Let's Not Put A Cap On It

The argument whether professional sports teams should have salary caps remains to be a contentious topic. A salary cap is an upper limit on the amount that employees in a particular company or industry can be paid (English Dictionary). In sports, a salary cap is used to limit how much a team can spend on player salaries. If a team exceeds the salary cap amount, they will be penalized with fines (Zegers). Professional sports teams should have salary caps to establish fairness throughout the league and increase revenues for each of the teams and their owners.

Professional baseball players have a season with 162 games before post season. Baseball players aren't the biggest, the strongest, or the fastest. A baseball player can be any size and that is what makes the game so special. Anyone can be a baseball player if they put in the work to do so. However, baseball is not a sport one can just start playing and expect to be exceptional at. Baseball requires players to be in tremendous

He states, "This is not about stupidity, it is about what is fair in baseball, and what is not. It is about the overall appeal of the national pastime. It is about caring, interest, and most of all, competition. Right now, there is very little of any of these components outside of the 212 area code." Most importantly, he explains why baseball needs a salary cap by saying "it is the only way to put constraints on what the Yankees are doing and to return the sport to the interesting and suspenseful form of sporting entertainment it once used to be." The Yankees are at an unfair advantage all across the league, and nobody, not Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland, or perhaps even Los Angeles, can acquire talent the way they can. The only way to prevent them from doing so is to put a cap on how much they can pay their entire team.

Twenty-five million dollars made per year. Over one hundred fifty-four thousand dollars made per game. Over forty-seven thousand dollars earned per at bat. Sounds a little ridiculous, does it not? That is what current Texas Ranger shortstop Alex Rodriguez earns to play the game of baseball (azcentral.com). Baseball is a game that children have been playing in schoolyards and fields for the past one hundred years. It may not be a game anymore. On the Major League level it has become a business. This is where the problem starts.

There’s always some people hating on the fact that MLB players are paid millions of dollars, but never have anything to back up how they are overpaid besides saying that it is ridiculous how much their paycheck is. Little do they know, that some of the money comes from fans, ticket sales, endorsements, and how well they perform. There is a lot more that goes into how they EARN that money.

Every year, it becomes more obvious that many sports in America have problems. For years, Hockey has been criticized for its excessive violence. The National Football League has also been scrutinized for this reason as well as the fact that many of the top players have constantly been in trouble with the law. Major League Baseball is no different. The situation with baseball is more complicated, and is not only ruining the game itself, but also drawing millions of fans away from the sport. The biggest problem is with the high salaries paid to athletes. These salaries are taking the competitiveness out of several sports, especially baseball, where there is no salary cap. Action must be taken

Every sports team/organization operates the same when it comes to salaries some players get paid more than others and salaries fluctuate based on the economy. In the 1920s the average monthly salary for a Negro baseball player was about $230 which is about $2,760 annually. Whereas in the 1920s the average annual salary for a major league player was about $5,000 to $6,000. Then the dreaded 1930s hit the decade of depression. Despite the failing economy baseball was and is America's pastime and is always popular among the people. People would always manage to go see a baseball game every now and then. This would allow for an average annual salary increase of about $1000 from about $5000-$6000 to $7000. It obviously made sense that as the economy is failing salaries would start to decrease. Of course they did Negro baseball players monthly salary went down from $230 to $170. Which would be $2,040 annually about $720 less than the previous

Any sports one looks at can be classified as a money-making pit. Scouts looking at young talent ready to sign them for a quick buck and then once they stop producing, move on to the next potential talent. Baseball is the sport that is an industry dominated by trying to gain a profit from a region’s juvenile talent (Ruck). Since 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, there has been an increase in Latin American countries represented in MLB. More than a quarter of major league players are from Latin American, with about half of the minor league players being Latino (Ruck). On the opening day of the 2011 season, eighty-six players represented the Dominican Republic alone. That is more than a tenth of major leaguers (Ruck). One would

In Major League Baseball the general belief is that the more a team spends on their payroll the more games they will win. With the absence of a salary cap baseball may seam unfair to the smaller market teams who can't bare the salary costs that the larger market teams can. In Michael Lewis' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Lewis depicts just how the Oakland Athletics have been winning in an unfair game for almost a decade. The A's are a small market team that doesn't have nearly the amount of money at their disposal that their competitors in the American League do. However this past season the A's won their fourth American League West championship in the last seven years while having the lowest payroll in their division. In

Free agents demand for very high compensation and this takes away major chunk of available salary. Every team has to come up with good balance of rookies and veterans to meet salary cap.

There are many professional athletes who are overpaid a tremendous amount of money. For example, in 2013 the New York Yankees third basemen Alex Rodriguez’s salary was $29,000,000. Another athlete that was overpaid was the Philadelphia Phillies first basemen Ryan Howard. During the 2011 postseason, he tore his Achilles tendon and had to miss most of 2012 season because he was on the disabled list. He had a salary of $20,000,000 for 2012 and only played 71 games out of 162. Major League Baseball should impose a salary cap on athletes because athletes are being overpaid, they are signing big contracts, and some are not performing well.

For prospects that are forced into the minor leagues for development, the road to the majors has proven a grueling process and the majority of players never make it to the major leagues. Extremely low salaries and bonuses in the minor leagues has become an ongoing, controversial topic between MLB commissioner Bud Selig and minor league players 17. A fast food worker makes between $15,000 and $18,000 a year, which is two or three times as large as minor league players’ average salary, so minor league players are forced to have multiple jobs throughout the year 18. The majority of minor league players lie below the federal poverty level and while MLB salaries are rapidly increasing, minor leagues salaries remain constant. The MLB receives exemptions

The MLB payroll usually has a huge gap between the top spender and bottom spender which makes it uncompetitive. The Los Angeles Dodgers payroll was 234 million and the Miami Marlins payroll was 65 million in 2015 that being a difference of 169 million (Blum). With the huge gap in pay reflects in the quality of play. In 2013 Alex Rodriguez was paid 29 million in 2013 that is 4 million more than the entire Astros roster. That is not fair at all because if a single player is deemed better than a whole team how can it be expected to be a competitive game. Having a salary cap allows for the stardom of new and upcoming teams. Before 1994 the NFL was often dominated by 4 to 5 teams now after they have implemented the salary cap and other teams have emerged and became dominant and they have even won championships. Studies show that in most cases that money spent relates to the amount of regular season wins a team has. Therefore if there was a salary cap in every sport it would be much more

In one way or another Major League Baseball (MLB) has been existence since 1869. It is a certified professional baseball organization that comprises major certified sports leagues in North America. The teams of the MLB play in various leagues such as the National League. The MLB also supervises minor league baseball leagues that are connected with the major league clubs and manages the World Baseball Classic event. The Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) has been existence since 1965 when they hired Marvin Miller to negotiate the collective bargaining agreement in 1968. With a new collective bargaining agreement signed in 2011 this essay will review how the MLB is helping developing countries through the case of the Dominican Republic.

Forbes Magazine has the Boston Red Sox ranked as Major League Baseball’s #3 most valuable team. According to Forbes, the Red Sox are valued at $724 million, a substantial increase since their 2002 acquisition, which had them valued at $380 million. Based on these rankings, the Red Sox have an operating income of $19.5 million, a sizeable increase from their 2006 operating income of -$18.5 million. Because of Major League Baseball’s inability to produce a salary cap, the Red Sox are able to use their extensive revenue to purchase players and put an