Some baseball owners call for salary cap

PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. - Some baseball owners say it may be time to reconsider a salary cap after the New York Yankees spent nearly a half-billion dollars on free agents during a recession that may cause some teams to retrench.

"I would ask, if it's such a bad idea, what sport doesn't have a salary cap other than us?" Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio said Wednesday.

A salary cap isn't on the agenda of the major league owners meetings this week. But it could become an issue when the present collective bargaining agreement expires after the 2011 season - especially if the economy worsens.

"I think there's a lot of owners that would like to have that right now," Oakland owner Lew Wolff said. "I think the parity is what we're looking for, and the more ways you can get to parity the better. I think it's pretty good now, but I think it could be better.

"It's a very good question, because maybe this recession, depression, whatever we're in may be a change for a lot more years," Wolff said.

The bleak economy was on the owners' minds as they gathered at an exclusive mountainside resort to begin two days of meetings. Owners compared notes on ticket sales and sponsorships and other indicators of the economy's squeeze and were set to consider proposals Thursday to eliminate the possibility of rain-shortened postseason games and to change the method of determining sites of tiebreaker games to head-to-head record rather than coin flips.

Wolff said the Athletics' ticket sales are down about 10 percent from a year ago. The Brewers lost Mercedes-Benz as a sponsor but added a presenting sponsorship agreement with Potawatomi Bingo Casino - part of an expected double-digit percentage gain in sponsorship revenue.

The Chicago Cubs are for sale, but the economy hasn't cooled the ardor of the club's long-suffering fans. Chairman Crane Kenney said the waiting list for season tickets to Wrigley Field recently surged past 100,000. Kenney said the Cubs' recent playoff appearances have given fans hope that the team is poised to win its first World Series since 1908.

"I think our fans are starting to sense that the end (of the title drought) is coming, and they want to be there for the party," Kenney said. "We're in a real good spot. We don't take it for granted."

Some owners, especially those in low-revenue areas, say a cap would give smaller markets a fair shot at signing top talent.

"There's no question that, a market like Pittsburgh, a salary cap would be advantageous," Pirates owner Bob Nutting said.

The Yankees' offseason spending spree has sparked renewed talk of a cap, an issue owners haven't brought up in negotiations since the disastrous 1994-95 strike that wiped out the World Series for the first time in 90 years. But not all owners are critical of the Yankees' acquisition of pitchers CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett and infielder Mark Teixeira.

"I have no problem with what they've done," Kenney said. "They've done it within the rules, within the confines of our agreement.

"And if you look at the reality there, they've got a $1.3 billion stadium coming online," Kenney said. "They were probably relying on Wall Street to fill a lot of those seats. And they missed the playoffs for the first time in 13 years. So their reaction is probably similar to what I would do, which is, you've got to put a compelling product on the field when you open the doors of that new ballpark, and that's what they did."

Wolff's team recently agreed to a one-year, $5.25 million year with Jason Giambi, who had bolted Oakland after the 2001 season to sign a $120 million, seven-year contract with the Yankees.

Asked if the Yankees' spending concerned him, Wolff replied, "I probably should say it does, but to me it doesn't because, frankly, the more visible they are - they are baseball, traditionally. And they're not doing anything different than they've done traditionally for years.

"I think they benefit all of us more than they hurt us," Wolff said.

Indeed, New York's luxury tax payment - $26,862,702 - was just $141,000 shy of the Florida Marlins' entire 2008 payroll, which came to $27,003,450.

Attanasio said he wasn't bitter because the Yankees outbid Milwaukee for Sabathia, who joined the Brewers in midseason and helped pitched them into the playoffs.

"There's no sour grapes here," Attanasio said. "The Yankees are playing within the rules of the system. So you can't blame the team. You have to change the system."

Attanasio said a salary cap would make it easier for owners to control their payrolls.

"Obviously, by definition, if you have a salary cap you have some cost certainty because there are very clear parameters," Attanasio said. "So I think there are some merits to it."

One argument against a salary cap is the recent success of low-payroll clubs in the postseason.

Last fall, the Tampa Bay Rays made it to the World Series for the first time despite having the 28th-highest payroll - $51 million, or about $171 million less than the Yankees. In 2007, the low-budget Colorado Rockies won the NL pennant. And the perennially pinched Marlins have won a World Series more recently than the Yankees.

It may take more than a salary cap to help Nutting's Pirates, who have had 16 consecutive losing seasons, tying the 1933-48 Philadelphia Phillies as the longest-running losers in major American professional team sports.

"You see opportunities, whether it was Tampa Bay, whether it was Colorado the year before, there certainly is a model that teams with lower payrolls, smaller markets have succeeded, can succeed, and that's where we need to focus our attention," Nutting said. "We need to find ways to succeed in the current economic environment, and we're not going to use the hope of a salary cap as a crutch or as an excuse."

Yankees feed at taxpayer trough because they can

Hey, CC Sabathia, can you spare your team a dime?

How about you, Mark Teixeira? Got an extra million or two lying around so the suites at the new Yankee Stadium can get the designer touch your fans deserve?

It seems like only yesterday that the Yankees shelled out nearly a half billion dollars for a trio of players they hope will entice the remaining rich of New York to shell out a lot of money for the pleasure of watching them play. There was a muted outcry that the Yankees had gone too far, but the general consensus was that if any team could afford to throw out so many millions, it was the guys in pinstripes.

Turns out there was a reason - taxpayers are helping foot the bill.

Not all of it, of course. Even in today's tanking economy, there are plenty of people still willing to spend $2,500 on a front-row seat behind home plate, and the Yankees will end up picking up much of the tab for the new stadium itself.

But the same team that was so generous with its players now wants New York taxpayers to be even more generous than they already have been in helping fund for a stadium built for the singular purpose of making the Yankees even more money.

A billion dollars, it seems, just doesn't buy what it used to.

The Yankees are going back hat-in-hand this week to ask the city for another $259 million in tax-exempt bonds on top of the $940 million in similar bonds they've already gotten for the new stadium, saying the extra money is needed, among other things, to pay for a state-of-the-art big screen and to properly finish off the stadium's luxury suites.

Now I'm no economist, but doesn't something seem a little off here?

Just weeks after committing some $423.5 million for Sabathia, Teixeira and A.J. Burnett, the Yankees need to float nearly that much in bonds at taxpayer expense just to finish the stadium? Couldn't they reach out to their new players and get a loan from them instead?

Forget about the cost overruns that upped the stadium tab to $1.3 billion. Who's doing their books? Bernard Madoff?

Yankees president Randy Levine insisted Wednesday in a contentious hearing that the team is paying for its own stadium and that grandstanding politicians are to blame for even making an issue out of the latest request. Although he's right about the issue becoming a political, er, football, the fact remains that the city of New York and its taxpayers are heavily subsidizing the stadium, too.

They're hardly setting a precedent. Since the Baltimore Orioles soaked taxpayers for the first retro stadium, Camden Yards, in 1992, baseball owners have managed to con the public in 17 other cities for new parks of their own. In almost all cases, the majority of the money spent on these new stadiums has come from taxes or fees imposed for just that purpose.

In the case of Yankee Stadium, it will be the Yankees paying off the bonds. But because they're tax free, it means the bonds will carry lower interest rates and the team will avoid spending tens of millions of dollars it would have otherwise had to pay on the borrowed money.

When everything is included, it adds up pretty quick. Figures released by the city's Independent Budget Office tallied a whopping total public subsidy at more than $500 million, with another quarter billion dollars or so for the Mets' new stadium in Queens.

I don't live in New York, so I'll leave it to the taxpayers there to be outraged or simply figure that's not a bad price for entertainment. But at a time when the unemployment rate is at a 16-year high, Americans are losing their jobs at the fastest rate since World War II, and cities and states are struggling for enough money to provide the most basic services, I'd lean toward outrage.

The only good news is the economic meltdown might eventually force the Yankees to come up with a more reasonable pricing model. With 800 of 4,300 premium seats still available for sale and seven luxury suites still unsold, the team has hired a real estate agency to market some of its high-priced wares.

Act now and you can get a 20-game package for $7,000 a seat. Buy four and you can take the family out for under $2,000 a game, assuming they don't buy too many souvenirs.

Plenty cheap, unless you consider you're already paying for the stadium anyway.

Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg@ap.org