Major League Baseball Franchises Research Articles

“It’s still Cleveland baseball”

In the summer of 2021, Cleveland’s Major League Baseball franchise announced the rebranding of the club’s nickname from the decades-long controversial “Indians” to the” Guardians.” The long-standing use of Native American imagery in sport has long been the source of contention, and for this reason, the Cleveland Guardians have continually been in the public eye prior to their rebrand. This article examines both the organization’s rebranding efforts and media coverage surrounding the team’s new identity. Guided by the theory of framing, this study applies themes of sports rebranding to analyze the team’s announcement video and sequentially deploys an inductive approach to identify the media frames present following the rebranding. Three sports rebrand frames were identified from the Cleveland Guardians’ announcement: regional pride, nostalgia, and rebirth. The media response looked at 79 articles and found two higher-order frames - broader movements and branding commentary – with six subcategories. In total, these frames indicated that rebranding efforts sought to center the new identity around the city of Cleveland while deemphasizing damages from the use of derogatory racial Native American imagery. The media response also shows that the rebrand is contextualized through broader movements and is politically contentious. Future directions of framing theory in sports rebranding and the discourse around the use and removal of racial imagery in sports is discussed.

Designing and Evaluating Dynamic Pricing Policies for Major League Baseball Tickets

Problem definition: We develop and estimate a demand model that can be used to evaluate and design dynamic pricing policies for single-game tickets by a sports team. Academic/practical relevance: Many firms have difficulty evaluating the impact of their pricing policy, which further inhibits their ability to design and implement dynamic pricing. We address this issue in the context of single-game ticket pricing for a Major League Baseball franchise. Methodology: We develop and estimate a comprehensive regression-based forecasting model that captures relevant aspects of the demand generation process such as ticket quantity and stadium seat section choice. The model is then used to evaluate the revenue associated with a specific pricing policy. Results: The demand model reveals factors that drive sports ticket revenue, such as the effect of home-team performance on overall price sensitivity and the relationship between customers’ arrival timing and product choice. These insights are incorporated into the optimization to improve the dynamic pricing policies. Managerial implications: We show that by leveraging the model insights and allowing sufficient pricing flexibility, the franchise can achieve a potential revenue improvement of 17.2% through daily price reoptimization. This improvement is comparable to the outcome of a clairvoyant policy in which the future evolution of demand is assumed to be known. The online supplement is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2018.0760 .

Rethinking Firm Specific Human Capital: An Empirical Test of Employee Mobility

Firm-specific human capital has long been held to be a source of competitive advantage as it constrains employee mobility. However, current research suggests that an individual’s prior firm-specific investments may actually signal value to hiring firms, and thus increase the likelihood of employees leaving their current firms to work for another. In an empirical analysis of Major League Baseball franchises between 1988 and 2011, we find that an individual’s investments in firm-specific human capital increases mobility. We also explore whether the relationship between firm-specific human capital and mobility is moderated by occupational level.

Home Team: The Turbulent History of the San Francisco Giants by Robert F. Garratt

Reviewed by: Home Team: The Turbulent History of the San Francisco Giants by Robert F. Garratt Paul K. Howard Robert F. Garratt. Home Team: The Turbulent History of the San Francisco Giants. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. 236 pp. Paperback, $19.95 Growing up in the Bay Area during the sixties I had the joy of watching Willie Mays roam the outfield for the San Francisco Giants. Mays, McCovey, Marichal, and Cepeda gave the Giants a Hall of Fame cast that instilled in me an enduring love for baseball and the San Francisco Giants. That Hall of Fame foundation became the bedrock of my passion for the Giants that was certainly challenged as that era ended. Robert F. Garratt has given baseball fans a rich and engaging history of the Giants' move from New York to San Francisco from those early years with a Hall of Fame cast through times of poor play, lousy attendance, multiple painful near moves, and that dreadful place known as Candlestick Park. From the preface through the epilogue it is clearly evident that Garratt put his scholarly skills to artistic form. From owners Horace Stoneham, Bob Lurie and Peter Magowan, Garratt guides readers through the challenging years of the San Francisco Giants. Stoneham was faced with a New York stadium that was well past its prime years. The Polo Grounds was one of the oldest ballparks in baseball. Laying aside myths and speculations, Garratt presents a detailed and articulate history of the events culminating in the moves of Stoneham's Giants from New York to San Francisco and Walter O'Malley's Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Whereas the book is engaging and contains a myriad of fun, interesting facts, the pace lacks freshness due to repeated facts. Garratt writes, "The Giants [End Page 269] drew 1,155,067 for the 1954 season" (1). The same fact is repeated just three pages later. Multiple times in chapter one Garratt writes that Dan Topping and Del Webb were owners of the New York Yankees. Also multiple times, Garratt gives readers the same facts regarding a bond passed by San Francisco voters in 1954 authorizing five million dollars to build a stadium "for the sole purpose of attracting a Major League Baseball franchise for San Francisco" (11). Despite my own perceived lack of fresh pace, the book really does remain engaging from cover to cover. Personally, the most fascinating thread illuminated by Garratt is the visionary distinctions of Horace Stoneham and Peter Magowan. Both owners had visionary insight, but with different styles. As a New Yorker, Stoneham is described as having a "genuine affection for the city and the urban life it offered" (3). He loved New York and he loved the Giants, yet times were changing. Garratt writes that it dawned on Stoneham that "despite its tradition and history, the Polo Grounds, both as a facility and a location, was past its prime" (5). Sensing how the American future would be shaped by the automobile Stoneham worried about the lack of parking available at the Polo Grounds. As the move to San Francisco moved forward, a stadium with ample parking was at the forefront of his thinking. Stoneham's vision for Candlestick Park set a disastrous course. As the Giants moved west, Stoneham seemed unaware of the need to integrate the team into the historical and cultural fabric of San Francisco. Looking back, the only aspect of the move that had any feel for the city of San Francisco was that Candlestick Park resembled Alcatraz. On the other hand, Garratt beautifully describes how Peter Magowan had a vision that was rooted in tradition, history and culture, both of the Giants and of San Francisco. This vision was manifest immediately in December 1992 as the Giants entered the Magowan era. Signing Barry Bonds, hiring his father Bobby Bonds as hitting coach, and extending a lifetime contract to Willie Mays laid a course for the Giants rooted in tradition and history. While Magowan's early years were still latched to Candlestick Park, he was able to set a visionary course for a new stadium linked to the history and culture of San Francisco. Wow, did Magowan...

Hurdle Models and Age Effects in the Major League Baseball Draft

Major League Baseball franchises expend an abundance of resources on scouting in preparation for the June Amateur Draft. In addition to the classic “tools” assessed, another factor considered is age: Younger players may get selected over older players of equal ability because of anticipated development. Additionally, Little League rules in effect until 2006 operated on an August 1–July 31 year meaning that, in their youth, players born on August 1 were the eldest in their cohort. We define a relative age to be how old a player was (in days) when the youngest player in their cohort was born. For example, a player born on July 31 would have a relative age of 1 day, whereas a player born on August 1 would have a relative age of 365 days. We examine the performance of high school (HS) players selected in the June Draft from 1987 to 2011. We find that more relatively old players are selected in the Draft. Conversely, both age and relative age have a significant negative relationship with the odds of reaching the major leagues. Given that a draftee reaches the majors, however, there is no difference based on age or relative age, as measured by games played, wins above replacement, and on-base plus slugging percentage. Had the draft market operated efficiently, neither relative age nor age on draft day would have captured additional variation in performance after controlling for draft position and other factors. We conclude that teams have undervalued both young and relatively young HS players.

The Revenue Impact of Dynamic Pricing Policies in Major League Baseball Ticket Sales

We study the operational implementation of multiproduct dynamic pricing by a Major League Baseball franchise for single game tickets. We develop and apply a comprehensive customer choice model to help design dynamic pricing policies for the franchise. Our model encompasses all relevant aspects of customer demand generation process, including ticket quantity and stadium seat section choice. Furthermore, our demand model incorporates external factors that drive customer valuation of sports tickets such as the home team's on-field performance and observed overall attendance level at the time of purchase. Our counterfactual results show potential revenue improvement of up to 15% through the effective use of dynamic pricing. We also find that a properly calibrated fixed pricing policy based on a detailed customer demand model can achieve similar levels of revenue improvement as the optimal dynamic pricing policy.

Brand Equity, Efficiency and Valuation of Professional Sports Franchises: The Case of Major League Baseball

Values of professional sports franchises have outpaced even investment returns in recent bull markets. Financial World found the value of professional teams like the Dallas Cowboys, Miami Dolphins and the NY Yankees to exceed $200 million each. In 1996, the average estimated value of Major League Baseball (MLB) teams was $134 million, and most showed double-digit growth in value, although 13 of the 26 teams were in the red. Our research proposes a model to determine the value of a professional sports franchise, by treating the franchise as a brand whose value is enhanced by its key attributes. This approach is appropriate because each franchise represents a single brand firm. Our model takes into account equity enhancing factors like the franchise longevity, historical performance, the number of marquee/award-winning roster players, and market factors such as market size, competition and franchise efficiency. We determine the extent to which a franchise is managed efficiently with respect to inputs like investments in players (player costs) and outputs such as franchise revenue and team performance (win-loss ratio). Using data from 1990-1995 to illustrate our model, we are able to determine (1) the brand equity of MLB franchises, (2) how efficiently each team is managed, and (3) the contribution of marketing factors like brand equity, market size, competition, as well as efficiency, to franchise value. While this paper focuses on MBL, the methodology can easily be extended to other professional sports.

Before Wrigley Became Wrigley: The Inside Story of the First Years of the Cubs' Home Field by Sean Deveney

Reviewed by: Before Wrigley Became Wrigley: The Inside Story of the First Years of the Cubs' Home Field by Sean Deveney Douglas K. Lehman Sean Deveney. Before Wrigley Became Wrigley: The Inside Story of the First Years of the Cubs' Home Field. New York: Sports Publishing, 2014. 268 pp. Cloth, $24.95. The centennial anniversary of Wrigley Field, the iconic home of the Chicago Cubs, was celebrated in April 2014, but many casual fans are not aware that the stadium on Chicago's north side was not built to serve as the venue for the Cubs, but rather for a competing team that was the cornerstone for an outlaw league attempting to reach major league status. Chicago's Federal League franchise remains the only championship team to play at the corner of Addision and Clark. While the Cubs have won the National League pennant during their tenure at Wrigley Field, they lost six World Series before finally winning the crown in 2016. This is a story with many actors: Joe Tinker, Charles Weeghman, Charles W. Murphy, Charles Taft, brothers Joe and Mike Cantillon, James Gilmore, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Ban Johnson, along with a cast of minor players. Sean Deveney, a writer for The Sporting News, has done an excellent job of telling the story of how Wrigley Field came to be. It is a story of intrigue, double-dealing, and battles on and off the diamond. While the focus of Deveney's book is Weeghman Park, it is also a history of the Federal League during the turmoil between the Federal League owners and the magnates of Organized Baseball, in particular American League president Ban Johnson. In his second book on the Chicago Cubs during the 1910s, Deveney has made use of secondary and primary sources in his research on this topic. In addition to the contemporary Chicago newspapers he also utilized newspapers from Boston, New York, Baltimore and Washington as well as many of the baseball-related magazines of the times. Deveney utilized the legal documents from the Federal League's struggles to be recognized as a major league as part of his research. He also made use of the major secondary monograph sources covering the period, including biographies of the major characters, as well as histories of Chicago and the battle between the Federal League and organized baseball. The battle between Organized Baseball and the Federal League owners is the centerpiece of Deveney's book and he traces it back to the efforts of brothers Joe and Mike Cantillon to place an American Association franchise on the north side of Chicago. From these beginnings, he traces the involvement of Charles Weeghman, a wealthy Chicago businessman whose fortune was built on an empire of lunch rooms located within the Chicago Loop, who wanted [End Page 224] to acquire a major league baseball franchise. Because of Weeghman's involvement Chicago would become the center of the storm involving the Federal League and Organized Baseball. The Chicago Cubs were a power in the National League during the first decade of the twentieth century, playing in the World Series four times between 1906 and 1910, winning two of those series. By 1913 the Cubs were no longer challengers for the National League pennant, but were still able to finish with winning records and in the first division. Still, the glory days of Tinker to Evers to Chance were over. Evers played his last season with the Cubs in 1913, Chance was selected by the New York Highlanders off waivers and Tinker traded to the Cincinnati Reds in 1912. Tinker took the opportunity to jump to the Federal League at the end of 1913 becoming one of the biggest names from OB to make the leap and the manager for the Chicago Chi-Feds. He would be instrumental during the next two years in the Federal League's efforts to sign players such as Walter Johnson and Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown. The story of the Federal League's battle with Organized Baseball is a complicated one, centering around salaries, contracts, ballparks, the ten-day clause, baseball's reserve clause and a lawsuit with a decision handed down by Kenesaw Mountain Landis...

Changes in Cuba’s Migration Policy and Its Impact on Baseball

Baseball is an essential constituent of the Cuban national identity. For nearly a century, Cuban baseball players had joined high-ranking international leagues, including the Negro Leagues and Major League Baseball (MLB) of the United States. After the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, the professional practice of sport was banned in the country. On the other hand, the revolutionary government instituted migration rules that disallowed Cuban citizens to travel abroad freely. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban national baseball team reigned in amateur competitions worldwide. Sporting successes in general and those of baseball in particular, were managed by the government as a political tool; the government used to display the loyalty of the athletes as a triumph of the Cuban system. However, since the nineties there has been a growing departure of Cuban top baseball players who have had the target of entering in MLB franchises, disregarding that the Cuban migration policy had remained unwavering. On the other hand, after the enactment of changes in the Cuban migration policy in 2013, the unconventional departure of high performance baseball players has increased sharply. The relationship between the migration reform and the increased leakage of baseball players has not been studied by scholars. The relevance of this paper is that it is the first academic approach to that relationship. This paper discusses the migration reform in Cuba and focuses mainly on its impact on baseball.

Rooting for the Clothes: The Materialization of Memory in Baseball’s Throwback Uniforms

At their essence, sports jerseys function as symbolic materializations that foster a constitutive identity and unity between fans, players, and cities or regions. When new teams are created, often the team logo and uniform are the first manifestations of the team's identity. These designs are so important that many franchises consult with professional marketing firms on new designs intended to connect with new fans and maximize merchandizing streams) Furthermore, when teams acquire new players, the first act as a new member of the team often involves a ceremonial press conference that is opened by the new player donning the team's jersey (a similar practice takes place during amateur drafts for new players). The jersey thus signifies both an identity and a membership while existing as a transformative object with its own magical provenance: the wearer, whether on the field or off, defers their individual identity for the sake of a team. As such, jerseys are constantly put in place as performance pieces, as when uniforms are raised to arena rafters to give enduring presence to their greatness, or when city statues are draped in team jerseys to unite the citizenry. These uniforms come to symbolize more than just a team; they can become transcendent icons that represent a city, even a country, and its enduring memories. In the United States, the most enduring uniforms belong to the nation's pastime: baseball. With several teams founding their identities in uniform designs established almost a century ago, the symbolic power of uniforms has reached unprecedented levels in a society that is enamored with nostalgia. Major League Baseball (MLB) franchises have sought to exploit this infatuation by unveiling and donning or retro uniforms on a regular basis. These garments mimic the uniform histories of earlier teams, utilizing new fabrics and sewing techniques to meet contemporary expectations for uniforms while appearing as a facsimile of a bygone era. As proof of the popularity of throwbacks during the past decade, every MLB franchise--save the Colorado Rockies--has deployed some version at least once. Given that baseball uniforms first appeared in the 1840s, MLB clubs have an almost infinite number of throwback uniforms to delve through. With such a library of offerings, the commemorative and nostalgic functions that throwbacks provide is occasionally placed in contrast with histories that reopen divisive franchise relocations. With uniforms serving as the materialization of this divisiveness, multiple teams throughout the major leagues have employed throwback jerseys that highlight their clashing histories. Specifically, the Seattle Mariners recently wore throwbacks to the Seattle Pilots, a franchise that moved to Milwaukee in 1970 and became the Milwaukee Brewers. Conversely, the Brewers have also worn throwbacks to the Milwaukee Braves, a franchise that originated in Boston, moved to Milwaukee to start the 1952 MLB season, and then moved to Atlanta before the 1966 MLB season. The Washington (DC) Nationals, a franchise with roots in Montreal, has ignored Expos throwbacks and instead has used Washington Senators jerseys, recalling two earlier franchises that did exist as the Senators but relocated to two different cities. After the 1960 season, the Senators moved to Minnesota (and became the Twins) while, simultaneously, a new expansion franchise was given to Washington, thus keeping a professional baseball franchise in the nation's capital. That version of the Washington Senators left DC after the 1971 season, moving to the Dallas area to become the Texas Rangers. These complicated, contextual, and, at times, contradictory histories make throwback uniforms, as nostalgic symbols loaded with meanings and memories, appealing targets for rhetorical criticism. Specifically, throwbacks force us to consider how the material representation of history is fraught with questions regarding collective memory, commemoration, and the impact of materialized style. …

“Baseball over Tea-Cakes”: Major League Baseball in American Avant-Garde Poetry from Imagism to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E

“Baseball over Tea-Cakes”Major League Baseball in American Avant-Garde Poetry from Imagism to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Richard Parker (bio) Harold Seymour and Dorothy Seymour Mills begin their history of baseball by observing that “Baseball in America is many things. But, contrary to widespread belief, professional baseball is not a sport. It is a commercialized amusement business.”1 They go on to demonstrate that baseball “is not only a business but a monopoly as well,” detailing Major League Baseball’s already immense scale at the time of the 1959 season. My history of Major League Baseball considers this specific corporate incarnation in American poetry, beginning with Ezra Pound and Imagism in the 1910s and concluding with the Language poets in 1970s and 1980s, passing through the intermediate stages of Objectivist verse, the Black Mountain poets, the San Francisco Renaissance, the Beats and the New York Schools. This genealogy makes for a somewhat perverse history of American writing on baseball; with the exception of Jack Spicer, baseball is not a significant subject for any of the poets I will address here, and none of them can reasonably be considered “baseball poets.”2 My history will, in fact, be one of writers pointedly not writing about baseball, and the nuances in their approach to this avoidance. Underlying this non-history is a century of growth in Major League Baseball that often matches changes within the avant-garde, with the many ambiguities and controversies of westward expansion and a rampantly postmodern, late-capitalist consumerism providing snug analogies to developments in American poetry. My history of Major League Baseball in avant-garde American poetry begins with the young Ezra Pound, a writer with very little to say about baseball, a poet who wrote no poetry on baseball and who would only come to approach baseball late in his career. His early example is, however, germane to the manner in which the other writers I will approach deal with baseball in their poetry, chiefly through his early mentoring of the Imagist movement. Imagism’s inability to address an amassed urban proletariat, as displayed in Pound’s early work as those undifferentiated “faces in the crowd” of “In a [End Page 87] Station of the Metro,” or the “the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor” in “The Garden,” was endemic.3 Through his Imagist phase and later Pound was unable to convincingly depict a differentiated, modern, urban working-class. Rather than the urban poor, Pound’s sympathy would be for the rural peasants of an exoticised China (a sympathy most clearly displayed by the early Pound in the adaptive translations of Cathay [1915]). As far back as 1874, Mark Twain had already warned of baseball’s dangerous proximity to the big business interests of the Gilded Age, accusing baseball of becoming “the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century!”4 With the arrival of the Imagists in the years immediately preceding the Great War, this connection between baseball, mass entertainment, and big business would have been even clearer, and this movement’s refusal of such subjects, along with its transatlantic ambivalence towards Americana in general, make it unsurprising that they did not deal directly with the sport. Their example would, however, provide a model for the approach towards baseball employed by the poets I will discuss here. Imagism originated in London, and the poems quoted above describe London and Paris, neither of which cities held Major League Baseball franchises in the 1915 and 1916 seasons. Across the Atlantic, however, America’s stay-at-home poets would make a more direct approach to the national pastime, and in some cases would choose to adapt the techniques of Imagism to this project. William Carlos Williams’s much anthologized poem, “At the Ball Game,” originally an untitled section of Spring and All (1923), while going further to approach both the baseball crowd and their game, would transfer some of the Imagist ambivalence to the spectacle of the sports crowd. Like Pound’s crowds these spectators are quite homogenous: The crowd at the ball game is moved uniformly by a spirit...

Abstract LB-83: Colorectal Cancer Coalition (C3) and Thomas P. O'Sullivan Foundation: Advocacy, Research Funding, and Education

Abstract Following the death of Doug Sharp's good friend, Tom O'Sullivan, in 2007, his widow and I established the Thomas P. O'Sullivan Foundation with the mission of raising funds for research and increasing public awareness and education about colorectal cancer. The foundation has held three annual golf tournaments which have collectively raised over $75,000. The foundation has provided funds to specific research projects at the University of Kansas Cancer Center. The Foundation is also tentatively funding an education day through the Kansas University Cancer Center in 2012 which will give doctors, scientists, staff and others a chance to speak and network with approximately 300 to 400 people who have an interest in colorectal cancer. Also, in 2012, the foundation is looking into funding a “Day at the Royals”_a major league baseball franchise in Kansas City, to increase education and awareness. Through his involvement in the fight against colorectal cancer following my friend's death, Mr. Sharp became involved in Colorectal Cancer Coalition (C3) in 2010. C3 is a national nonprofit advocacy organization whose mission is fight colorectal cancer through research, empowerment, and increased access to treatment. The Coalition was established in 2005 in order to provide focus, infrastructure and support to the growing colorectal cancer advocacy movement. Nationally headquartered near Washington, DC, the Coalition is the sole colorectal cancer advocacy organization focusing on providing a voice for patients in the Halls of Congress and in research centers and regulatory agencies throughout the country while working to educate patients and caregivers about the disease and empower them to be their own best advocate. Mr. Sharp attended C3's annual “Call on Congress” conference where he, alongside other advocates, was trained to lobby their member of Congress in Washington DC. The group specifically asked for support from the members on three legislative bills: HR 1330, the Colorectal Cancer Screening and Treatment Act; HR 1189, the Colorectal Cancer Prevention, Early Detection, and Treatment Act; and an increase in cancer research funding of $50 million for the fiscal year 2011 in the Department of Defense through an appropriations bill. Earlier this year, he was one of six individuals from across the country asked to serve on C3's Grassroots Action Committee (GAC). The GAC is a steering committee charged with growing the C3 advocacy's membership, increasing awareness for C3 activities & goals, as well as organizing the 2011 “Call On Congress”. This year, advocates will be lobbying for the same pieces of legislation. In addition to those efforts, advocates will also be seeking support for a bill to issue a US Postage Stamp to bring about awareness and proceeds to fund colorectal cancer research. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2011 Apr 2-6; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2011;71(8 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-83. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2011-LB-83

A Flag is Flipped and a Nation Flaps: The Politics and Patriotism of the First International World Series

title of has often been scrutinized as being a flagrant misnomer for Major League Baseball's best-of-seven championship event. While there is a long history of non-U.S.-born athletes competing in series, prior to. 1992 teams had always represented and played in U.S. cities. World Series between Atlanta Braves and Toronto Blue Jays marked first time an international city, albeit from same continent, was featured in fall classic. A decade prior, Toronto expansion team had just come off a six-year stretch of consecutive last-place finishes in their division. (1) In 1992, however, Jays were scorching hot, and Canada had officially contracted baseball fever. More accurately, Blue Jays fever. An article published in Canada's Maclean's newsmagazine described it well. It explained how Blue Jays carried hopes of Canada into premier event of America's national pastime. In a three-way compact, players, city, and country all sought a World Series victory--now. (2) With Toronto being home to one of only two Major League Baseball franchises in all of Canada (the Montreal Expos being other), Canadian baseball fans had slim pickings unless they decided to root for a team from States, an option many took then and still take today. success of '92 Blue Jays, however, captivated Canada from east to west. (3) After all, this team was stacked with likes of Joe Carter, Roberto Alomar, John Olerud, and soon-to-be World Series MVP Pat North of Borders. pitching staff had equal depth provided by starters Jack Morris, David Wells, Pat Hentgen, Juan Guzman, set-up man Mark Eichhorn, and ever-solid closer Tom The Terminator Henke. Although not a single member of Blue Jays' roster was Canadian, the twenty-five U.S.- and Latin-American-born players were understood to represent Canada as surely as twenty-five Canadians could have done. (4) After beating their rival Oakland Athletics in an intense six-game struggle for American League pennant, Blue Jays, backed by an entire nation were in position to make baseball history and receive due recognition on professional baseball's biggest stage. Blue Jays' designated hitter and 41-year-old elder statesman Dave Winfield may have said it best: We're aware that we don't represent just a city. We represent an entire country. Every team has its territory, of course, maybe a state or region, but we've got all of Canada. (5) media on both sides of border had a great time propping up international component of series. In United States clamor was all about baseball being game, and to Canadians it was a matter of sending their Trojan Horse stateside to shake-up America's game. (6) On day Jays arrived in Atlanta, a local writer described it like this: The Canadians are riding across border trying to wrest away Holy Grail of American sport and cart our game off to frozen North. (7) message was clear and, regardless of outcome, 89th World Series was predestined to be something special. While it is beyond scope or intent of this essay (not to mention expertise of this author) to delve into a comprehensive analysis of political and social landscape of Canada during early nineties, for sake of providing context it is worthwhile to note that this swell of national pride happened to coincide with a very interesting crossroads in contemporary Canadian history. A national referendum was scheduled for Monday, October 26, just days after series concluded, asking Canadians to vote Yes/Oui or No/Non on a package of proposed constitutional amendments. Charlottetown Accord, as it was called, contained new legislation pertaining to balance of federal and provincial powers and several other issues of longstanding importance to Canadians. Among most significant and polarizing issues at stake in referendum were those dealing with unique status of Quebec, Senate reform, and rights and political representation of Native peoples. …

If You Build It, They Will Speak: Public Stadiums, Public Forums, and Free Speech

ROOT, ROOT, ROOT Baseball and freedom of speech are American icons, latter a central element of former. (1) During seventh-inning stretch fans reiterate ancient injunction to root, root for home (2) scoreboard, organist, and players encourage fans to make noise and to actively participate in game. Somewhere in crowd is a man in a rainbow wig carrying a John 3:16 sign. (3) The Wave, in which fans in successive sections of park stand and raise their arms in unison, expresses some message, although I do not understand what that is or why anyone feels a need to express it. (4) Fans engage in what I term speech. (5) Cheering speech is about teams, players, coaches, officials, team executives, or other fans. It supports, opposes, cheers, jeers, praises, criticizes, heckles, and even taunts. It can be in support of one's own players and team, be against opposing players and team (a distinct message), or even be critical of one's own players and team. It can be about events field or about baseball in a broader social context. Cheering speech can be oral, symbolic, or written signs, banners, clothing, and body parts. It can be positive, negative, and everything in between. It can be in good taste or bad, clean or profane, provocative and clever or otherwise. And it will be loud. First Amendment protection for cheering speech comes from two directions. First, speech about baseball is important in its own right. Baseball is a societal force, a symbol of American society, psyche, and aspirations. (6) Baseball is American culture--low culture perhaps, but culture nonetheless, with pervasive and meaningful appeal. (7) As federal grand jury investigating 1919 Black Sox Scandal stated, baseball is American institution, having its place prominently and significantly in life of people. (8) Cheering speech is protected as expression that builds a culture on all areas of human learning and knowledge. (9) From other direction cheering speech has political content; it often is pure political speech matters of public import made in particularized context of a baseball game. Political speech of criticizing U.S. president becomes cheering speech if done when president appears at ballpark to throw out first pitch. Cheering speech is protected for its connection to and role in larger public discourse. IF YOU BUILD IT Ballparks are part of mythology of baseball; these are green cathedrals in which religion of baseball is observed, with such timeless nicknames as Friendly Confines and the House That Ruth Built. (10) Major League Baseball franchises have entwined themselves in political process through public financing of places in which games are played. (11) From late 1980s until 2004 no fewer than twenty ballparks were either built or renovated exclusively or partially for Major League Baseball teams (eleven between 1999 and 2004), with approximately two-thirds of funds from public coffers. (12) impetus for this massive public undertaking often is an existing team's threat to leave city; other times it is an attempt by a city to attract a new or existing team. (13) Major League Baseball insists that essential to fielding a competitive team is a new, retro, nostalgic, postmodern, baseball-only park located in a downtown area and with seats close to field. (14) Teams demand additional new park creates to be profitable off field and to have money to compete for high-priced superstar players who will enable team to be successful field. (15) result is a public-private partnership in stadium financing, with public putting a large amount of money up front and team garnering nontraditional revenues generated by special features of modern ballparks. …

Major League Baseball Franchises, 1901-2002: A History in Prose

Major League Baseball Franchises, 1901-2002: A History in Prose

Is Winning Everything?

The data envelopment analysis technique is used to measure franchise payroll efficiency in the National Football League (NFL) from 1981 to 2000 and Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1985 to 2001. This article shows that there is a significant difference in the level of franchise inefficiency between MLB and the NFL because of the different financial structure in these leagues. MLB franchises, with little revenue sharing and no salary cap, tend to be less efficient than NFL franchises. Big spending and inefficient MLB franchises tend to come from large media markets, although this is not the case in the NFL. This article also shows that NFL franchise efficiency significantly improved after the salary cap was introduced in 1994.

Franchise Free Agency in Professional Sports Leagues

The National Football League (NFL or the League) has expanded membership only twice since its merger with the American Football League (AFL) in 1970. In the wake of each expansion decision in 1974 and 1993, there has been a series of unsettling franchise dislocations and extortions of stadium concessions from estranged NFL cities. The League argues that it has been rendered powerless to regulate these relocations by the adverse antitrust ruling that the NFL suffered in its failed attempt to block the move of the Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles in 1980-2. Over the same period, however, Major League Baseball (MLB) has expanded on only three occasions, and, while incumbent MLB clubs have often threatened relocation to leverage new stadia or lease concessions, not one MLB franchise has actually abandoned home since the Washington Senators became the Texas Rangers in 1972. Since the Raiders decisions,' over onehalf of the franchises in the NFL have played a stadium extortion game with their home markets and, in stark contrast to MLB, about one-half of these relocation threats have been realized. According to the League, the relative frequency of relocations in the NFL derives from the antitrust immunity enjoyed by MLB throughout most of this century.2 The remedy to the relocation revolution, in the League's opinion, requires the legislative empowerment of the NFL with an antitrust exemption similar to that held by MLB. It is argued in this paper that exemption from antitrust law is not necessary, because the NFL already holds the power to regulate the relocation of its members without threat of antitrust litigation, regardless of the Raiders decisions. The location of NFL clubs is inherently unstable, because franchise relocation is often in the best economic interest of a syndicated league. The ultimate source of franchise free agency in the NFL lies in the League's extensive revenue-sharing arrangements well beyond exemption from antitrust law.

A Unified Theory of Capital and Labor Markets in Major League Baseball

The economics of professional sports has been relegated to the realm of labor theory by the assumption that owners of sports franchises are simply maximizers of profit in vacuo. Theory developed within this vacuum [11; 12; 15; 16; 18; 19] has been preoccupied with Rottenburg's invariance proposition [13] that the distribution of talent within Major League Baseball (MLB) is independent of the legal ownership of that talent. According to this Coasian argument, the institution of free agency in MLB would not affect the real decisions of teams, but it would result in the transfer of wealth from owners to players in the form of higher player salaries, reduced exploitation, diminished profits and lower franchise values. As predicted, the player-cost share of league revenues rose from 20 percent to 58 percent over the first two decades of free agency in MLB. Unfortunately, the explosion in MLB players' salaries has been attributed by association to the institution of free agency, itself.1 Symptom-treating policies such as payroll caps and luxury taxes, which have been conceived from this myopic view, have been ineffective [12] and potentially deleterious [18]. During the same two-decades, however, over 40 MLB franchise ownerships were coincidentally transferred amid a revolutionary transition of MLB ownership structure from sole sportsman to leveraged syndicate.2 This paper explores the possibility that the salary escalation during the free agency period was partially the result of the capital market game of leveraged syndication being actively played on a labor market field of free agency. The major problem in developing a theory to unify capital and labor market behavior stems from Modigliani and Miller's irrelevance proposition [10] that the financial and real decisions of a firm

Stealing Home: Political, Economic, and Media Power and a Publicly-Funded Baseball Stadium in Denver

In 1990, the Major League Baseball owners announced that the National League would add two new franchises in 1993. Two issues immediately confronted the various groups attempting to secure a baseball franchise for Denver. One was finding an owner for the franchise, the other was providing a stadium for the team. This study focuses on the events and social processes involved in the baseball stadium issue in Denver's bid to secure a major league baseball franchise. The taxpayers of metropolitan Denver were asked to vote on a sales tax initiative that would finance the construction and operation of a new baseball stadium ifaMajorLeagueBaseballfranchisewasultimatelyawardedtoDenver. This study centers on how various forms of power were used to persuade taxpayers that they should pay the costs of constructing a baseball stadium and how the same forms of power were later used to obtain a stadium lease agreement. Other issues addressed by this study include why citizens were not more active in questioning either the public expen diture of money for the construction of a stadium or the terms of the stadium lease agreement. Analyses and explanations for these questions are grounded in the dynamics of power as it was employed by the various entities whose interest was in securing a Major League Baseball franchise for Denver.