Friday
night in the NLCS something remarkable happened.
I'm
not talking about Shohei Ohtani's performance in Game 4: for that there is no
superlative grand enough to describe it. Nor am I talking about how the
winningest team in either league, the Brewers, were swept in four games on just
fourteen hits in the course of them in what was the most dominant pitching
performance since the Dodgers swept the Yankees in the 1963 World Series. No
I'm talking about the fact that, for only the second time in the 21st
century, the defending world champions in baseball will be given a chance to
retain the championship for another year as the Los Angeles Dodgers became only
the second team in the 21st century since the 2008-09 Philadelphia
Phillies did the same thing.
I
won't deny that the wild card era and the increasingly complex play off system
of baseball has made it more difficult for dynasties in the traditional sense
of the word. But it's not like they are impossible either: between 2010 and
2014 the San Francisco Giants won three World Series titles in five years, the
first national league team to do so since the St. Louis Cardinals did it
between 1942-1946. And we've seen
variations on in throughout the century as well: the Red Sox managed to win
three World Championships between 2004 and 2013 and David Ortiz played on all
three winners and making himself a contender for this century's Mr. October.
But the fact that we've had to redefine what a baseball dynasty is during the
21st century in a way that we just didn't in the 20th is
a sign not only that the game is more competitive then it has been in any time
in its history but also how much a lie one of the biggest stains on that game
is. And the reason I know this is because this December we will be celebrating the
50th anniversary of one of the most significant moments in baseball
history but one that a game so proud of its past would very much like to
pretend didn't happen at all.
That
decision was the so-called Seitz ruling. In that ruling Peter Seitz, who was in
charge of binding arbitration for baseball during the 1970s was called to hear
what was a labor dispute. Andy Messersmith had spent the previous season doing
something unheard of in baseball: playing for an entire year without a major
league contract. Marvin Miller, the executive director of the Baseball Players
Union had managed to convince Messersmith to be a test case for baseball so
that he could challenge the reserve clause, the part of a major league contract
that had been subject of divisiveness by the players and that even some owners
had questioned the legality of it. Ownership said that it bound a player to his
team for life and that they could decide what to pay him or whether to trade
him. Miller argued that it only represented one year and that after it the
player was allowed to become a free agent.
Seitz
initially didn't want to make a ruling and he urged ownership to come up with a
more equitable solution. But the owners who had been convinced the players were
perfectly happy being, as Curt Flood put it, well paid slaves until Marvin
Miller came along, refused. In his ruling in favor of the players Seitz compared them to
the French lords of the 12th century who had so much power they
wouldn't share it with anyone else. The ownership then immediately fired Seitz
but it didn't matter: the reserve clause was dead.
In
the half-century since the nostalgia-industrial complex of baseball writers has
gone out of its way to romanticize so much of the twentieth century before the
Seitz decision as a time when ballplayers didn't care about money and played
for 'the love of the game'. This of course is helped by the fact that writers
felt ballplayers were overpaid when they made $10,000 a year as much as when
they make $10 million and it leaves out a lot. Never mind that so many of the
players after winning the World Series had to work second jobs during the
winter to support their families, from selling cars to working in vaudeville;
never mind that after the game was done with them they frequently died in
obscurity or in poverty (usually both); never mind that in the 1980s superstars
like Mantle and Mays were temporarily banned from baseball because they sold
their autographs, mainly because even the biggest stars hadn't been paid enough
in the 1950s and 1960s. And keep in mind these were the superstars; the
average players barely were able to get buy at all.
Considering
how so many of these sports writers from Ring Lardner and Damon Runyon down to
Roger Angell and Ira Berkow were intelligent and erudite men and given how much
time they spent in locker rooms, you'd think they'd have eventually realized
just how bad the average player had it when it came to money, especially since
they knew better than their readers this was a business first and that only the
fans could think of it as a game. But I see no evidence of this in any of their
writings and Angell and Berkow seem disappointed when the players start finally
getting the salaries they've deserved all along. And that is one of the reasons
that makes me wonder how they could have bought in to what was one of the
arguments against the reserve clause.
The
main reason owners argued that the reserve clause was a necessity was because
if they had to pay ballplayers a lot of money, then the richest clubs would buy
all the best players and the game would not be competitive. This is a straw man
argument and the reason they should have known this is because up until the 20th
century that's what was happening anyway and they all knew it.
In
a book written at the end of the century Baseball Dynasties by Rob Neyer
and Eddie Epstein the authors attempted to rank what they considered the
fifteen greatest dynasties in the 20th century were. Eight of them were new York teams
The
1911-1913 New York Giants
The
1926-1928 New York Yankees
The
1936-1939 Yankees (four consecutive World Championships)
The 1949-1953 Yankees (five consecutive
World Championships)
The
1952-1956 Brooklyn Dodgers
The
1960-1964 New York Yankees (five
consecutive pennants)
The
1984-1990 New York Mets
The
1996-1999 Yankees
And
they also considered for their book the 1921-1924 Giants, who won four
consecutive pennants and the Bronx Zoo Yankees of 1976-1978.
In
this book Neyer argues that baseball had always been a game of the haves and
the have nots, comparing the Yankees winning 22 world series between 1921-1964
and the St. Louis Browns winning one American league pennant during their half
a century of existence. They acknowledged that this book was a collection of
the ultimate haves but didn't make the obvious link to the fact that the city
that spent most of the 20th century as the center of America was the
most successful place for its national game. They acknowledge that the rest of the American
League as well as baseball was very sick of the Yankees winning all the time,
which was a truth so universally held that there is a Broadway show when a man
sells his soul to the devil to stop the Yankees from winning the pennant.
The
Yankees as well as every other New York team during the period prior to free
agency (and well after) has had excess to wealth and a media market that most
teams simply don't have and it was resented by ownership and management in
baseball at the time. Chants of 'Break Up The Yankees' were heard in parks
across both leagues during much of the 20th century. But the fact
that owners were not willing to do the one thing necessary to improve their
teams – pay the kinds of salaries that New York wasn't or do things to level
the playing field – lays bare the fact that they would rather let the entire
sport suffer rather than pay a fair wage. This was particularly true during the
1950s when attendance for every team suffered in large part because New York
was The Capitol of Baseball'. I don't think it’s a coincidence that the game saw
a resurgence when the Yankee dynasty collapsed in 1964.
Salaries
have skyrocketed in the half-century since Seitz made his ruling, though much
of this is due to the owner's own willingness to make ridiculous sums of money
for mediocre players. One owner in the 1980s said that he had to be willing to
pay as much as his dumbest competitor. But having lived my entire life in the
aftermath I have to say that particularly in this century there have been some
real improvements in a way I'm not sure you could say before the coming of free
agency.
One
of the things about spring training is that it gave the idea of a fresh start
and that this might be the year that your team, after years and decades of
mediocrity, might finally win it all. In the old days when there was just two
leagues and the Yankees were dominant, most cities in both leagues lost those
delusions by May or June at the latest. That's just not true anymore and the
fact that is so much harder for a team to repeat even as a pennant winner is
proof of that.
I've
spoken in previous articles how in this century the three teams who went the
longest without a World Series, the Red Sox, White Sox and Cubs all managed to
win the World Series after generations of fans died without seeing a
championship or even a pennant. The fact that it has been more difficult for
the Red Sox to go back to back with any of their world series (though they have
won four so far this century so far) is a sign of how much more difficult it
is.
And
it has offered hope to other teams that never had a chance. The Astros managed
to finally make it to the world series and become frequent participants during
the last twenty years and finally won it all (under controversial circumstances).
The Rangers finally managed to win their first World Series after sixty plus
years of existence in 2023. The Washington Nationals won the first championship
for the city since the Coolidge administration in 2019. The Angels won their
first championship in 2002 and the Marlins managed to win two in their first
ten years of existence. (They've since dropped into a kind of stasis.)
And
teams that spent most of the twentieth century never getting close to October
baseball have had more of a chance then ever in this new era. The Brewers,
after winning just one pennant in the 20th century, are becoming
more formidable contenders. The Padres and Mariners, though they have yet to
cross the finish line, are perennial faces in October baseball in a way they
never were during the twentieth century. And the Phillies who needed nearly a hundred
years to win their first ever world championship needed just another 28 to win
their second. They were the first team in history to lose 10,000 games but now
they're no longer consider a joke as they were for what amounted to the 20th
century.
We've
seen this play out countless times over the last decade. The Royals managed to
make back to back world series appearance in 2014-2015, winning their second
ever World Series in the latter. The Guardians have been more successful in the
last thirty years when it comes to World Series appearances then they were in
the previous 90. And as we saw just last night the Blue Jays have
managed to make it to the World Series for the first time since they won
back-to-back titles in 1992-1993.
The
closest thing we have to a dynasty in baseball these days are the Dodgers. This
is their fifth trip to the world series in the past nine seasons and they've
won the NL West every single year between 2013 and 2025 save for 2021 when they
won the Wild Card. They do have the
biggest budget and the best roster as well as the best history. But it is worth
pointing out that even with that it took them 29 years from between
their first pennant this century in 2017 and their last one in the 20th
(the 1988 world championship). Even that make their accomplishments all the more
remarkable in a way that so many of the dynasties in the past just haven't.
They've had to work harder and play longer than any of their predecessors ever
had just to get to the World Series in the first place. The fact that it
still took them so long to win the series (and considering it was during a
pandemic it has an asterisk on it) shows just how difficult it is to get to the
top.
Part
of the complaint that Yankees and Mets have is with all the money we spend we
never seem to win the championship that is I suppose obligated to us by
birthright. But a century earlier Damon Runyon himself wrote that you can not
buy a pennant. And that is just as true in 1925 as it is in 2025. The money helps of course but there's a
lot more effort involved and a lot more opportunity then there was in 1975. I
fail to see how competitiveness in baseball is a bad thing for anybody.
No
matter who wins the World Series that begins this Friday I will be sure of one
thing: both teams had to earn it. The Jays are trying to break a thirty-two
year old hiatus against the defending world champions. I don't think the former
team would have had that chance before and I marvel at the latter's greatness
for getting there.
Play
Ball!
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