Sitting and watching a heavy snowfall, I am angry with the Cleveland Indians.
For a guy who lives within 50 miles of Lake Erie, I am not a winter person. I don't know about where you live, but where I live it's more than cold and snow; it's slate-gray skies, day after day after day. The lack of sunshine weighs on me and by February, without holidays to distract me, I am going crazy.
The way I get through it is baseball. I’m a baseball guy and my sport comes to the rescue every year, just when I need it the most. I arrive at spring the way a person escaping an unruly mob might feel once they‘ve reached safety: Relieved and exhausted and a little scarred by the whole experience. There to greet my escape every year is usually the Cleveland Indians.
Come February, I start counting down days until pitchers and catchers report for spring training. I start listening to any baseball report. I fill myself with team reports that are so premature, in a matter of weeks, they‘ll probably be irrelevant. I knows this at the time, but I gobble them up anyway.
Quickly that gets old and I start counting down to spring training games. Spring training games lose their luster quickly, and soon I am ready for games that count. Before I know, it the regular season and spring weather are simultaneously beginning. Hallelujah.
But this year I have been betrayed. Baseball has let me down. More accurately, the Cleveland Indians have let me down.
I wish I could care, but, seriously, what’s the point?
I'm not a fair-weather fan who only cares when the team is winning, but losing badly most years starts to weigh on me. And knowing they'll be bad this year isn't helping.
This a team with no starting pitching and no real power. You know what that typically adds up to in the American League? A lot of losses.
What am I supposed to do, get excited about Russell Branyan? Travis Hafner? Who's our second pitcher? Fausto Carmona? A guy who was lights out for one season, but, since that postseason, when he melted down against Boston, hasn‘t had good control over his pitches? Is the hiring of Manny Acta supposed to make me eager for a 90-loss season?
I'm not trying to pile on. Taking shots at the players and the new manager isn't fair. It's not their fault.
It’s the fault of the guys who write the checks.
Years ago, the Dolans made it known to their fans that they were no longer going to overspend on the team’s payroll. The message was that if fans weren’t going to come to the games, then the roster would be a reflection of that.
Before you start nodding your head at this sort of fiscal responsibility, let’s take a look at this business strategy.
Imagine you own a restaurant that once did pretty well, but now is beginning to see a huge drop in sales. What do you do? Do you replace your cook with any guy off the street and start purchasing your supplies from some guy in an unmarked van?
Sure, you’d like to get your meat from a butcher, but it’s not in the budget due to slumping sales.
So now you have inferior ingredients prepared by an inferior cook resulting in inferior product. When customers begin to complain, you say to them, “Look, I know the food isn’t good. But if you buy lots of it for the same price as other restaurants serving good food, we’ll be able to afford to serve you quality fare again.”
How do you think that would go over? Let me tell you: You’d have an empty restaurant heading towards closing for good.
Revenue is something to be earned. You have to make people want to spend money on your business. It's not the responsibility of the customer to give you their cash; it's your responsibility to earn it. And since others also want that same cash, you’re going to have to compete for it.
But the Indians aren’t competing for anything. Rather than taking true responsibility for this, they are blaming the local economy and the lack of a salary cap and revenue sharing.
Allow me to retort: The Cavs and the Browns are selling out in this economy and both sports have higher ticket prices than do the Indians. And the Indians have the benefit of being in an outdoor sport during the best weather of the year!
The Cavs were always third banana in this area, but they are drawing every night and how are they doing it? They’re winning! Guess what, Indians? You’re now third banana. How does that feel? Congratulations on being fiscally responsible; you’re getting killed in the market.
Which makes me wonder: If they‘re just going to be mediocre every year and be hated by the fans for it, what’s the point in owning a Major League Baseball team?
It can’t be for the money. Certainly, with the exception of a few teams, an MLB team is not going to be a huge money-maker. Not many owners are going to get rid of their other investments and live off the fat of a professional baseball team.
So then you must own a team because you love the team or professional baseball or competition. So what’s the point of being involved if you’re only going to put out a product that nobody wants to see? What’s the point in being an owner that people loathe? Is it fun to be considered cheap?
As for the salary-cap/revenue sharing issue, that is the reality of Major League Baseball. I would think that if I were going to buy myself a major professional sports team, that I would put together a business plan of how I was going to succeed. And in doing so, I would look at the business environment to see what it would take to succeed. If the environment wasn’t right for me, I wouldn’t get involved.
Buying a baseball team, you’d have to know that if you want to legitimately compete, you’re going to have to spend a lot of money on talent. Fiscal responsibility is not going to win games; talent on the field and in the dugout is. And talent costs money. But talent also generates money, as people get excited about your team and come to see them play. This equals ticket sales and concession sales.
Instead, the Cleveland Indians owner Larry Dolan—as well as team president Paul Dolan—seem to be more focused on economics rather than on the performance of their product.
Being more concerned with money than with winning is something players are always demonized for, but it‘s what we seem to have in the owner of our baseball franchise. They want to win, make no mistake, but not at the expense of their pocketbooks.
The Dolans own a team in a city where the people want nothing more than for them to sell and leave. Really? This is how they want to be viewed? This is how you wish to be seen as a business owner? This is what you want your legacy to be?
Look at how people see Dan Gilbert, the deep-pocketed owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers: A hero. A savior. A winner.
If you’re Paul or Larry Dolan, isn‘t this embarrassing? Aren’t you competitive enough to want to be considered as savvy and as good of an owner? Are you really content to be thought of as mediocre? I just can’t get my arms around that. If you’re competitive enough to want to be in business, how can’t you want to be considered one of the best?
At this point, as the Dolans, you have two choices that will end all of this: Sell the team or start spending.
Selling the team tomorrow is not going to help your legacy and you’ll always be considered one of those bad owners Cleveland always seems to have. By trading Cy Young Award winners in back-to-back years, you’re dabbling in Ted Stepien territory as it is. But at least the pain would be over. Not a great option, but an option.
Or you can open up your pocketbook and start putting together a legitimate winner. Build the nucleus of your team with farm-grown product, but be prepared to spend on essential pieces of a championship puzzle. People will forget about the lean years of this decade if you can put together a consistent winner. You’ll quickly ascend from goat to hero.
But I get the feeling the Dolans won’t do either. They’ll try their best to replicate the Minnesota Twins, who are to be admired for their level of success with the budget they have to work with, but who also haven‘t played in a World Series for almost two decades.
They’ll continue to be disliked by a fan base pining away for an owner with the resources to spend on players. They’ll continue to give their fans little or no hope. They’ll continue to engrain themselves in the minds of the people of northeast Ohio as the tightwads who ruined every summer for those who love this team and this sport.
And I ask one last time: What’s the point?
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