Dear Bud,
This letter continues my thoughts for you on how we can save the MLB. I realized how timely these letters are this weekend. Think about how good things are going right now for baseball.
With the exception of the AL West all of the races are tight. The AL east is an absolute heavy weight fight. The Central is interesting and the whole NL has compelling story lines
and
yet
people aren’t watching. That’s annoying. It made me think that maybe we don’t need to fix baseball but we might need to tweak the MLb a little bit more, which of course, is what these letters are about. To this point we’ve covered two fairly simple possibilities:
- Put the DH in both leagues, no one is paying to watch a pitcher hit .125
- Allow people to bring coolers to the games. It’s a way to give back.
Unfortunately, Bud I am about to get into some more controversial areas. Some of these next few, perhaps all three of them you are going to want to outright reject. Please be open minded and look at the possibilities.
It’s time to create some interest through ownership. With the death of George, you lost a key ingredient to grabbing people’s interest in baseball. You lost a perceived bad guy. You lost someone that people love to hate. His sons are even hated by some Yankee fans but not in the same way.
You need someone else for people to hate. You need someone for the media, especially the four-letter word station to hate.
The self-appointed watchers of the game, A.K.A. the media, need to be appeased. They need to have something to rant about every night. They need to point the blame for what’s wrong with the game away from themselves and at someone else. They need to be able to fill their airtime and sell their commercial slots.
In short, they need Mark Cuban.
You need Mark Cuban.
Baseball needs Mark Cuban
He’s passionate. He’s funny. He’s involved. He’s rich. He wants to win so badly, he won’t pocket revenue sharing money so that he can make a profit over winning. He understands that winning teams make money. He understands that it is about a culture of winning, period.
More importantly, it will increase your product awareness because the media thugs hate no one more than they hate the self made rich white guy. Think about all the tripe they’ll put up on the news every day and night. For their 24 hour programming, you’ll find baseball being mentioned even in January leading up to the Superbowl. The guy will be an advertising coup for you and all of MLB.
On top of that, he’ll be a good owner. He’ll be at games, he’ll work to give back to the fans and the community. He won’t skimp on payroll.
He’s a good fan and a good businessman. What more could you want in an owner? Now, I know the Rangers situation was different, you wanted, nay you had to have Nolan Ryan own that team. Nolan Ryan, he of the, “I beat the $h*^ out of a guy who was charging my mound. But there a lot of teams out there that could use an owner like Cuban. The Astros, the Pirates, the Cubs, the Orioles, well let’s be honest, that list could go on for a long time.
In the interest of full disclosure, I love the guy. I hope he buys the Yankees some day. I know you don’t like him but the time has come to put petty differences aside.
To quote the girl from Remember the Titans, “Now, ain’t the time to be proud.”
The man will be good for baseball. He’ll put a winner on the field, he’ll drive up the sports Q rating.
It’s time to recruit men like Mark Cuban to be owners in this league. To thwart his efforts, or to not allow him ownership is not only foolish, and wrong it should be illegal. It goes against good common sense and good business sense.
It’s bad for the game.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.