By Sridhar Pappu
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In the years since, the situation worsened. George Steinbrenner and Ted Turner became baseball’s gaudy avatars, simply spending their way to the World Series. Last season the three highest-salaried teams in each of the three American League divisions won their titles, and three of the five best-paid teams in the National League won theirs. In 1999 the top ten teams spent an average of $70,800,000 on salaries. The average for the bottom ten teams? $24,500,000. As broadcaster Bob Costas points out in his recent book Fair Ball: A Fan’s Case for Baseball, you won’t find such huge disparities among teams in other sports, such as football or basketball.
Vitallo, who’s an accountant in Oak Brook, would like to propose at least a partial solution. He says superior talent is responsible for winning, and under present circumstances that goes to the highest bidder. When a team like the Milwaukee Brewers or Montreal Expos competes against the New York Mets, Vitallo says, they’re engaging in a contest resembling one in which you or I would play golf against Tiger Woods. On the surface, it’s unfair–until Woods agrees to give us a handicap, additional strokes to make things fair. Thus there are two contests: one in which Tiger kicks our butts, and a second meant to factor in our inferior talents. Simply put, Vitallo would like to create a second tier of competition in baseball, giving teams with lower payrolls, like the Brewers and the Expos, additional strokes.
In all likelihood, teams winning the second-tier contest will still be considered also-rans. “It’s a hollow victory, maybe,” Vitallo says. “But if they have a competition thing going, the fans and ballplayers have a chance of winning while the franchise has a chance to build itself up.
Vitallo has sent his proposal to several major league clubs. He says he heard of some interest in November from a member of the San Diego Padres’ front office. Nothing ever came of that.
