History says MLB will expand when in need of cash

Expansion? Did someone say expansion?

Oh, yes, I know who did. It was me. A couple of weeks back I mentioned the fact that I think that expansion of the major leagues will be one of the permanent changes in baseball that arises from the current pandemic. It’s a matter of dollars.

And sense. Baseball’s owners say they are losing money this year. I’m not convinced that’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but I am convinced that everybody’s cash flow is considerably below what it would be if there were spectators in the seats. Moreover, the cash flow will continue to lag even after people are allowed to return to the ballpark.

Whenever the pandemic ends, baseball will be doing business in a country that is attempting to extricate itself from a deep recession. There won’t be as many deep-pocketed corporations willing to pay fancy prices for luxury suites or special seats that come with all sorts of privileges. There won’t be as many “average” fans willing to pay above-average prices for seats in the not-so-special parts of the ballpark. There won’t be as many television advertisers ready to purchase 30-second spot ads which could cause the networks to be more cautious when bidding for the next round of contracts.

In short, there isn’t as much income now and there probably won’t be in the immediate future unless the owners find a new source of revenue. That source is available. The entry fees that would be charged to the owners of two new franchises could offset the shortfall. It has happened before.

In 1990, when an arbitrator ruled that baseball owners had colluded to halt free agency and therefore owed $280 million to the Players Association,

the owners were horrified. That meant that each of the 26 clubs was being assessed more than $10 million — money some of them didn’t have. They raised that money through two rounds of expansion. The Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins joined the fold in 1993 and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Arizona Diamondbacks were added five years later.

That was only the latest chapter. Baseball expansion has always been prompted by outside events. Every time it happened the owners were in state of panic for one reason or another.

The most difficult expansion was the first. In 1961, the American League went from eight teams to 10 and the National League followed suit a year later. This broke a very long-standing tradition in a game that has always valued its tradition.

Starting in 1903 major league baseball consisted of 16 clubs in 10 American cities. There were three teams in New York, two each in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and St. Louis and single entries in five other cities. Literally, nothing changed for 50 years.

Not until 1953, when the Boston Braves relocated to Milwaukee, did anyone tinker with the geography. The move was probably overdue and it triggered a flurry of activity. Over the next two years St. Louis and Philadelphia became one-franchise cities and Baltimore and Kansas City joined the big leagues. Then, in 1958 the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants fled to the west coast, leaving the Yankees as the only team in New York.

All of these moves were healthy for baseball, but the sport soon became a victim of its own success. There were other cities that wanted major league franchises and each of these cities had representatives in Congress. Some of those Congressmen suggested it might be time to remove baseball’s exemption from the anti-trust laws.

Congress wasn’t baseball’s only concern. A New York lawyer named William Shea was trying to organize a third major league, which he called the Continental League. His partner was Branch Rickey, who had already revolutionized the game twice and was willing to do it again. Rickey said he wanted the CL to operate within baseball’s existing structure but he was prepared, if necessary, to become an “outlaw” league and raid the existing teams for talent. He was serious.

Looking at Congress on one side and Branch Rickey on the other, baseball took a deep breath and agreed to expand. Then it did as little as possible, adding four teams but opening only two new markets — Minnesota and Houston. In 1966, Atlanta joined the major leagues when the Braves abandoned Milwaukee for the South.

The 20-team system seemed to work until 1968 when, for unknown reasons, offensive numbers plummeted drastically and pennant races in both leagues were runaways. People complained that baseball had become boring and were questioning whether or not it should continue to be called our national pastime. Pro football had introduced the Super Bowl and for the first time another sport was exceeding baseball in popularity. Panic set in.

The owners decided it was time to reshuffled the deck and add a few more cards. There was some internal bickering between the leagues but when the 1969 season began each league consisted of 12 teams, divided into divisions of six clubs each. For the first time in history there would be a round of postseason baseball that would precede the World Series.

However, in the process of expanding to 24 teams the owners made one critical mistake. One of the new American League teams was an underfunded club named the Seattle Pilots. After only one year of operation the Pilots were sold to a Milwaukee auto dealer named Bud Selig, who moved the team to his own city. The city of Seattle, which had already committed to building a new stadium, sued the American League, and apparently had a good legal case. The AL owners grew fearful of a judgment against them — fearful enough that the agreed to expand again in 1977 and made certain Seattle got one of the two new teams.

That created a very awkward situation. Having two seventeam divisions in one league was awkward by itself, but having fewer teams in the other league was even more awkward. Yet, baseball functioned with that reality for 16 years — some of them with Selig, who helped to create the problem in the first place, serving as commissioner.

Selig, of course, wasn’t the only commissioner who caused difficulties. It was one of his predecessors, Peter Ueberroth, who, in the mid-1980s organized an owners’ boycott of free agents — something an arbitrator ruled to be collusion. That, as we have seen, led to additional expansion. That’s why baseball finds itself with 30 teams today.

Thirty is an awkward number. Any time there is an odd number of teams in a league or a division the schedule-maker will be faced with difficulties. Those difficulties could be eliminated if baseball does, indeed, add two new franchises.

With 32 teams baseball could create four divisions of eight teams or eight divisions of four teams, and either system could be designed to function smoothly. Teams could be lumped geographically and that would drastically reduce travel costs while allowing for more road games in each team’s time zone — changes that both the owners, players and fans would embrace. It would be, so to speak, a brand new ball game.

Maybe it would be the right thing for the wrong reasons, but who cares?

It would be the right thing, and that’s all that matters.

Hall of Fame voter Jay Dunn has written baseball for The Trentonian for 52 years. Contact him at jaydunn8@aol.com.