Manny Machado and the Free-Agent Log Jam

Sssshhh. Did you hear that? It almost sounded like a pen on paper. 

Wait—it was!

Holy crap! Could the collusion really be over? Are baseball players once again free to sign decades-long guaranteed contracts for outrageous sums of money? And are addled MLB owners once again able to protect their pockets from the stacks of cash burning a hole in them?

Oh great day in the morning! We are saved! Saved!

Like you, I'm relived beyond description to learn that Manny Machado has signed a ten-year, three-hundred million-dollar guaranteed contract with the San Diego Padres. And that the disconcerting free-agent log-jam may soon be history.

This because I am amused by the sight of successful businessmen tossing logic to the wind as they unlearn everything they (presumably) learned while (presumably) building-up their businesses. Perhaps Bill James has done a cost-benefit analysis of long-term contracts and assigned them a WAR rating. 

But I haven't seen it.

So I'll fearlessly expose myself to public ridicule and venture to say that a MLB owner has to be certifiable to even entertain the idea of one. At least as certifiable as an athlete would be to turn one down.

Is there a soul extant who feels that Albert Pujols or Miguel Cabrera or Robinson Cano or Prince Fielder are anywhere near the players they were when they signed these contracts? Or will be when they expire?

Are major league owners even semi-cognizant of this?

Sure, I'm jealous. Aren't you?

Where jealousy turns to agitation is when it becomes apparent who pays for these contracts. And that's me. Granted, appearances tend to obfuscate this fact, driving as I do a mass-market Japanese sedan and living in a modest home.

But it's true.

And sports fan, you do, too.

As you swallow those thirty-dollar parking fees and twenty-dollar hamburgers and an ever-spiraling cable bill, remember Alex Rodriguez. David Price. And Giancarlo Stanton. Clayton Kershaw. Zack Greinke. And Max Scherzer.

Someone's paying those salaries, and it ain't the boss. (Which is, incidentally, how rich guys get rich in the first place.)

While the players receive the brunt of our derision when discord rears its ugly head, we shouldn't forget those who entitle the young men we call professional athletes.

Once upon a time, professional athletes were very underpaid. But that argument is as relevant as the pony express is to communications. A middling ballplayer like Edwin Jackson (who couldn't hold Jose Quintana's glove, much less Clayton Kershaw's) has earned sixty-six million-dollars playing ball.

Edwin Jackson. Think about that.

When you or I perform our jobs in kind, we usually find ourselves in the bosses office being educated in the finer points of our employer's performance plans. (This if we're not being made available to our respective industries, as a favorite euphemism goes.)

Major-league baseball is a TV show. It's a consumer product—just like laundry detergent and tires and those packs of underwear at Walmart.

If I may be so bold, I'd like to suggest that MLB owners and players think really hard about market saturation and price points. About the fiscal limits those of us in the ninety-nine percent have for non-essential consumables.

Is it understood by owners and players that there are not nearly enough people in the one-percent to support thirty professional baseball teams? Or thirty NBA squads? Ditto our thirty-two NFL franchises. And the thirty-one NHL aggregations we share with Canada.

I'm happy for Manny Machado. Seriously. Hell, if someone's going press three-hundred million-dollars (guaranteed) into your hand you'd be a fool not to take it.

But as a sports fan whose access decreases with every bump in a player's salary, I'm forced to relegate my fandom to the same category as my crush on Melanie Liburd and follow from a distance.

The players can strike and the owners can incinerate their fortunes on long-term, nine-figure contracts and hawk their over-priced merch until the future is female. But even as an ardent, lifelong music fan who reveled in the joy of attending concerts, I learned to live without them when their cost exceeded their benefit.

I can do the same with professional sports. And suspect I'm not alone.

Ron Santo

I’m sorry, but I can’t see the belated election of Ron Santo to baseball’s Hall of Fame as anything but borderline cruel. Perhaps I’m afflicted with an undiagnosed case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Maybe it’s the crass capitalism of Christmas.

Or maybe it’s the smug and exclusionary politics that kept an earnest, deserving ballplayer from the Hall for decades as he battled the diabetes that would eventually kill him.

None other than baseball-obsessive Bill James named Santo as one of the ten-best third basemen ever. Not of the 60s. Not of the modern era. Ever. How is it that someone so good remained excluded for so long?

There are a dearth of third basemen in the Hall. According to Baseball Almanac, just eleven. Only the position of catcher (thirteen) even comes close. Yet Ron Santo, nine-time All-Star, five-time Gold Glove winner, breaker of a sixty-year-old league assist record at the position somehow wasn’t good enough.

Third base is an extraordinarily difficult position to play. It is physically demanding, and as such, makes long-term success as a hitter (the primary criteria for entrance to the Hall of Fame) unlikely. Despite their often powerful builds, only two third basemen have ever surpassed 400 home runs. None have 3,000 hits.

Third base is a meat grinder. It devours baseball players.

There are only a few obvious choices at the position. Mike Schmidt. Brooks Robinson. Eddie Mathews. Pie Traynor.

While admittedly a shade below their stature, Santo was nevertheless the premier National League third basemen of his era, second only to Robinson in all of Major League Baseball. He was clearly and obviously a rare talent.

And coupled with his private struggle with diabetes, his success at one of sport’s most-difficult positions was remarkable. Ron Santo was given a life expectancy of twenty-five years. Think diabetes is a tough battle now? What do you think it was in 1964?

More than any of his quantifiable athletic gifts, Santo’s greatest asset was his heart. It was a relentless and powerful one.

Admittance to any type of club is invariably political. It is often no more than a popularity contest. And for inexplicable and unfathomable reasons, it was one Santo had to die to win.

Having spent fourteen of his fifteen years in baseball as a Chicago Cub, it is an irony Ron Santo no doubt appreciates.