Winning - at any cost.

https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2020/2/21/21145913/sports-cheating-houston-astros-manchester-city-saracens

The article looks at recent ‘cheating’ scandals in professional sports.

The article notes: “Breaking the rules isn’t a new phenomenon in sports, but the level at which it’s happening—both in cadence and severity—is alarming and reflective of society”

First, the Houston Astros of Major League BAseball stole signs from the catcher to the pitcher.  The catcher flashes a ‘sign’ to the pitcher - possibly for a fastball, a change-up, a slider, a curve and then a suggested location - inside or outside - up high or down low.  

To ‘steal a sign’ lets the opposing team (probably with a camera in the center-field seats) see what the pitcher is going to throw and when somehow communicated to the batter says “Hey - be ready, he is going to throw a fastball up high”.  The concept gives the batter the opportunity to be ready for the pitch.

Two other recent scandals involve money.  Generally speaking, rich-teams can hire (and pay) for the best players.  So, a team that has lots of money can buy the best players in the world.

In the past, in American baseball, the New York Yankees had deep pockets and could hire the best players (and win the World Series).  In order to be fair to smaller cities, Major League Baseball (and similar sports) put in salary caps. By this, a team like the Yankees could only pay a maximum of $X dollars for players, and if they paid over that, they paid a penalty that was shared to small cities.  This is kind of a Robin Hood concept - take from the rich and give to the poor.  

If the Yankees can buy the best players and the Brewers can’t afford to pay that much, year-after-year, the Yankees will win more games and attract more fans while fewer fans will go to the Brewers will win fewer games and attract fewer fans.  In other words, “the rich get rich and the poor get poorer”.

By putting salary caps on teams, when they have spent their money, they can’t go over that.  So, instead of 20 super-high-paid players, they might only afford (say) 8 high paid players and then have 12 average or lesser paid players.  The players they couldn’t afford would be available to the less successful teams - and in theory, they could hire some of them and get better results.  

In the English scandals, two teams were paying for the high priced payments with payments “under the table” (or cheating the compensation rules).  That is, that maybe the team hired their eight highly paid players with their salary money, but hired the additional twelve players at “average salaries”, but supplemented them with alternative payments.  The additional players are getting paid top salaries but on paper, it looks like they are getting average salaries. (Does that make sense - the team gets twenty top players and are playing hundreds of millions of dollars for the players, but on the accounting books it looks like they are only paying for eight top players and for twelve average players - who are really top players and should have been playing on other teams - but by slush funds are playing on the same team.)

It becomes a type of monopoly.  Taking baseball as an example, the top four teams with the most money pay the best salaries and the poor Brewers (or Kansas City Royals) can’t compete for the top players.  

I am somewhat ambivalent about this!!  In the business field, a company that puts out the best product can charge a little more for that product.  If (say) Honda year-after-year puts out the best cars in the world, then Chevy (or really General Motors) should work on improving the quality of their products.  

But, while that works in the business world, maybe that doesn’t work in the competitive world of professional sports.  By handicapping successful teams so less successful teams can complete seems to be attempting to ‘level the playing field’. 

With the Honda / General Motors example, if that continued for many years, General Motors would be forced out of business for putting out less valuable cars (or cars of lesser quality).  

With baseball, if that continued for many years, the Milwaukee Brewers would cease to exist - and then the Kansas City Royals would disband - and then the Colorado Rockies would also fold.

What do you think?  Can an association (or a “league”) handicap a successful team that is too successful in order to help struggling teams succeed?  

The survival of the fittest is thrown out in favor of making more equal competition.

What do you think?

Karen