Gary Sheffield Welcome to Economics

For those who actually read my blog I have been away for a while. I have been very busy in my work life and no time to breathe.

Gary Sheffield has spoken out about why there are less African American players in baseball. Mr. Sheffield is a great baseball player, but when it comes to philosophy and economics he leaves a little bit to be desired. The quotes I have seen he actually hits the nail on the head. To draft a player in the draft, whether he be white or black you have to invest a lot of money. If he does not pan out the organization has lost a lot of money. To sign a Latin player the up front investment is much less. This is true. It seems to me to be efficient.

Now the question, why is this the case? In the decade of the seventies the players union won the right of free agency. Due to this players are paid much higher salaries. Some may say outrageous salaries. I say you should work for whatever you can, and if the market makes it higher, more power to you. In the time since then owners have had not much to say about them. They pay them or they will lose them. The rich get richer and the poor don't. Because of local television deals the New York teams, the Boston Red Sox and the larger cities can pay whatever is needed to dominate their leagues. Recently that has changed somewhat. Why is this? All teams actively scout the Latin American countries, actually sponsor baseball academies, and finance leagues in these countries. Why do they do this? Well the obvious answer is that it increases the pool of available players, thereby using age old laws of supply and demand to make the expenses of running a team more manageable.

Many players have expressed solidarity with Sheffield. This is natural. It is their lively hood at stake. They have come to expect multi-million dollar salaries with the not being able to do much about it. Now there is more competition and the top dollar players are accepting less because they have to. This is called economics.

Sheffield see this as a bad thing. I don't The players (the owners too for that matter) don't seem to care much about the fans. The owners need the players, this is obvious, but they also need the fans. Without people buying gear, going to games and paying for subscriptions there is no money to pay the players. For me to take my family of four to a Cleveland Indians game it will run me over $120 by time I pay for parking, some food and reasonably good seats. This stresses my budget, but makes it prohibitive for an lower income inner city family. This is where Sheffield says they should get their players. Too bad they will never get to see a live game. While increasing the talent pool does not bring down the cost to me to take my family to a game, it has slowed the increases so we can still get to a couple of games a year. It has also allowed the smaller market teams to be more competitive. This is good for people in Cleveland, Detroit, Cincinnati etc. Again I think of the fans here, not the players. Economics works every time it is tried, and the laws of economics are not changeable, just because a ballplayer thinks they should.

While Gary Sheffield and anyone else in the public eye has the right to run his mouth with his opinions, I don't expect much sympathy from the masses who work hard just to be able to go to a ballgame a couple of times a year. He wants us to feel the labor/management sympathy, but when the union worker laid off in Detroit sees players making $10 - 15 million a year and whining, I don't think he feels much solidarity. Just my opinion.