Baseball Finance Reform: Time to Cut A-Rod’s Salary

Photo by Flickr user Keith Allison under Creative Commons

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


When the Philadelphia Phillies lost the World Series to the New York Yankees last night, I felt anger, heartbreak, frustration and the burning desire for a salary cap in Major League Baseball. Of course, I’m happy for those who saw their team win the World Series. But in the 108 years that the Yankees have been around, they’ve won the World Series a whopping 27 times. That’s right: 25 percent of the time. And in the 126 years that the Phillies have been around, they’ve won twice. Yep, two percent of the time (rounded up).

And that’s no mistake. In the past decades (and the foreseeable future) the Yanks have held a crushing financial advantage over all other major league franchises. This year, for example, the Yankees spent $208 million on player salaries, more than $60 million more than the second highest-paid team (The Mets) and nearly what the Phillies spent on their payroll ($111 million). A-Rod alone made $33 million this year, nearly a third of the entire Phillies payroll.

Baseball needs a salary cap. Think of it like campaign finance reform in politics. If the world’s richest donors could shovel all their cash to a single candidate, that person would flood the market with advertising and crush his or her opponent. But the government has deemed this unfair because it elevates the influence of rich voters above poor voters. Without a salary cap, the MLB elevates the hopes of fans in rich cities over fans in poor cities. Baseball is supposed to be about home team rivalries and anxious competition, not the size of each team’s checkbook. Forgoing a salary cap allows rich teams like the Yankees to swallow up promising talent when it matures, which is too un-American for America’s favorite past time.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate