Crying in baseball

Add to the pantheon of terrible ideas no one asked for the heartless scheme from Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred to put 42 of 160 minor league baseball teams, including New York’s Staten Island Yankees, the Auburn Doubledays and the Binghamton RumblePonies, on the chopping block as early as 2021.

MLB says it has to slash farm teams to improve players’ living conditions and upgrade stadiums.

Nevermind that 40.5 million people went to minor league ballparks last year, availing themselves of one of the few affordable live family entertainments left in America. Nevermind that MLB’s rich owners are more than rich enough to simply pay all minor league players, currently living on small stipends, a living wage.

Nevermind that these clubs provide communities located hundreds of miles from a big-league stadium a priceless sense of pride and belonging.

Nevermind that the scheme threatens a system that has over the generations helped grow good players, like Luke Voit, Derek Jeter and Chase Utley, into great ones.

On a wall of our offices hangs a giant image of a 1947 Daily News cover of a young man wearing a Montreal Royals shirt whose contract the Brooklyn Dodgers bought. His name was Jackie Robinson.

Under a century-old federal antitrust exemption, Major League Baseball is (go figure) technically not engaged in interstate commerce, and therefore cannot be held liable for monopolizing the industry.

How about this for a trade: Decimate the minor leagues, and lose the exemption. No player to be named later.