A Legend Dies

George Steinbrenner was the most infamous man in baseball. A controversial and dedicated owner, Steinbrenner changed the Yankees and subsequently the face of the sport forever. He lived and breathed by a winning record, sank historic amounts of money into the team (elevating the Yankees but belittling the fair playing field) and demanded nothing less than World Series success. He was temperamental and passionate, a bully, a leader and ultimately the man behind the most successful baseball team in the world.

George Steinbrenner died this morning, July 13 2010, after suffering a heart attack.

Highlights from Tonight's Lowlight Jays Game

After a loss as devastating (read: embarrassing) as tonight's against the (villains!) Red Sox, it's important to remember the good things. There are 2 of them. 

- Johnny Mac, the hardest working man in baseball and the best all-round guy in town, drove home another home run, the first run of the game for the Jays

- Casey Janssen pitched well. And he got ejected from the game for protesting a boneheaded call (which then got reversed). I always did like him.

The Blue Jays now sit a game under .500 (shameful!) as Toronto turns yet further away from the sport and even devout fans are jumping ship on struggling stars like Adam Lind and Aaron Hill. With Marcum down again, Romero struggling and not a soul in the batting order hitting over .300, it's not exactly Toronto's year. But as we take a break this week to watch 3 of our starters sit on the bench at the AllStar game, let us take this time to consider jumping back on board the support train. We have to stand behind our effort men like McDonald and Hill, the guys who want nothing more than to prove to Toronto that they're worth cheering for, even if they don't play hockey.

How Lebron killed his career and the NBA as a whole

The Lebron saga has been hashed, rehashed, debated, analyzed so much that I almost feel bad adding to the endless space on the internet already devoted to the subject. This is way past beating a dead horse; it's been beaten to death and then beaten again until the corpse is mutilated beyond recognition. But that was LEADING UP TO "The Decision." Now that the decision's been made, I'll get in my say before it can be murdered anew.

I am, of course, personally disappointed. I very recently thought of Lebron as the best basketball player in the world, and more importantly, I thought of him as a class act. I thought of him as an incredibly talented individual, but more importantly an unselfish player who played for what was best for his team, not for himself. I saw him put up triple-doubles and whenever talking about the greatness that was Lebron I would focus more on his assists, his hustle, his defense, and his team chemistry more than his points scored. I openly professed how he made the players around him better, how he was a leader, and how his play-making ability and team-oriented decision-making on the court was just as impressive as his personal talent. I admired his clean record (no criminal allegations, never seen hanging out with the wrong crowd, always family and team-oriented) and his hometown-hero story. I always thought he was a fantastic player who came up just short because of external factors and some bad breaks, and that he himself was wholly not at fault for any failings of his team.

While his skill will only improve over the peak years of his athletic career, I will never be able to admire him the same way. Perhaps one day I will be able to again appreciate his athletic prowess the way I grudgingly recognize Kobe's, despite my own misgiving on his character, but I don't believe I will ever be able to have the same glow I used to have when talking about Lebron.

He was so recently the perfect athlete; on pace to be perhaps the greatest player in the history of his sport, with the character and off-court demeanor to back it up. He was the poster-boy for the NBA; the now and the VERY bright future of the league. He was America's player, and unless your team was playing against the Cavs that night, it seemed like everyone was rooting for him. But that is in the past. The reason it seemed to good to be true is that it was.

Lebron's decision to sign with Miami is disappointing because of what it says about him as a person and how drastically it changes the perception of him around the country. It may seem to him unselfish to take less money to go to Miami for the sake of winning, but this process and his eventual decision has shown that he is far more selfish than I considered possible.

It is not only what he's done but how he's done it. He has dragged this process out into a production unlike anything I've ever seen in sports (or entertainment, and that's a whole new level of narcissistic self-celebration). He has tried to make himself the center of the universe and has done what no athlete should ever do: put himself above the league. On SportsCenter's bottom line (a scrolling bar of headlines and scores at the bottom of the screen) there were news tabs for "MLB," "NFL," "Tennis," "NBA," and then "Lebron." The NBA put itself on hold for Lebron, or more accurately, Lebron made the NBA put itself on hold for his courting process and eventual decision. He had power and influence over the NBA's organizations more than any entity, with the exception of the Commissioner's office. The media contributed to making this circus act what it was, but Lebron initiated it. He started the fire and kept on feeding it.

I could have accepted his ego-parade if he eventually used it to return to Cleveland and hyperbolize the importance of his home. The satisfaction I'd have in his decision to stay with Cleveland would far outweigh his self-important creation of the Lebron media circus. It would have given Lebron more attention but in the end not really harm anyone except for a few organizations who were dropping payroll and throwing away a season or two to desperately try to court him (but that's no fault of his that they made a gamble on such a risky endeavor). But the problem is this ego-trip didn't benefit himself without harm to anyone else. It comes at the price of so many others. It comes at the price of the league's competitive balance as the NBA has now become the Miami Heat, and then the rest of the league below it. It comes at the price of the fans of every other team hoping to fight their way to the finals. It comes at the price of a competitive, engaging NBA season. And perhaps worst of all it comes at the price of his home, of all the people of Cleveland, of the place that made him who he is. It comes at the price of ripping the hearts out of millions who looked up to him and invested themselves in him in a way that only a handful of athletes can ever enjoy.

Cleveland admired him in a way I have never seen elsewhere in my entire life. As a Yankees fan, I think of how devastated I would be should Derek Jeter ever leave the Yankees. I think of how betrayed I would feel if one of the most talented, well-charactered, and maybe the most popular Yankee player ever left New York for another team. But not even Derek Jeter holds the importance to New Yorkers that Lebron held to Cleveland. Jeter is from Michigan, not New York City, and it's not like the city of New York went 50 years full of heartbreak until he came along. There is simply no parallel to how important Lebron was to his city. He was by far more significant to Cleveland than any other athlete in any other sport anywhere in the country. And then for him to betray his home following a two-year buildup, with a month long period of the NBA humiliatingly "groveling at the feet of the King," and then with a nation-wide hour long TV special celebrating his betrayal of his home, of his NBA-family? I can think of no crueler way to rip out the heart of Celvelanders and spit on it.

If you thought Johnny Damon or Roger Clemens had it rough in Boston after going to the Yankees, you're about to have your perception of public hatred blown off into the next state, specifically Ohio. For a taste of this spectacular switch from Deity to the most hated Athlete in America, read Cleveland Cavalier owner Dan Gilbert's letter to Cavs fans here or watch the jerseys burn:
here
here
here
here
or here
The videos go on and on.

But perhaps what disappoints me the most is what Lebron showed about his character and priorities. He showed winning was his number one,  at whatever the cost. In some cases this would be admirable, but he put the RESULTS of winning over the journey. He put more stock in the Championship trophy than he did in the competition it takes to get there. That is what is most disappointing: Lebron showed that winning is more important to him than competing. He showed that winning is more important than EARNING what you win. He showed that the appeal of winning many empty championships is more important to him than working for one that would mean the world. A championship ring means nothing without the fight to get there. Without the fight, what value does the victory have?

What makes the legends of the game so great is their will to dominate; their passion to compete. What makes Kobe arguably the greatest player playing (I can't believe after years of fighting for Lebron I'm on Kobe's side in this argument now) is his will to win, that he wants it more than anyone else and refuses to be stopped. What makes Jordan the greatest player of all time is that he would not be denied victory. He would win because he would out-compete entire teams. The greatest players are great not great because of the numbers they put up, or the championships they win, but because of the drive they have that was responsible for the championships, and the will to out-compete everyone else on the court. In joining this super-team, Lebron has forfeited his place as a great player, because he has forfeited his place as a competitor. He's jumping on the bandwagon to make his path to a trophy as easy as it can be. Lebron showed that having a ring on his finger for something he barely has to work for is better than fighting for what he wants. Or maybe he's shown that he simply doesn't have that competitor's spirit to do it himself and needs to tag onto Wade and Bosh's efforts to finally win a championship. When a player puts the trophy before competing for it, he ceases to be a role model and loses the right to be considered one of the best in the game.

But despite all this, I almost feel sorry for Lebron. I have never seen an athlete commit more overt and permanent career suicide as Lebron did tonight. This is as much of a lose-lose situation as I can imagine. The expectations for Miami are to win it all. Now. Next year. Every year these three are together. Dominating in the regular season isn't enough. Winning 80 games won't be enough. Winning a title won't be enough. If Miami wins 3 championships in the next 5 years, Miami fans will be wondering why on earth they didn't win all 5. Miami is expected to win, and if Miami doesn't win EVERYTHING, ALL THE TIME, then they, and especially Lebron, will be criticized perhaps even more than he will be in the next several days for signing with Miami in the first place. People will say if he can't win with THAT team, then he can't win. Period. And if he can't win with that team then we have all greatly misjudged his potential and his skill as a player. If he doesn't only win, but DOMINATE throughout his time with Miami, he will be the biggest joke in the NBA, maybe in all American sports. The magnitude of this free-agency circus certainly won't help mitigate the ridicule he'll face for failure.

But even his best case scenario is a terrible one. Say he wins. Say he wins a lot. Say he even wins 5 championships in 5 years and steam-rolls the rest of the league. Even then, he loses. They'd say each championship was practically given to him, that he had the deck stacked in his favor as much as it could be, OF COURSE he won, why should he be given credit when he barely even had to work for the success? Each championship will be empty, boring; just another number. No pride, no excitement, no passion. Nothing that even closely resembles the kind of fire and passion that a championship should have (THIS kind of passion).

And the more he wins, the more the rest of the country roots against him. The easier it is for him, the more unfair it is for every fan of an NBA team other than the Heat. The more dominant Miami is, the more meaningless is the play of every other organization who suddenly doesn't have a chance against the monopoly that is the Heat. And the more success Lebron's super-team has, the more desolate he leaves the NBA as a whole. The potential for the lack of competition, the lack of excitement, the absence of meaning to any games will all hurt the NBA in a way that no scandal could ever do. It will do more damage than the steroid scandal ever did to baseball. It will kill the league.

If Lebron loses in Miami, he'll have brought the whole world's focus on him just to watch him fail in the most embarrassing way imaginable when he had the equivalent of a Yahoo! Fantasy League team playing with him. And that's probably the best he can hope for. Because if he wins, if Miami dominates the way everyone expects, then he becomes the enemy of every basketball fan outside of Miami and he becomes the murderer of the NBA's competitive integrity. He will be the man who not only put himself above his home, but worse, above the league, and above the sport. I'm hoping for Lebron's failure not only for the satisfaction of the country, but for Lebron's sake. Success would prove to be even worse.

Ethics of the free-agent Super Team

If you're a basketball fan, or even a sports fan (which I'm assuming you would be, since this is a sports-related blog) you're aware that this summer's class of NBA free agents is considered by many the most talented in the history of the league. This abnormal concentration of talent through free agency has given rise to speculation of a "Super Team" where Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, and Lebron James all join together on the same team (most likely in Miami) to maximize their shot at winning a championship (or more appropriately, many). Of course, everyone seems to have an "inside source" claiming they have some information of where these players will each sign, but when everyone claims to know something you can bet that no one knows anything.

But despite the specious likelihood of the scenario, the idea of this super-team is an intriguing one mostly because of it's apparent uniqueness. And it does feel truly unique. Not in my memory (or it seems anyone else's) do I remember the prospect of top level free agents plotting a super-talent coalition. Perhaps it's mere coincidence that the NBA has never before had this kind of concentration of talent at the same time available on the open market, but surely it must have happened in another sport.
But no, it is an entirely different animal in the other two most popular sports in the US; baseball and football.

In both sports there are too many people involved on the field to have an effect the way this kind of free-agent-alliance would in the NBA. In football, a star quarterback-runningback-receiver combo is probably the closest thing you could get, but with 22 players on the field at once, many fulfilling completely different jobs, even that kind of star threesome couldn't dominate the way three out of 10 players on an NBA court would, especially with any of those three able to control or contribute to potentially every play. The same argument can be made in baseball. Even the greatest players are one of 9 on the field and they only have 4 to 5 at-bats a game. They cannot dominate the way 3 dominant players can EVERY PLAY in the NBA. An ace pitcher can dominate a game, but even then, only half of the game (in preventing runs, not in scoring them, unless they're in the NL and happen to be a dynamite hitter, which doesn't exist) and then once every 5 days. 3 tops level starters are great, but together would not have nearly the effect the Bosh-Wade-Lebron (BWL) tandem would have.

Besides, the super-team argument can be made of the Yankees, particularly with the new millennium when the Yanks tried to buy their way to the World Series through free-agency. It took them 9 years with a (moderately) scaled back payroll and reliance on their farm system to deliver another Championship. And the Yankees had to go out and get way more than three top level free agents to even come close. Baseball is a game with simply too many variables, too much unpredictability, and too limited impact of each individual for three of the greatest players in the game to have nearly the impact that BWL would have. Add A-Rod, Pujols, and Hanley Ramirez on the same team and you'd have quite an offense, but if you make the rest of the team average, you're still going to come out only slightly better than average win total. They're certainly not going to run away with the best record, never mind the world series.

Now it's no foregone conclusion that Bosh, Wade, and Lebron would win even one championship, they still have to play the games, but team BWL would be such a saturation of talent that I don't think anyone would wager against them. They'd be more dominating than Boston's big three if they were all in their prime, and the Celtics have made it at least to game 7 of the finals in the 2 years they've been healthy, despite their age. The point is, this scenario is special and different in that never before has the prospect of combining star players been so potentially dominating.

I still struggle with exactly how I feel about it. In one sense, they have every right to agree to play for the same team, to join forces in their own best interests and win championships. I can't say if I were in their shoes I'd do anything different. If winning a championship is my prime concern and that's the best way to do it, why not?

But then I get that feeling in my stomach that says something is wrong. Yes, they have the right to act in their best interests, but it feels like they're rigging the system at everyone else's expense. Miami Heat fans might be happy with that kind of super-power combo in Florida, but the rest of the league would only have to second best to look forward to. Is it right for those three to team up for their own interests if it comes at the price of the interests of the league as a whole? Isn't the nature of competitive sports to be competitive?

And furthermore I hope they don't join forces for their own sakes. Does the BWL tandem want Championships that are easy to come by? Does it really mean anything if they're not fought for, if they're hardly earned? Once you start taking winning championships as a given, what significance do those championships have? They amount to nothing more than a number. With Lebron and Bosh never having won a championship, and with Wade fighting tooth and nail for his, I don't think any one of them would want the playoffs to simply amount to "another" ring.

But why the super-team idea would be bad for the league isn't exactly the point of this entry and why it wouldn't be in the best interests of the players involved, specifically Lebron, are related elsewhere (See Michael Rosenberg's great column on why the super-team concept would be disaster for Lebron's career by clicking here). No, the point of this entry is to observe this situation through a non-sports prism. This IS a unique situation in sports, certainly in the history of free agency in the NBA, NFL, and MLB, but it is not a unique situation in general. In fact, it is so common that there have been laws passed in the to confront this very issue over the course of the past hundred years.

I am no economist, but still, it was almost impossible to ponder this super-team and not think of the same economic situation that exists in the world of business. The words "collusion," "anti-trust acts," "monopoly," and "barrier to entry" rush to mind. But, rather than dwell on the intricacies of things like cooperative monopolies, suffice it to say that laws exist in the US to prevent companies from doing what Lebron, D-Wade, and Bosh are reportedly considering. That is, agree to fix the system for their own benefit at the price of everyone else. In this situation, a few corporations agree to fix-prices, or have several small operations apparently running separately and competing with each other while actually being owned and operated from a larger entity, or simply coming together to force out all other competition and collectively reap a larger reward at the expense of small businesses. While each of these scenarios are different, they all share a few powerful actors basically strong-arming the system and purposefully marginalizing competition.

Now that sounds a whole lot worse than merely acting in your best interests, in these cases the two are are the same. Companies marginalizing competition BECAUSE it is in their own best interests. Team BWL would essentially be doing the same thing, coming together to create a monopoly in the League for their own benefit at the expense of the rest of the League.

Now, Wade, Bosh, and Lebron are not corporations, they are individuals, but if you take away the identity and simply view them by their incomes they are, from a financial standpoint, essentially the same as multi-million dollar companies. Just because power is consolidated in one person rather than throughout the company, are they really so different?

The US government has laws to prevent this kind of thing from happening. Collusion is illegal, Teddy Roosevelt was known as "the Trust-Buster" for a reason, and Intel was sued not so long ago for marginalizing competition in order to instate itself as a monopoly. There are countless examples that stretch back as far as modern industry does.

But this is not an economics blog entry, it's a sports entry. So, where does this all lead? Am I suggesting the league make it illegal for players to team up in the way Bosh, Wade, and Lebron may do? No, of course not. That feels just as wrong as them actually going through with it. After all, companies can also merge together for their own collective benefit, just never to the degree where it would spell doom for the rest of an industry.

There are so many reasons why all of us fans should be hoping against this superstar alliance, and why the alliance wouldn't be nearly as much in the interests of the players involved as they might perceive, but what I'm really saying is that we should look at how to confront the present by looking at the past. There is a consensus, developed over at least a hundred and fifty years of economic history that this kind of thing shouldn't happen in business and steps have been taken accordingly to prevent it. I hope Bosh, Wade, and Lebron take a lesson from history and decide not to make us confront the ramifications of this NBA-like collusion because history has already shown us how it plays out and in the end, no one is happy about it.