Yer Out!

It is difficult to make the case that the Montreal Expos would be missed should Major League Baseball shut the team down, as it has all but promised. The Expos themselves have been missing in action, losing about 90 of 162 rencontres each season. They stink in two languages. Not that many Montrealers have noticed--the team averages a league low of fewer than 8,000 fans a game.

That's the best of the worst case for baseball's plan to boot two clubs from the league. Cutting the number of teams to 28 from 30 would eliminate 50 player jobs, not to mention hundreds of positions from the front office to hot-dog vendors. The league would save some $40 million of the $160 million it sends in subsidies to also-ran clubs such as the Expos. The remaining teams would also get a bigger cut of baseball's $2.5 billion network-television deal. And, purists argue, the quality of play would improve in a league that has been diluted by expansion.

Although the possible hit list also includes the Florida Marlins, Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Oakland A's, the other bleeding candidate for "contraction" is the Minnesota Twins. Unlike the Expos, the Twins have loyal fans and a competitive if inexperienced team. But the state's flinty taxpayers have refused to chip in for a new stadium to replace the charmless Metrodome, meaning that the Twins can't enhance revenues from skyboxes and naming rights and such. The Twins also have an owner, billionaire banker Carl Pohlad, who has been unwilling to invest in big salaries. "It makes no sense for Major League Baseball to be in markets that generate insufficient local revenues to justify the investment in the franchise," said commissioner Bud Selig. Minnesota brings in $25 million locally, near the bottom. The league's proposed solution to this Twins shortfall: hand Pohlad (and the other loser) from $125 million to $150 million to close up shop.

Selig's timing of the announcement--hours before baseball's labor contract expired and two days after the finish of a great World Series--infuriated the players' union, which viewed it as a hardball bargaining tactic. The league is desperate for some kind of salary cap, like that of the NFL and the NBA, because the owners are unable to contain themselves. Witness Texas Rangers boss Tom Hicks' signing Alex Rodriguez to a 10-year contract worth $252 million. Union president Donald Fehr issued a terse denunciation and then filed a grievance. Said former commissioner Fay Vincent: "Once again, the owners of baseball have made a terrible mistake."

Blame baseball's screwy economics. Although all teams share equally in the money ginned by network-television and merchandise sales, the revenue that each team collects locally from TV deals and ticket sales is theirs alone. That means big-market teams like the New York Yankees, which pull in up to 15 times as much local money as the Twins and Expos, can write big checks for the best players when they become available. The Yanks' payroll was $110 million last season, vs. $25 million for the Twins.

Big-market teams thus have an advantage over their small-market cousins, which has proved out in playoff appearances. Of course, money can't explain everything. If the big-city teams ought to dominate, how do you account for Chicago's Cubs and White Sox? Or the Boston Red Sox's karmic futility?