To get to the gym at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, one has to go through the casino, and at 5:05 a.m. on Thursday I was reminded that the dark 1995 film "Leaving Las Vegas" was nonfiction. There were hundreds of Nicholas Cage characters at the tables and slots, glasses half-full, cigarette smoke engulfing the walkway.
That was the grimy Spanish Moon side of the setting for baseball's winter meetings. The other side was chicken wraps as expensive as the rooms and "sales" slashing women's handbags to $4,000-something. Bud Selig had the sense not to pull a Big Three CEO and fly his private jet into Vegas to warn about baseball's financial woes, because he couldn't have held the attention of the general managers and agents and media, not when
CC Sabathia was pulling down $161 million,
A.J. Burnett got $82.5 million, and $37 million for
Francisco Rodriguez was termed "a steal."
Some baseball executives thought Scott Boras was over the top in his Boras Corp. state-of-the-game evaluation; Boras cited the sport's revenues, accused some small-market owners of pocketing the Central Fund and revenue-sharing dollars to finance their debt and cited the dollars being offered, including the $160 million he knew he already had in hand for
Mark Teixeira. But Boras was simply being an advocate for his clients, as he is paid to do.
The people who run the game haven't exactly sent the kind of message that one gets from financial institutions, newspapers, clothing and electronic chains, and automobile-related companies. The general managers held their November meetings at a California resort that had very tasty $40 cheeseburgers. The Yankees and Mets are opening lavish ballparks with the help of taxpayers -- bailouts for companies that aren't taking on water -- with some box seats in South Bronx going for $2,500 a chair. Nice guy
Andy Pettitte balked at taking a pay cut from the $16 million he earned for going 14-14 with a 4.54 ERA in 2008. The
Kansas City Royals signed
Kyle Farnsworth -- who will be 33 in April and in 10 major league seasons is 27-for-58 in save opportunities, has won 30 of 78 decisions and has a 4.47 ERA -- to a two-year, $9.25 million contract the same day
Manny Ramirez told a friend he might retire rather than play on a two-year, $50 million contract, presumably passing up such paltry wages to run the Brookings Institution.
And you want to tell Boras not to lead some GM into singing the Tom Petty line, "She wanted my money, so I gave her my soul"?
As there was the dark side of reality in the Bellagio casino at 5:05 a.m. on Thursday, so there are some who see that the economy that has turned millions of lives into living computer viruses will impact the baseball world if and when it tastes reality, when families decide the $250 for a family of four at Fenway Park is too expensive, or when companies asking for governmental assistance can't write off a night at Dodger Stadium or hard-working folks in the rusted belt of Cleveland and Detroit, St. Louis and Cincinnati decide they have to stay home and watch the games with their families. One major Midwestern newspaper may not travel with its team, and in Dallas, where the Dallas and Fort Worth newspapers have been journalistic beacons, the Dallas Observer reports that the Dallas Morning News will use the Fort Worth stories when the Rangers are on the road. A GM ain't humming "Like a Rock" four times a game, unless it's to reflect an owner's portfolio.
Arizona, Colorado and San Diego are already feeling the crunch, and by Opening Day in April,
Matt Holliday,
Adam Dunn,
Orlando Hudson,
Brian Fuentes,
Randy Johnson,
Jake Peavy and
Trevor Hoffman will be gone from those three teams.
The Indians are also feeling the crunch, and Mike Ilitch is willing to lose $30 million to keep the Tigers in Detroit's public eye. The Blue Jays are being asked to scale back because of the Canadian economy. As the recession unfurls, it is practically impossible to predict its impact in Washington, Baltimore, Florida, Tampa Bay, Houston, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Texas, not with the backdrop of the reality that close to 2,000 seats for the final two American League Championship Series games at Fenway Park went unclaimed online at face value.
"I believe that the economy is going to have a much greater impact on the baseball industry than most of those people wandering the halls of the Bellagio realize," one general manager said. "I believe that if one manages one's payroll, there will be some very attractive, impactful players available come June and July because their teams have to deal with economic realities. So if some big-market teams lose out on certain players now, they can wait and add significantly during the season if they have the capital."
For instance, if Boston were to lose out on Teixeira, they can wait and see where
David Ortiz and
Mike Lowell are during spring training. Maybe Holliday,
Magglio Ordonez,
Rick Ankiel or
Alex Rios will become a must-move cost. If the Mets can't get
Derek Lowe on a three-year, $36 million deal, or if
Oliver Perez gets too expensive, they can sign a
Randy Wolf and wait to see whether a
Dan Haren or
Roy Oswalt becomes available by midseason.
Every agent should try to act in his clients' best interests and get the best contracts possible based on past contracts, signed in a different economy. Remember, however, that the past reflects an industry whose revenues grew from $1.7 billion to $7 billion from 1995 to 2008, before the deluge. If those $40 cheeseburgers and $15.75 chicken wraps and $9.25 million deals for middle relievers whose track records parallel the guys sitting at the tables at 5:05 a.m. in the Bellagio are vestiges of the past and the real world hits baseball, the midseason trading market may be the first cousin of the housing market, and the equivalent of foreclosure will be a distressed owner asking for someone to bail him out of a contract, or two.
"We are now basing all our economics on the past," said one general manager in Las Vegas, "without any way of knowing about the future. The Mets may not have been willing to trade
Jon Niese for
J.J. Putz, but Roy Oswalt? They will. The Red Sox may have refused to trade
Michael Bowden for
Miguel Montero, but you can be sure they will for
Chris Iannetta. See me in July."
Peter Gammons
