Political columnist and MLB Blue Ribbon Panel on
Baseball Economics member George Will appeared on last
night's edition of FSN's "Last Word" with host Jim Rome and
discussed the panel's findings and proposals. Will, on
revenue sharing and Yankees Owner George Steinbrenner
possibly filing an antitrust lawsuit to prevent it: "I don't
think so. That's nuclear war and there are other nuclear
weapons that can be used against them. For example, if you
make people mad enough, [the small-market teams] can say to
the Yankees, 'That's very good. You get all your local
revenue, we just won't let you televise your games out of
our ballparks." Will said "any team that thinks local
revenue is its [own] revenue should play 162 intra-squad
games and see how many people show up." Will, on how it's
possible only three MLB teams have been profitable since the
labor dispute in '94-95: "To ensure against creative
accounting creeping into our report, we used data that is
audited twice by reputable auditing firms at the club level
and again at the major league level because important
decisions turn on this. ... I'm confident that the numbers
we have aren't cooked." Will, on the MLBPA not being on the
panel: "They were heard from. [MLBPA Exec Dir] Don Fehr
came and talked to us with [MLBPA General Counsel] Gene
Orza. ... I think they got off their chest what they wanted
to. ... We did not write a report for the owners, we wrote
to the owners for them to do with what they like." Will, on
the potential for the proposal to be implemented: "We did
not feel we were writing a collective bargaining offer. We
were trying to solve baseball's problems intellectually and
say, 'This is how you can do it.' If they decide to build
on what we've done, almost everything in our report is a
collective bargaining issue. So they would have to first
... sell it to the owners, ... get some kind of settlement,
not consensus. ... Then the players have to understand their
stake in it" ("Last Word," FSN, 7/20). USA TODAY's Hal
Bodley notes that in addition to the two audits of the
financial data contained in the panel's report, the MLBPA
"also has the right to ask for an audit by an independent
accounting firm" (USA TODAY, 7/21).
