The Economic Case FOR Steroids in Baseball

Everyone who is a sports fan could not escape the news over the weekend that Alex Rodriguez, 3B for the NY Yankees, tested positive for two banned substances (both steroids) in 2003, when he was playing SS for the Texas Rangers. His name was one of 104 that appeared on a list of players who tested positive during that season, and the ramifications of all those positive tests was increased and public enforcement of drug tests in MLB the following year. The fact that A-Rod's name was leaked to the public by four anonymous sources and published by Sports Illustrated was not all that shocking; enough allegations had been made against A-Rod throughout the years that he had to defend himself by denying his steroid use in an interview with Katie Couric.

No, the surprising thing for me was that A-Rod almost immediately went on air in another interview, this time with ESPN's Peter Gammons, and admitted he cheated by taking steroids in 2001, 2002, and 2003. Well, he claimed to be off the juice in 2003, but then there's the case of his failed drug tests that year.

Even more surprising for me was the reason why A-Rod said he cheated:

"When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I felt
like I had all the weight of the world on top of me and I needed to perform, and
perform at a high level every day."

Why did A-Rod feel all the pressure to perform? When he left Seattle and signed the richest contract in the history of Major League Baseball, it was for 10 years and $252 Million to play SS for the Rangers. That's an awful lot of pressure, an awful lot of zeros to justify on a yearly basis. For the first time, a player came right out and admitted what everyone always understood as the underlying reason for taking performance-enhancing drugs (PED): ECONOMICS.

Keep in mind that A-Rod had all the tools necessary to play and be a star at the MLB level. He was not some no-power, good glove middle infielder in the years leading up to 2001. In 2000, A-Rod was one of the last stars left on a Mariners team that previously dealt LHP Randy Johnson and CF Ken Griffey Jr. to other teams. That season, he hit 41 HR, had a .316 BA, and became the only SS to have 100 runs, RBI, and walks in a single season. This is not some player past his prime or struggling in Double A or Triple A to make it to The Show; in 2000, A-Rod was in the prime of his career.

Much the same can be said of Barry Bonds, as well. Bonds, of course, has already been convicted of using PEDs in the eyes of the baseball public, despite his protestations otherwise. Bonds, even before he sought out the services of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), was one of the all-time best outfielders in MLB.

Why on earth would these guys risk their reputations, their long-term health, and their shot at immortality (the MLB Hall of Fame) when all those things were in reach? I think economics has a great deal to do with it.

Baseball, when it comes to player contracts and guaranteed money, is somewhat between the extremes of the NBA and NFL. In the NBA, players have truly guaranteed contracts that will pay them for the life of the contract, even if the player is sitting on the bench. In the NFL, no contract is guaranteed past a given Sunday. I'm fairly well convinced that was why Shawne Merriman tried to tough it out and play on two bad knees in September, even after he was told by several doctors that he needed season-ending knee surgery to save his career. In MLB, player contracts are fairly well guaranteed, but either side can request salary arbitration to either increase or decrease the salary based on the past season's performance.

Baseball is not like some sports, when an athlete might have just one really good shot at winning a gold medal and securing lots of money in endorsement deals. How many track and field stars did we see in Beijing who came up just short of achieving their lifelong dreams? I would argue the economic case for cheating in track and field is far, far greater than it is in baseball or football.

Cycling is another case where the athletes have been doping for decades, but for different reasons. Sure, the leader of a cycling team can make several Millions of dollars while on contract with the team. The domestiques, however, make far less, although I think their salaries are still in the six-figure ranges. This article from WSJ sheds some light on cycling salaries, which typically are closely guarded (subscription req'd). No, the real reason why cyclists abused EPO for so many years, and why they still look for ways to cheat the system today, is because it is such a grueling sport. The attitude has been, "everyone else is doing it; if I want to survive in the peloton, I have to do it, too."

Let's get back to baseball. When all the talk about PEDs in sport revolved around Barry Bonds, I wondered whether it made economic sense for him to sacrifice his long-term health for a few more seasons of muscle. When Bonds left the Pittsburgh Pirates to sign as a free agent with San Francisco, his contract was a then-MLB record $43.75 Million over six years. That's a paltry $7.29 Million per year. When Bonds re-signed in 2002 (during or shortly after the time he is suspected of using PEDs), SF gave him a five-year, $90 Million contract. That's an average of $18 Million per year. In 2005, Bonds earned $22 Million, second only to A-Rod. In 2006, he earned $20 Million, and in 2007, he earned $15.8 Million. That's an awful lot of money that can be used to pay for any type of health issues Bonds might face (if any) as a result of using PEDs. The cost-benefit analysis is pretty straightforward here.

A lot of the MLB players who have been outed for using PEDs, either by Jose Canseco's books or by The Mitchell Report, have said they used PEDs only to help come back from an injury faster. Andy Pettitte was one of the players who took that path. Many of the players suspected of using have only denied the allegations, despite any evidence to the contrary. Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro fall into that camp. Before A-Rod, however, no one admitted that one reason they used PEDs was due to financial or economic concerns.

On a macroeconomic level, the supply and demand of hugely talented baseball players is partly to blame for the high salaries for star players. There is little doubt that Tom Hicks, the owner of the Rangers, overpaid to secure the services of A-Rod in 2001. But the price he was willing to pay was driven up by the perception that A-Rod was the centerpiece of the World Series championship-winning club he wanted to build. Put in microeconomic terms, the marginal utility Hicks expected to receive by employing A-Rod must have far outweighed the opportunity cost of hiring other free agents.

There is little doubt, after listening to A-Rod's confession yesterday, that he felt the pressure of all those expectations to perform. He didn't put it in economic terms, per se, but he did say he felt the "weight of the world" on his shoulders.

Another way of looking at the same issue is to view a player's performance in the year leading up to free agency, often called the "contract year." Almost invariably, the player in a contract year performs far above his statistical averages, all in hopes of landing a bigger contract worth more money at the end of the season. In MLB especially, free agents who just landed a new contract with a new team tend to disappoint during the life of that contract. Kevin Brown and Mike Hampton jump to mind.

What's the alternative, then? Can we ever get back to a time when player salaries did not engender such on-field performance swings? I don't think so, and I don't think we necessarily want to see players earning the pauper wages they once did, way back when. About the only thing that can be done, and what MLB is finally doing, is setting up strict drug enforcement regimens to catch and punish the cheats. The MLB drug testing policy could be much stronger, yes. But at least they now realize how far-reaching PEDs were in baseball, and how damaging to the sport they are.

The Death of Jazz... ...and Baseball, Too?

Over the weekend (if you consider that the weekend starts on Friday; long gone are those college days when youthful exuberance demanded the weekend start on Thursday!), I finished reading Joe Posnanski's excellent book, The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America. Did I mention it is an excellent read? O'Neil had such a zest for living, I'm now sad I never got to meet the man before he passed away. Posnanski was lucky enough to spend a year traveling with O'Neil, and there are wonderful life lessons* learned every step along the way.


* My favorite life lesson? When O'Neil schooled Posnanski with, "Son, in this life, you don't ever walk by a red dress."

One thing stuck with me after reading the book, however. O'Neil often compared baseball to jazz. He also compared living to jazz, but he insisted that the rhythms of baseball most closely matched those of jazz. I do think he was right about that.

What, then, do we make of the premise that jazz is dying, or perhaps that it died with John Coltrane in the late '60s? My wife was watching the Grammys last night, and she mentioned the same thing, that jazz is dead. Perhaps someone on the show said as much, I don't know.* The only part I watched last night was when Neil Diamond took the stage to sing "Sweet Caroline." How he could pull that off without any hint of irony, I have no idea. The only worthwhile part of the show immediately followed his performance, when they paid tribute to those musicians, producers, and even one music photographer who passed away last year, followed by an excellent rendition of "Who Do You Love?" as a tribute to Bo Diddley.

* I can't stand the incredible proliferation of awards shows -- too much self-congratulatory back slapping can't be good for any industry, and it's not like the folks in Hollywood or the music industry really need any more attention. So I boycott all of the award shows, even the Oscars, on general principle.

I thought I would explore the thought that jazz died with Coltrane a bit more, since people still practice and listen to jazz in great numbers. I have friends who are dedicated to the genre, and who still travel great lengths to attend the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Of course, as soon as I opened their website, I saw a picture announcing the scheduled performance of Jon Bovi. Maybe jazz really is dead, after all.

I also found this very recent article from a musical magazine called The Walrus (with an obvious reference to The Beatles, no? Actually, probably not.), in which the author talks about jazz and how it might slip into the same category as classical music: no composer creates anything fresh and new; performers just put their own interpretation on the classic pieces of the genre. Alexander Gelfand actually makes a convincing argument that many musical genres hit similar walls during the '60s, when new musicians revolted against standard elements of music such as meter, harmony, and tonality in attempts to push the boundaries of music. Nothing new there. People in all walks of life were revolting against the Establishment during that time frame.

Personally, I am ambivalent towards modern jazz for all the same reasons why people describe jazz as dead today. As much as I love swing, big band, bebop, and other earlier forms of jazz, I detest the random, meandering improvisational form that took hold on jazz in the '60s. Too many of the sounds are discordant, and the songs don't seem to go anywhere. Everything is too loose, if you will. How can anyone tell if a truly improvisational effort that goes on for 25 minutes is any good or not?

Very good rock-n-roll, on the other hand, is invariably tight musically. There should be no random notes, and a three-and-a-half minute performance does not allow for any wasted effort.* Think about the signature songs of Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and even The Ramones. All of their songs were tight and to the point. I do remember being introduced to a small college band's sound by a fellow traveler on an airplane ride back in 1993. I remember thinking, "Wow. This sound is tight!" That was The Dave Matthews Band, just getting ready to release their first commercially successful album, "Under the Table and Dreaming."

* Obviously, lots of songs played on classic rock stations ("In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," "Hotel California," and virtually anything by Chicago, Boston, the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, etc.) do meander and take up unbearable amounts of time. I don't listen to those, either.

Back to the question: what to make of the death of jazz, if jazz is so closely tied to baseball? I would be remiss if I failed to include in this discussion the contributions of Ken Burns, who did two very extensive documentary series, one on Baseball, and one on Jazz. Clearly, O'Neil was not the only one who saw the connection between these two very American pastimes.

This discussion could get way out of hand at this point. The rise of rap and hip hop culture affected the style of play in the NBA, and there is a great intertwining of hip hop attitude in American culture at large (yes, even in the suburbs) these days. I don't want to get into all of that.

Drawing just one parallel to the jazz-baseball pairing, rock-n-roll could be associated with football. The rise of rock music in the early '50s and beyond coincided with the rise in popularity of the NFL and college football, and the NFL tends to get artists for the Super Bowl halftime show from the ranks of rock-n-roll (the early days of using Up With People notwithstanding), so I do think that case is strong. The rise of football also coincided with the rise of television, and there is a lot to be said about changing media and changing tastes, as well.

Baseball has its own issues that have led to declining interest among the American public. The litany goes on and on:

• The players strike of '94 that forced the cancellation of the World Series just about killed the game.
  
• Sadly, it was not until the Steroid Era home run bashers brought people back into the seats in '98 that baseball seemed strong again.
  
• Now, we all wonder how to deal with the statistics from the Steroid Era.
  
• Starting times for playoff games are too late for the next generation of fans to stay up and watch their heroes play the most meaningful games.
• Many of the playoff games that used to air on one of the big four networks (NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox) now are being shown only on cable stations like TNT or TBS.
  
• Kids don't get out and play sandlot games with their friends any more, depriving kids of the pure joy of playing outside the regimented structure of organized baseball leagues.
• A major drawback to organized youth baseball is the constant pressure to win imposed upon the kids by their coaches and parents; it often leads to burnout.
  
• Ticket, parking, and concession prices for a family of four hover close to $200 at most MLB ballparks, making the possibility of regularly taking a family to see a game nigh impossible.
• Actually going to the ballpark is still the best way of seeing the game and taking in all the rhythms, the sounds, and the music of baseball, as O'Neil described it.
• Watching a game on TV still leaves a lot to be desired, since you cannot see the action on the entire field at the same time in any camera view, unlike football and basketball.
• The MLB "salary cap," in which teams spending well above the cap limit pay a relatively small payroll tax, does not have the same effect as does the NFL cap, which significantly levels the playing field for free agents, thereby ensuring competitive balance.
  

There are many, many reasons why Americans do not watch or play baseball in the same numbers as we once did. The rise of football, basketball, and even "extreme sports" have all crowded the sports landscape. The same splintering of TV viewership that accompanied the rise of cable TV (where there is a niche for any viewing pleasure, meaning we never will have 109 million or so people tune in to a single show ever again) has had an impact on how we play and watch sports, as well.

I would also argue that people's tastes have changed since baseball's heyday in the '30s-'50s. People don't really listen to baseball games on the radio any more; who has the time for that? Forget that listening to baseball on the radio is the perfect medium if you cannot make it to the ballpark in person. Even if you can go to the ballpark, you'll still see fans listening to radio broadcasts while watching the game. It's a powerful connection that exists between radio and baseball.

I grew up listening to Cincinnati Reds games on WLW 700 AM with Joe Nuxhall and Marty Brennaman, primarily because the pizza delivery cars we drove only had AM radios in them. There was nothing better than listening to the games while driving to and from the next delivery location on a hot summer night. A very big reason why I've wanted a satellite radio receiver for the longest time was because I would be able to listen to Reds games on the radio once again, no matter where in the U.S. I lived.

What I'm really trying to say here is that the rise and fall of jazz and baseball fandom does seem to be linked. There are perhaps no more American modes of expression and entertainment than baseball and jazz. But the reasons for the overall decline in popularity for those two pastimes are complex and have to be couched in terms of shifting cultural patterns, as well. It's a fascinating topic, and I thank Posnanski and O'Neil for making me think of it.

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: 3D Football!

Chances are, many people not reading this blog live somewhat near a movie theater belonging to the Carmike Cinemas chain. They aren't as widespread as the AMC movie theaters, but still cover quite a bit of the country. If you do, and if you want a really big, widescreen 3D view of the BCS National Title Championship Game between Oklahoma and Florida on Thursday evening, you're in luck!

People who follow the NFL probably took notice last month when the NFL demonstrated its 3D streaming of a live game between the miserable Oakland Raiders and the struggling San Diego Chargers in early December. At the time, the NFL was showing its proof-of-concept to only three movie theaters around the country to a very select few NFL high-up muckety muck types. The three theaters were in LA, Boston and NYC, and the invites were pretty exclusive. I know I didn't get one.

I do find it interesting that the NFL's proof-of-concept was clearly a trial version of the technology, with the associated burps and glitches expected of such not-yet-beta technology. And yet, Carmike is pressing forward with its live 3D broadcast of the BCS Championship Game to regular folks on over 1,300 screens across the country. It will be interesting to see if they have any of the same technical glitches that plagued the NFL broadcast at first, and if that sours people on the viewing experience.

Even more interesting will be whether enough regular people will shell out the Andrew Jacksons required to get in the door to make the event profitable for Carmike Cinemas. That price ($20 per ticket) is too rich for my blood, especially when I get the game for free over-the-air to my HDTV. It could be that Carmike is willing to take a loss on this early proof-of-concept nationwide to stoke the demand that would later prove much more profitable in the long run. Being first to market on a nationwide scale is nothing to sneeze at. Apparently, the NBA is also experimenting with 3D live broadcasts to movie theaters as a way of expanding its diminishing fan base.

All of which goes back to how movie theater chains are trying to reinvent themselves and deliver the types of content that will draw people back into their seats. People undoubtedly have seen the ads for live streamed performances from the (NY) Met(ropolitan Opera), which have been shown in movie theaters for the past year or so. Again, I'm not much of a fan of opera, but I find it fascinating that both movie theater chains and the Met think they could draw in more fans through the use of live streaming of previously very exclusive performances.

The main problem for movie theaters across the country, of course, is the rise of home theater and high definition TV setups in people's homes. The move from analog to digital high definition TV, while good for the TV manufacturers, has coincided with steep drop-offs in movie theater ticket sales by volume; rising movie ticket prices continue to mask the decline in tickets sold per showing. Ah, but who wants to really put up with people talking, texting, or otherwise being rude in the movie theater, with overpriced popcorn and other snack foods, in order to watch the latest mass-market tripe from Hollywood? It's far better, and more enjoyable, to stay at home and watch a slightly older movie on DVD in high definition with my own popcorn.

To completely bastardize the quote from Bull Durham (1988), if I've got a quadrophonic Blaupunkt, I don't need a curveball!

The Year-Round Sports Cycle

Does anyone else think it's just a little strange to have hockey players reporting for camp on 16 September? The AP article points out just how short the off-season is for hockey players, and they are just one example of this trend all throughout the '90s and '00s towards longer seasons, more teams, more playoffs, and more games. Which, of course, means more ticket sales, more concession sales, more memorabilia sales, and more chances to win in the postseason.

We even have the current NFL Commish, Roger Goodell, pontificating on an expansion of the NFL schedule from the current 17 weeks (16 games plus a bye for every team) to something like 17 or 18 regular-season games for each team. Goodell, ostensibly, would shorten the pre-season games and replace those "meaningless" games with ones that count in the standings. The owners were already charging regular-season ticket prices for fans to watch backups and players with little hope of making the 54-man roster play their guts out, so I'm not entirely sure what the NFL would gain other than getting more TV revenues from the deal. Which is why the earliest they would make this change would be 2010, when they can renegotiate with the TV networks for the entire package of games.

On the one hand, I enjoy seeing the wildcard in both football and baseball, because more teams alive in pennant races in September means better quality of play on the field. In the NFL, having two teams per Conference able to win a wild card berth means that even week 17 games mean a lot to teams on the bubble. Just ask the Titans and Browns players last year. The Titans were fortunate to play against a Colts team that already locked up its best possible playoff situation, and so was resting key personnel like Peyton Manning, etc., but when the Titans won that game, it knocked Cleveland out of the wildcard.

However, more than just viewer fatigue (which is still pretty darn significant; how many people can say they are excited about watching NHL hockey right now?), there are real issues with how far the sports leagues are pushing their schedules. Players have higher likelihoods of getting hurt, the quality of talent has been diluted through expansion, and increased playoff eligibility makes regular-season games less meaningful. Let's be honest: after four weeks of pre-season NFL, the actual week 1 results were crazy for established players like Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, LaDainian Tomlinson, and a host of others.*

*Re-reading that line, it sounds like I would be in favor of Roger's plan to replace meaningless pre-season games with regular-season ones. I don't object to four pre-season games at all, although when they used to play five, that was too much. What I have a problem with is this current practice of not playing NFL stars in pre-season. Yes, the risk of injury is always out there. Yes, that risk actually tends to go up if guys aren't playing at full speed. There might not be a good solution to the problem of star players getting hurt, either in pre-season or regular-season games. It's a violent game, have you noticed?

Just the news cycle alone is almost too much to bear for an average fan. The NFL already operates pretty much around the calendar year, with the April draft, spring and summer minicamps, other training activities (the sometimes dreaded OTAs), and competition committee meetings all generating significant news in addition to the July-February training camp-Super Bowl schedule. Baseball has its Winter Meetings in addition to a spring training to World Series schedule that stretches from late February (pitchers and catchers report) to now potential game 7 finishes in November. I've always thought it was funny that winter sports like basketball and hockey were still having playoff games in June.

Enough is enough already!! Fatigue has set in. I already tune out most regular-season games, and especially in hockey and basketball. Even if you're a fan of a specific team, unless you have tickets to see that team in person, there's not much reason to watch baseball games in April-July. Many regular-season NFL games are snooze-fests, at least through the first half, until the defensive players get tired in the 3rd and 4th quarters. In golf, only the four majors are really all that interesting. I could care less about the FedEx Cup, but I will probably tune in to this weekend's Ryder Cup, if able.

I know we'll never go back to the old days where players couldn't afford to live for a year on what salary they made playing their games, and so they had off-season jobs selling insurance or real estate. There's too much money to be had by selling more tickets and putting more games on TV, even if dozens of new cable channels have to be created to display that content. I just exercise my right as an American to not watch regular-season games until the playoffs are looming and every game becomes more meaningful than the last.

I do worry about the dilution of records, however. More regular-season NFL games means more games that count in the record books, which means more chances to break the single season passing, rushing, receiving, etc. records. We all know what happened to Roger Maris when he passed Babe Ruth's seemingly unbreakable HR record on the last day of the season... after Maris was given 8 more games than it took Ruth to set the record. If the NFL extends the regular season, it will make it all that much more impossible for any future team to tie the 1972 Dolphins as the only team with a perfect record in the Super Bowl era. It sounds like Goodell is OK with that.