Done with Baseball

For the past 15 years I have had the ultimate love-hate relationship with Major League Baseball. I love the game of baseball and there is nothing like going to a game, especially now that I have a son that soon will probably love the experience. I would love to cheer for the hometown team just like I do with the Packers and Badgers.

But here is the problem. Since the strike of 1994, baseball has done nothing to legitimately fix the disparity between the free spending teams and the financially-strapped franchises. For awhile I was like many of my baseball cheering friends where I would simply enjoy going to the ballpark. It didn’t matter that the Brewers and Twins lost nearly every game I went to in the 1990s. Then I had the ignorant stage where I thought that with smart draft picks and the right manager, my small market teams could compete on a yearly basis with the big boys.

Then I adopted the philosophy that I now have realized is extremely ignorant when the Florida Marlins won two World Series. I thought that this was the rationale for thinking that there wasn’t an issue and any team could win the championship.

But then I started coming around to reality. There is no chance for a small market team to compete on a yearly basis. The Marlins had two good years over the past 15 and caught lightning in a bottle. They benefited from baseball’s lone saving grace, the playoffs where anything can happen (unlike the regular season where the best team is almost guaranteed to win over the course of an obnoxiously long 162-game regular season). Others that disagree with me will bring up the Minnesota Twins’ division championships this decade. The Twins are in the AL Central which has one large market team, the Chicago White Sox. The White Sox have been one of the largest underachieving big city teams of the past 15 years which has allowed the Tigers, Indians and Twins to win the division. Put the Twins in the AL East and they would experience the same thing Toronto, Baltimore and Tampa Bay have experienced year after year this decade: playing third fiddle to New York and Boston.

But speaking of Tampa Bay, what about the Rays’ division championship a year ago and Bud Selig’s comment that they are not a one-year wonder? Well Bud, like nearly everything you’ve done as commissioner, you are wrong. The Rays have had one good year in their history and probably won’t have a second for quite awhile, especially in that division.

So now, my feelings on Major League Baseball have gone from disgruntled fan to not a fan. I have given MLB chance after chance and get continually frustrated. And now look at which cities are in the playoffs this year: Philadelphia, New York, Boston, two L.A. teams. I’m done. I am absolutely done with Major League Baseball. I am done watching games. I am done caring who wins. I might take my son to a game here and there and let him decide if he likes it, but I am done.

I do not do this hoping to start a movement, and I know that Major League Baseball doesn’t care about losing fans like me. There are plenty of fans who don’t care about the payroll disparities and don’t analyze how the Yankees and Red Sox make the playoffs nearly every year and many other teams have to have nearly everything go right (and yes that includes being in the “right” division Twins fans) to just have a chance once every few years. I’m just saying that I’m done. MLB has lost me.

Good riddance.