Every few months, it seems, someone from inside Major League Baseball floats a rumor. The rumor is that baseball is considering dropping two - or even four - of their weakest teams.
There must be something to it, since it keeps popping up. The question is, would such a move make sense? If so, which teams do we drop?
Three years ago, I reported that the teams in Montreal, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee were in danger of being moved. Pittsburgh and Milwaukee saved themselves by building new stadiums which will open in 2001. That leaves Montreal as the first, most likely team to be dropped. Too bad - in the late 1980s the Expos were drawing 2 million fans a year, but a bad stadium and trouble with the Canadian-US exchange rate keeps their attendance to 11,000 a game.
They've got good management and a productive farm system which brought the likes of Vladimir Guerrero, Pedro Martinez, and Larry Walker to the majors. Maybe it would be better for baseball if they moved to Northern Virginia or Charlotte or Portland.
What other teams are in danger?
Oakland A's. Charlie Finley blew it in 1968. He wanted to move his Kansas City A's, and he took them to Oakland, where he'd have stiff competition for fans from the existing Giants across the bay. He could have moved the A's to Toronto, Dallas-Fort Worth, or Phoenix, none of which had teams at the time.
Now the A's even draw fewer people on some weekdays than Sacramento's minor league team!
It's too bad that the A's can't draw in Oakland. They're a young, exciting team with an excellent farm system. They should move, not fold.
Minnesota Twins. Now, here's a sad-sack franchise. They don't draw, have very little TV revenue, and have a poor farm system. Whenever they get a good player, like Chuck Knoblauch, they wind up selling him to the highest bidder. It's been quite a comedown for the team that won the World Series in 1987 and 1991.
If I could fold one team, the Twins would be the one.
The Florida teams. The Florida Marlins won the World Series three years ago, then got rid of all their good players and lost 108 games in 1998. The fans in Miami have never forgiven them, and now they have a lot of weekday games with 8,000 people in the stands. Now they say they can't survive if they don't get a new stadium.
The Tampa Bay Devil Rays, on the other hand, aren't drawing flies either. After decades of clamoring for a big-league team, the Devil Rays play bad, uninteresting baseball and have trouble even half-filling Tropicana Field.
Obviously, the major leagues should have moved a few teams in the 1990s. Montreal and Oakland have strong farm systems and good management; the owners should have moved the Expos to Miami and the A's to Tampa, but the owners didn't think of that. Now the majors have 30 teams, which is at least two too many, and that's why we're talking about folding teams. My money is on the Expos and Twins to bite the dust if anyone does.
I think I know why this thing keeps popping up. The major leagues have been under a great deal of pressure to "level the playing field" - that is, institute a luxury tax to share the wealth between the rich teams like the Yankees and the poor ones like the Expos and Twins. The rich-club owners would rather drop the poorer teams than pay them millions of dollars each year in luxury tax.