Boras and the nine game world series

by spittle8 on Jul 1, 2007 6:16 PM PDT Comment 31 comments

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070630/ap_on_sp_au_ra_ne/bbo_nine_game_series

What do y'all think? Anything that further commercializes baseball is cool with me, mostly. I think it's a travesty that no one watches the world series anymore.

Also: http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-mariners-hargroveresigns&prov=ap&type=lgns MARINERS NEWS ON THE FRONT PAGE! YAY!

0 recs | Comment 31 comments

Story-email Email Printer Print

Comments

I would delete this.

A straight copy, even with attribution, is still a copyright violation.

You can only excerpt so much.

In other words, CYA, Jeff.

by Faux on Jul 1, 2007 6:21 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Huh? Really?

by Gomez on Jul 1, 2007 6:24 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah.

Out of an article, you can only pull like 3 or 4 paragraphs, and you have to add some commentary, or else you're violating fair use provisions.

If someone from yahoo sees it, Jeff could be getting a fairly nasty email. I had a friend who hosted a forum that the same thing happened to, and he got a cease and desist and everything.

by Faux on Jul 1, 2007 6:26 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Addendum

If you have permission form the author, you also can use it. But that's a given.

by Faux on Jul 1, 2007 6:27 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yahoo's claim is ridiculous, as they're cribbing the entire story themselves straight from the AP wire. ESPN posts the exact same story word for word, because they get their news from the exact same source.

I know cease and desists are serious business, and consulting a lawyer isn't usually worth the time and effort, but Yahoo's full of crap. Meanwhile, I'll go ahead and crib all but the key paragraphs from the OP.

by Gomez on Jul 1, 2007 6:35 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

I didn't know it wasn't Yahoos story.

But AP is similar as they only distribute to people that pay them royalties. So when you use an AP story, they expect you to pay them.

Imagine my explanation, but substitute AP for Yahoo, and take out the whole Yahoo being assholes thing. It's the same law. You can't use the whole thing under fair use, no matter the company.

by Faux on Jul 1, 2007 6:38 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Also

I didn't mean just now with this story. It was a few months ago with some celebrity story that was posted on a forum he hosted.

by Faux on Jul 1, 2007 6:40 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Given that Yahoo PAYS AP...

...no, I don't think it's ridiculous. The whole idea of AP is that they supply a news feed for a fee for those who pay.

by rtang on Jul 1, 2007 6:41 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

That's an interesting point to bring up

Yahoo pays the AP and assumes the material as property... even though other news sites are posting the exact same material that THEY purchased from the AP.

How strange. I wonder how the courts figured that.

by Gomez on Jul 1, 2007 6:49 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Well, given...

...that it has Yahoo written all over it, the courts assume that it's Yahoo's responsibility to clean it up. It goes on up the line....

by rtang on Jul 1, 2007 7:27 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Thanks.

I wonder if there is some way Jeff can remove my comments, as the article is worth discussing.

Nudge, nudge.

by Faux on Jul 1, 2007 6:42 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

I believe he had a dinner to go to

Also, I think it's a good point to bring up, not necessarily because posting material with a link is wrong in itself, but to raise awareness of what Yahoo (and other news sites) will come after people for.

Either way, it's usually okay to post a few paragraphs and a link.

by Gomez on Jul 1, 2007 6:51 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Absolutely

3 or 4 paragraphs, even with only a short piece of commentary and a link to the source, is more than sufficient. After my friend got that C&D, he went and talked to a copyright lawyer and I just like to pass it on to sites I'd like to see stay open.

A good guide for anyone that wants to post things from other people online is at the EFF.

http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/

by Faux on Jul 1, 2007 6:57 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

To disagree.

I think the commercialization of baseball is what leads to lower viewership. I know I get fed up with the ads and stupid shit.

"We take you now to the 'Levitra Hard Hit Of The Game" Yuck.

I have friends that love minor leagues and college baseball, and don't like the majors because of all the money and advertising.

Ask quite a few college basketball and football fans, and you'll find the same thing.

by Faux on Jul 1, 2007 6:46 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

No, no, no

The season is 162 games long. Prolonging the post season takes the WS into early November. If anything is to be done with the playoffs - and I'd favor another round before a 9 game WS - MLB would have to shorten the regular season.

9 game series (serieses?) are too long anyway. What's wrong with best of 7? If I were a season ticket holder for a WS team, I'd be annoyed that two of the rarest games a team can play aren't easily accessible to me.

Nice Guys Finish Third - Hopelessly lost, but makin' good time.

by pdb on Jul 1, 2007 6:48 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Re: Shortening the season.

I don't really see a reason to shorten the saeson, but I would like to see the old habit of having a couple scheduled doubleheaders a month brought back, if nothing else than to make it more of a young-mans game.

You could "shorten" a season by 8 games in that way, or even add a couple extra rest days for longer traveling teams.

by Faux on Jul 1, 2007 6:52 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Okay, so this

First of all, I loathe Scott Boras. The days of fighting for the rights of underpaid players a re long gone and yet this guy scratches and claws for every last million he can get despite the league minimum being an obscenely high wage.

That said... aside from the 9 games, which is a pointless idea in itself... looking at the promotional ideas, independent of what I think of Boras... aren't bad marketing ideas in a vacuum, but they just won't work today. Sports media today is so over saturated with coverage and events that I don't think people really want an event like this and I don't think it'll bring viewers in over a long term. Even if it does, I think it will irritate many sports fans and turn them off, ironically.

Had they done this with a 7 game World Series in, say, 1989 or even 1996, it would've been kinda of fun. Now, it's just another eye-rolling exercise in needless excess.

by Gomez on Jul 1, 2007 6:55 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

What do you care

if an agent gets top dollar for his clients? He's not stealing from orphans.

What? No marshmallows?!

by Aaron on Jul 1, 2007 8:13 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Prices go up

Fans eat the rising costs.

by Gomez on Jul 1, 2007 8:22 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Wrong.

Player salaries do not drive ticked/concession prices. It's the other way around.

What? No marshmallows?!

by Aaron on Jul 1, 2007 8:24 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Really?

Okay.

by Gomez on Jul 1, 2007 8:26 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Think about it.

If the player's volunteered to play and got paid nothing, how much would tickets cost you? The answer is that the prices would be exactly the same because your willingness to see the best athletes in the world compete would be the same. That's all that matters when MLB teams set prices: supply and demand. If you are running a business, you are always trying to maximize your profit, and any expenditures you make will be made with your bottom line in mind. If you just spent money willy-nilly and only afterwards decided on how much you were going to charge your customers, you'd be bankrupt VERY quickly.

The people who get angry at Scott Boras (or the players themselves) have everything backwards. Teams try to milk as much money from fans, cities and advertisers as they can, and then based on that expected revenue they decide how much they will pay players.

What? No marshmallows?!

by Aaron on Jul 1, 2007 8:44 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

So these $60-200 million payrolls

have absolutely no bearing on a team's budget? You serious?

by Gomez on Jul 1, 2007 8:54 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Those payrolls are part of the budget.

The team owner tells his baseball people how much they can spend. If the GM wants to go beyond his allotted budget, he needs to ask for the owner's permission. If the owner consents, then the owner just makes less of a profit that year.

The players do not decide for teams how much they will spend on salaries. Each individual just argues for a bigger piece of the pie for himself.

What? No marshmallows?!

by Aaron on Jul 1, 2007 9:13 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

The agents demand a certain salary

They hold their client out until he gets it.

I'm not gonna deny that the teams/GM/owners aren't partially responsible for the inflated salaries, since they agree to pay it, but it's not like Boras et al are being totally noble and just taking what the market will give them. They SET the market and the teams pay the prices the agents set.

by Gomez on Jul 1, 2007 9:25 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

No one sets the market.

Free agents are like real estate. The players ("sellers") know generally what they are worth based on how much similar players are making and what organizations are bringing in, but the exact amount they will get depends on the specific teams courting them (the buyers). The buyers know how much money they have to spend and so they make offers with that in mind. The different sides go back and forth until the various teams and players agree to deals, with the players getting less than they asked for and the teams paying more than they originally offered. So "the market" is determined by a complex interplay between all the teams and all the players. How well each side comes out depends on how they read the market.

The reason it seems like the players are in control is because their salaries make headlines and everyone is aware that they keep going up, but the constantly increasing revenues of the teams rarely gets publicized and so fans don't realize just how well clubs are doing. Not only that, but MLB has for years cried poverty in order to leverage the union during collective bargaining and to extort cities into paying for brand new ball parks. This left the false impression that teams were struggling financially due to increased player costs. This never was the case, and if it were widely reported every year the massive increase in revenues teams are benefiting from, everyone would view things quite differently.

Here's an interesting blurb from the BP 2003 annual: "After the 2001 season, MLB released financial information showing that player compensation had risen 113% between 1995 and 2001. MLB used this information to argue that salaries were out of control and small markets could no longer compete. These same disclosures showed, however, that MLB's total revenue rose 134% over this time."

I don't know how anyone can read that and then conclude that teams are only "partially responsible" for skyrocketing salaries. No, they are entirely responsible because they are the ones who are truly in control. The players can only ask (okay, demand) a certain salary; the teams have total power to refuse those demands. The only reason players make more than the minimum is because the teams are in competition with each other and thus must outbid others to sign a player. The players can only play teams against each other.

What? No marshmallows?!

by Aaron on Jul 1, 2007 10:20 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

This subject is quite controvertible...

There is actually a really good article on this in "Baseball between the Numbers" done by the Baseball Prospectus team. Maybe someone isn't too lazy like I am to link to Amazon... Anyway the article is titled "Do High Salaries Lead to Hegh Ticket Prices" and is by Neil Demause. He presents evidence that supports both sides of this arguement (ie salaries drive ticket prices and ticket prices drive salaries). In the end though he actually goes outside of the box and concludes that the strongest coorelation he can find is actually between the economy and ticket prices. He specifically names the growing amount of money in the upper classes who can afford premium seats etc.

Here is the final conclusion of the article:

So if you are angry about those $30 nosebleed tickets, better to blame Ronald Reagan or the nation's ongoing love affair with garlic fries (ed - no offense to Mike Blowers) and cupholders than player salaries. After all, look what happened in the wake of the Reds' Larkin fiasco. The team held off on price hikes until the end of the season, then jacked them up by 43.5 percent the following off-season -- only to see attendance plummet from 2,577,371 to 1,879,757, wiping out any potential gains in revenue.

By the way I whole heartedly recommend the book to anyone interested in baseball, baseball stats, and baseball economy. The book has lots of very good well though out articles.

by rdave on Jul 2, 2007 5:19 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs