Alex Rodriguez trade bad news for baseball

House Editorial

With Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig's approval, the Texas Rangers traded star player Alex Rodriguez to the New York Yankees Monday.

The deal, which has been nicknamed the "mega-merger," is considered by some sports columnists to be the biggest trade in baseball history. The trade also has caused controversy about whether or not the deal was good for the game.

Many baseball fans think the Yankees' acquisition of Rodriguez will impact the game negatively. In a poll on ESPN.com Tuesday, 74 percent of about 100,000 fans said the Yankees' financial domination of baseball is bad for the game.

The Yankees have a roster full of all-stars. With that comes a $186 million payroll, which could increase if they sign more free agents. The second highest belongs to the Boston Red Sox, whose payroll is expected to be around $125 million.

Teams such as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Milwaukee Brewers have payrolls that don't even exceed $30 million.

The NFL has a hard salary cap and the NBA has a soft cap. Some feel that baseball should introduce a salary cap as well. At the moment, baseball teams have to pay a luxury tax if they spend more time than the $117 million threshold established in baseball's recent collective bargaining agreement. Last season, the Yankees were the only team to go over that margin, and were forced to pay a luxury tax of $11.82 million. Yankees' owner George Steinbrenner has no problem forking over money if it could help the team earn another World Series ring.

Other owners do not have that option. Red Sox owner John Henry told the Associated Press Wednesday that the rest of Major League Baseball doesn't have an answer for the Yankees' monopoly of star power.

"Revenue sharing can only accomplish so much," Henry said. "At some point, it becomes confiscation. It has not, and it will, not solve what is a very obvious problem."

Although it doesn't seem fair, everything the Yankees have done has been within the legal limits determined by Selig and the league.

The average team has one or two ace pitchers and two or three impact players. Meanwhile, the Yankees feature all-star caliber players one through eight in the lineup.

A roster like that will have some fans wondering what is the point of an all-star game. All they have to do is tune into to one of the Yankees' 162 regular season games. They can see Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Hideki Matsui and Kenny Lofton — just to name a few, and those are just the position players.

It is yet to be seen if the Yankees will win the World Series. Nothing is written in stone, and the World Series Championship Trophy has not found a home in the Bronx in three years.

Yet, without a salary cap, the rich will keep getting richer, and the small market teams such as Milwaukee Brewers will keep struggling to survive. Many think that fact alone will be detrimental to baseball for many years to come.