FanPost

Competitive imbalance, who's fault is it?

Who's at fault fo the current state of competitive balance in Major Leauge Baseball?  Is it Steinbrenners fault that he wants to put together a team chalked full of all-stars?  Is it his fault that he knows how to gain a larger following of fans?  Is it Steinbrennes fault for opening free agencies pandora's box?  No.  It is our fault, the fans.  We need to look no further than the front of our own noses to find the answer as to why baseball is limited to a few all star teams while everyone else suffers.  The transformation of the fan has been the most signifigant contributing factor to the competitive balance of baseball.
   There are a few fans out there who remain loyal to their favorite teams no matter who is playing for them.  Their main focus is not on individual players, but the team as a whole.  Anyone who calls themselves a Royals fan knows all to well that this is a hard stance to take.  But we are in the minority.  The average fan does not root for one team anymore, in fact theaverage fan does not root for any team except his fantasty team.  They root for players and hard numbers so they can win the weeks gift certificate to Denny's in their local fantasty leauge.  They follow the greatest players around the leauge no matter where they play without regard to past standing rivalries.  They buy the hats of the team that thier favorite players are playing on.  They watch the games of thier favorite players on T.V.  They follow the greats like groupies, not like loyal fans.  It is no wonder that business men like Stienbrenner scronge up these great players by luring them in with large paychecks.  They have an inherint advantage due to the large markets and prime advertisitng subsidies.  Steinbrenner is smart enough to see that he can create a baseball monopoly because he has the money to spend to make moeny.  Like lemmings, the average fan follows a Jason Giambi, or A-Rod to New York and buys their merchandise thus further fueling the large markets bankrolls allowing them to grab all the best talent.  The shift in this idea of the fan fro one who follows a team to one who follows a player has created this unfair balance in the game.  For fans like me and I assume many of you other Royals fans, we get claim to being oldschool fans, fans who are willing to weather the tough storms in tough years in hopes of one day seeing our Royals win again.  We do not need to attach ourselves to proven players to feel a sense of acheivement.  We are the tough fans, the lovable fans, the uncomprimising fans who made baseball great at one time.  Are we dinosaurs that have shook off the changing culture of baseball and remain affixed to the teams we grew up with?  Yes.  But if being a modern fan requires that one focus purley on numbers and forgets the romanticism of the game, count me out.  Baseball is not great because of the nubmers that players are able to post, but because of the little intricities in the game.  Team play, the connection between a shortstop and second baseman, the relay throw to the plate, the suicide squeeze, and the sacrifice fly are not stats that the average fan in the fantasy leauge care about.  But these are the little things that makes baseball the great game tat captured our heart the first time we went to a game.  
     Who is to blame?  Well not Royals fans, we are still here after 20 years.  Not the owners, owners have never really cared about anything more than money.  It is that punk in IT, or the computer geek down the street, the guys who have never been to a game in person, rarely watch a game on TV, but retrieve the stats on a daily basis in order to put together a good fantasy leauge team.  He knows nothing about rivalries, nothing about the beauty of the game, and nothing about why America used to watch baseball.  This is the man that is ruining our game.

This FanPost was written by a member of the Royals Review community. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the editors and writers of this site.