If you think that’s funeral music you’re hearing, you might want to get your medication adjusted. It’s just a matter of time before the voices return…and Lord only knows who they’ll be telling you to dismember. If there WAS music playing, though, the slow, mournful tones would be playing for my Minnesota Twins. Yes, the team I grew up worshipping and still follow with a passion is today once again the victim of baseball’s cock-eyed and horribly distorted and inequitable economic system. World-class pitcher and future Hall-of-Famer Johan Santana was traded by the Twins to the New York Mets last week, and yesterday he faced the new York press as the newest Met. Faced with the likelihood of losing him to free agency, Minnesota decided they had to at least get something for him (and Santana got a fat new contract- $137.5 million over 6 years…for throwing a (&^%$#@ baseball). It was the same decision they faced with All-Star CF Torii Hunter, only in his case the Twins did get nothing, losing him to the Los Angeles Angels in free agency.
Some of you may remember that Minnesota won World Series titles in 1987 and 1991. Over the past 21 seasons, they’ve won as many World Championships as any other team in Major League Baseball. Given the current state of baseballonomics, though, there is no way that Minnesota, a “small-market” team if ever there was one, could duplicate those feats today. No, the role of teams like Minnesota, Florida, Tampa Bay, and Kansas City are to provide competitive fodder for the big guns- the Bostons and New Yorks- to beat up on. Unlike the NFL, there’s no competitive balance, and while a team like Minnesota can certainly develop talent, they know they’ll eventually lose that talent to a team with deeper pockets.
I’m also a Mets fan, so I’m glad that Santana was traded there if it absolutely had to happen. Hopefully, he’ll make Mets fans forget the team’s epic collapse at the end of last season. With the addition of Santana, New York now becomes the clear favorite to win the National League pennant…and Minnesota will be lucky to break .500.
Isn’t it about time that Satan Commissioner Bud Selig fixed baseball’s broken economic system?
BASEBALL FANS DESERVE BETTER.
