The Birth of the Small Market Brigade

The year was 1996. I had just begun my sophomore year at Miami U, and I was taking my first international politics course, the course which introduced me to the ways of the world and the New York Times. As autumn began its life in earnest, I remember being caught up in the excitement of globalization in seeing a front page photo of some Bosnian kids - one was wearing a Yankees cap - in the midst of a very exciting pennant race.

It had been a disappointing season for the Reds after going to the NLCS the year before - I did not know then that it would be the last post season appearance for the Reds in a very long time. I did not know that baseball was changing so that it would be very difficult for any small market teams to get to October. No, when the New York Yankees went to the World Series for the first time since 1977, I did not know that a decade later that Yankees cap I wore to class, the one like the Bosnian kid's - would be buried in a closet and that I would hate the team with the passion of a thousand Julliets. I was caught up in the fever of the Yankees going to the Series after 19 years of failure to get there, a storied team with a mythical history and larger than life legends finally returning to glory.

I was a naive kid.

See, the thing is that I don't want to hate the Yankees. I don't like how my appreciation for the Red Sox has fallen into such rapid decline, either. It's just that the teams have such an unfair advantage over smaller market teams that this sense of injustice has become overwhelming. How could I have known back then as I sat in Dr. Hey's class learning how small the world is that baseball was about to change drastically, that the Yankees would make the playoffs every year until last year and that they'd win four WS and go to two others in the next decade?

Bud Selig likes to proclaim that this is a golden era of baseball because attendance continues to climb every year. Never does he acknowledge that the climb in attendance is not due to any rise in baseball's popularity but in the rise in the number of corporations buying season tickets. If actual butts in seats were counted rather than ticket sales, it would make many a baseball fan cry. But big business is all about deception, isn't it? It appears Selig is deceived by his own devices.

The drop in popularity can be attributed to many things, but I'll tell you what is never mentioned but may be the biggest reason of all: the inability for small market teams - teams like Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Kansas City, to compete. And you know what happens when teams are perennial losers? Fans go away. Bye bye. Onto something else that excites them. Where is NASCAR most popular? In the Midwest, where the teams (aside from mid market St. Louis) never win and in the South, where there are no teams (aside from the Braves, I know, but think about the region as a whole - the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, even rural Georgia, places that are pretty far from Atlanta).

It used to be that at least small market teams who were smart could compensate for some of the income gap by scouting and signing good young players - that is, when the draft was a more level playing field. However, the Tiger's signing of Porcello for $7.3 million has changed all of that and leaves some New York fans salivating:

Yesterday, baseball had some good news. Yankees and Mets fans, especially, should be happy: They should even send flowers and gift baskets to Detroit.

The good news is that the Tigers signed New Jersey's Rick Porcello, their first-round pick in this year's draft. Porcello, a Scott Boras client, was widely regarded as the best high school pitching prospect in the draft, and perhaps the best full stop. But he fell all the way down to the Tigers at no. 27 because of concerns that he would demand a large signing bonus, and that he would attend the University of North Carolina if he didn't get it. Happily, the Tigers bought him out of an education with the richest contract ever given to a high school player. The deal will guarantee him $7.3 million and place him on the Tigers' 40-man roster, thus surpassing the $7 million deal Josh Beckett earned coming out of high school in 1999.

You might wonder why you (or the Yankees or Mets) should care one way or the other about how much the Tigers are shelling out for some kid barely old enough to shave. By doling out so much cash to Porcello, the Tigers are sticking it to the man -- and are making it easier for New York's teams to do so as well.

Call this the birth of the Small Market Brigade, but those of us fans who suffer from the gross discrepancies in income and market share are the only ones who can do something about it. So here's the plan:

You there, in Kansas City in those pretty blue caps - you guys are in charge of kidnapping Bud Selig and replacing him with George Brett as an "interim" commissioner. You remember how long Selig was "interim" commissioner, right? The purpose of this is to remind the nation that our teams, too, once had great players.

And you in the steel city with the long losing Pirates - you guys are in charge of getting the Homeland Security Department to freeze the assets of the Yankees and the Red Sox. Make sure you get it done before the end of the season so we can all have access to the free agents on the market. (Though to be honest, this year's crop isn't all that great.)

You guys in Milwaukee - don't think just because you guys are narrowly holding onto first place means that you are exempt from this. You realize that even if you do manage to hold onto your lead, you're going to end up getting slaughtered by some larger market team in the playoffs. So you guys are in charge of getting all of the large market scouts deported from Asian countries.

You guys north of the border with your bubblers and your aboots and all, you guys are in charge of getting the large market scouts deported from Latin America, eh? I mean, just look at what Selig did to the other team in your country! Les Expos were probably the best team in baseball in 1994, but as those young players got older and unaffordable, the large markets snapped them up.

And you guys in Minnesota and Oakland, well, you may get to the playoffs every year (not this year - remember how it feels?), but you don't win World Series anymore. Heck, you don't even make it to the Series. So you're in on this, too, ok?

Hey O's fans - remember Jim Palmer? Remember Brooks Robinson? Eddie Murray? Come on, you guys have a great history, aren't you sick of never having a chance in hell to compete in your division?

Small market fans of the world, unite! Let the ruling teams tremble at a small market revolution! We have nothing to lose but our pinstriped chains! We have a World Series to win! Free at last, free at last, godalmighty, the Reds win the pennant! The Reds win the pennant! The Reds win the pennant!