When the news about Renel Brooks-Moon broke this morning, I found myself struggling with how to think about it. Not because I felt personally impacted or saddened by the news, but actually the opposite. I felt myself a little calloused to the whole idea. Why were people so up in arms about this? For context, I left the bay area in 2006, so at this point in my life I've gone to more games not at Oracle (PacBell, SBC, AT&T) then I have to the park on the cove. Would anyone care that the voice behind a commercial changed (this was the best non-sports analogy I could come up with)? Maybe that voice wanted to move onto bigger and better things. Maybe after a certain amount of years, their contract demands exceeded the advertising budget. It's just business. And that's when it hit me, because I've had this thought for a while now and haven't been able to formulate these thoughts into words. Capital B Baseball is not a business - as much as the team owners want you to think it is.
With any business or product, there should be choices. Do I prefer Coke or Pepsi? Apple or Android? But I'm not really sure I had a choice to be a Giants fan. I grew up in the South Bay Area, and I liked baseball. I just was a Giants fan. Add to this the fact that Baseball has become so much more regionalized, and that pride with one's city (or region) is synonymous with pride in one's team. Can you choose to follow and root for a different team? Technically, and logically yes. But emotionally? It's not so easy. Once a team has us, they often have us for life (and often times have any future generations of our lineage while they're at it). I don't think this is inherently bad. Blindly caring about a team has benefits. Having a geographical rooting interest builds camaraderie. But then why do we accept the lines from owners that "it's a business"?
Clearly it's not just a game! If it was, then obviously I wouldn't care about it this much! Twenty-three years. Do you still care about anything you cared about twenty-three years ago? How about ten? How about five? Name me a single thing that you cared about for twenty-three years.
Why do we have to explain to young fans that their favorite players were traded "because they were too expensive"? How do we explain the A's to young A's fans? A's fans that didn't really have a say in the matter. They like the A's because they like the A's. If an actual business had a bad year, their CEO would be on the hot seat and having to answer to angry shareholders. But Baseball team owners have created a line of defense, where their employees (POBOs,GMs, Managers) are the ones on the hot seat for poor performance. The owners get to continue collecting paychecks due to revenue sharing. The teams (and therefore owners) never have bad years in the context of a business. There is no threat to the owner or their team. There is not competition at the ownership level, but instead they are able to capitalize on the rising tide lifting their boat. In what other "business" do the competing entities actually have the same goal in mind?
Walking down a breezeway chanting "Let's Go Giants" with 30,000 strangers has nothing to do with how the team is run as a business. I don't care about their margins, their bottom line, or their profits. Baseball has transcended business, and the owners know it. But it's too big of a an operation to change at this point. So what do we do? We push back at the notion that Baseball is a business. We are critical of their choices, and of their messaging to their fanbases. We voice our discontent, and hope that they listen and correct what can be corrected. The "poorest" teams in baseball still have more money than we can imagine. They can afford to keep your favorite player on an arbitration salary instead of trading him for players making the league minimum. They can afford to pay free agents. And they absolutely can afford to keep someone around that so perfectly represents a city - and so, so much more.
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