of baseball. (13) It is widely believed that the 1994 player strike marked the point when economics took over and the game of baseball lost its innocence. (14) The game, however, has been dominated by economics since its inception. Baseball is, was, and will always be a business, and like any good business, baseball has one objective--to make money. The business of baseball has often been compared to the inner-workings of a large corporation. (15) In the business world, corporations need strong leaders to make important decisions and successfully govern the business. Just as a chief executive officer heads a corporation, the Office of the Commissioner governs the game and business of Major League Baseball (MLB). However, while a director of a corporation owes fiduciary duties to the corporation and its shareholders, the Commissioner of Baseball does not owe similar duties because [b]aseball is a private enterprise, bound by its own internal laws and regulations. (16) The MLB governing structure is an anomaly. If it were more like a public corporation, perhaps baseball could have avoided the issues that have plagued it for years. Instead, baseball is riddled with strikes, lockouts, gambling, drugs, and collusion. This article analyzes the history of the Office of the Commissioner of MLB and demonstrates how change in the current governing structure will allow fans to concentrate more on the game played between the lines, rather than what occurs in the conference rooms. …
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