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jad

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Everything posted by jad

  1. jad
    I don't see it that way. Dewey is right. If the issue is money, you can negotiate and come to an agreement. But if you stick to your principles (e.g., "We players are what fans come to see". vs. "We are owners of the business and without us, there is no league") or if you look at money, not as a material but as a sign of inner worth, nothing will get done.
  2. jad
    Excellent excellent point!!! (We had a saying in my business: who would you rather deal with? a man of principle? or a scoundrel? The answer is: a scoundrel. A scoundrel will deal, and 'dealing' is what is necessary in any collective organization.). (I, btw, always styled myself as 'principled' and thus was completely ineffective in ever getting anything done. and I don't say this a self-praise. I needed to channel my 'inner-scoundrel' ,who is certainly there and shows up often, in order to deal with other humans.)
  3. jad
    Or the "eye test" is simply erroneous. I have often heard announcers talk about how bad an outfielder is because he didn't take a 'direct path' to the ball. However, the reason outfielders do not do this, (as some prof. fielders have noted) is because it is easier to track the ball if you take an indirect ('curved'?) path to it.
  4. jad
    Wasn't that always the way one defended Frank Malzone in the old days? Oh yes, he makes a lot of errors, but that's because he gets to so many more balls than other 3b. (That should be pretty easy to determine with modern stats: just look at the assist/PO to error ratio.)
  5. jad
    But then, what happens AFTER you make a play or get a hit should hardly affect your individual stats. To go down that path is to argue simply that the only stat that matters is W/L.
  6. jad
    The rules of cricket are essentially those of soccer, except the games go on for three days or so instead of 8 hours.
  7. jad
    Ticket prices are set to maximize the take. It doesn't matter whether operating costs are $100billion or $100. I'm not sure why this appears to be such a mystery. (But the inability to understand this may explain why there are two types of people: (1) bazillionaire sports owners, CEOs of major corporations and their highly-paid accountants, and (2) those like us who spend their spare time on sports boards.)
  8. jad
    Please stop with the delusion that owners can/will just "lower ticket prices." Tickets are sold for what people are willing to pay for them and priced according to what is believed to maximize the gate. Do you really think that if seats cost $10, you could just stroll over to the ole' ballpark, pick up a few bleacher seats on gameday, and settle down to $1 hotdogs? (You want cheaper seats? Then stop going; stop watching NESN; stop buying team gear; stop giving sports free advertising by participating in sports boards; stop listening to sports radio.)
  9. jad
    Of course it does, and of course all those expenses matter to owners and the bottom line. I am not saying salaries do not affect the bottom line. Of COURSE they do. But ticket prices? those are still going to be determined by one over-riding factor "how to maximize the take at the gate." And that is going to be the same calculation no matter what the other expenses are (salaries, upkeep, operating costs, marketing etc.). That's why, say, here in LA, it will cost you over $50 to get into a Lakers game, whereas it can be as low as $6 for the CLippers in the same venue. Obviously this has nothing to do with salaries (which are pretty much the same), but only with what fans are willing to pay. The reason it costs $300 (is that correct?) to get a monster seat or box seat at Fenway is because if you don't pony up that money, someone else will. (Of course, with a new CBA looming, owners are pushing the 'look what players make today as opposed to you!', to try to deflect attention away from the plantation.)
  10. jad
    Right. IF fan interest goes down. Again, this has nothing to do with player salaries. Ticket prices are determined without reference to player salaries. (It would be easier to argue that fan interest INCREASES as salaries do.)
  11. jad
    I'm just responding to what you said above. Your words: "The players don't control the ticket prices, but if ticket prices were directly related to their salaries, how many players would be willing to take discounts so that fans could pay less for tickets?" The answer, of course, is none, just as it would be if you and I were asked to take a pay cut for the benefit of our bosses and clients/customers/students. (Maybe we're making the same point and are just mis-reading our comments!)
  12. jad
    Yes, IF ticket prices were related to salaries, which they are not. What would you do if your boss said your clients/customers/students would be better off it you took a salary cut? (but they weren't willing to take a salary cut themselves).
  13. jad
    You've been following baseball enough and sports to know that salaries have nothing to do with ticket prices. Ticket prices are determined by bean-counters who calculate what price produces the maximum take. They don't care whether players make millions or play for free; the math is the same.
  14. jad
    It's also a pretty accurate definition of Capitalism in Action. (Anyone know if there are economic consequences or benefits of locking players out? maybe a few million and change in not having to keep facilities open?)
  15. jad
    That's certainly true. And it wasn't baseball that caused my antipathy toward the whole system. The money-saving tank might be addressed in the new CBA, no?
  16. jad
    On the other hand, the only way to prevent tanking for draft position is to use a lottery and I would favor putting all 32 (or so!) teams in there: you can weight their chances however you want (32 balls for the last place team, 31 for the next .... 1 for the first? or all the same). There's nothing quite so annoying as teams in the NBA scrambling to avoid the playoffs or to drop to last place. Teams should not be rewarded for failure.
  17. jad
    Maybe so. But given the litigious nature of both agents and owners, I am still skeptical.
  18. jad
    Maybe I'm naive, but I would think that would be uncommon, as it's an insult both to players and owners. There are lawyers here, though, what do you think? Isn't this tantamount to a no-contact order or legal agreement? What do you think is happening?
  19. jad
    Ha! Fair enough. But the only players in 'our system' I'll have heard of are those playing for the SeaDogs, and even then, only when I start going back to games again.
  20. jad
    Maybe I'm not a "true" fan. I don't really give a cr*p about players from other teams.
  21. jad
    With 5 of 9 starters I've never heard of? Oh, I'd watch. But not with much interest. And probably only if they were at Fenway, so that I could see something I'm familiar with.
  22. jad
    From what I can find, owners (and GMs) are NOT allowed to negotiate with either players or their agents. But I can't find a definitive statement on this.
  23. jad
    Are owners allowed to talk to agents? (Isn't that the same as talking to the players themselves?)
  24. jad
    Well, the stockholders and CEOs get penalized because they have to share their wealth with (you know!) those 'worker'-types. Ugh. It's really sad that board-members have to dirty their hands by associating with such rabble.
  25. jad
    It's an amazing success-story of the capitalist system that the average victim of this system (i.e., the ordinary schmuck paying thousands a year in health insurance and trying to figure out a way to pay for education), still sides with the owners and CEOs, even mouthing all the attendant b.s. justification--they worked hard, they risk so much, they lose so much more money than we do--there's a nice scene in Bertolucci's 1900 that deals with this idiocy). And it doesn't seem to matter whether the workers are prof. athletes or some poor bastard flipping burgers.
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