When owner's representative Dave Ravitcvh called the major League situation "a Gordian Knot" he set me to thinking. The more i thought, the more I liked his analogy. you see, the Gordian knot was kept in a temple in Asia and it was supposed to be so intricate and difficault to untie (nigh on impossible) that whomever could untie it, .
would be ruler of the world. when Alexander The Great made it to the Gordian KKnot, he solved it by cutting it in half with his sword.
like the Gordian Knot, Major League baseball is a multifaceted puzzle. When you tug on one string, you necessarily pull on another. Salary questions are tied to television revenues which are tied to advertisers which is tied to attendance which is tied to fan support.well, you get the ifdea. And now Baseball seems to be at a crossroads. Senator Howard metzenbaum has introduced legislation to releive MLB of its long-standing exemption from the jSherman Antitrust Act. Should this come to pass (and I think it will) we will be looking at a very different baseball scene in just a few short years. Losing the special status baseball has enjoyed for so long will be just the blade to cut through the tangled mess that the owners have woven for themselves.
In this vein, let me weave a tale of my own, a tapestry that might show a way for baseball to become fun again And it won't require interleague play or any other abominatins for it to come to pass.
The owners will soon find that they are unable to arbitrarily limit the teams that young players may negotiate with. That would be a monopolistic paractice and against the Sherman Antitrust Act. As we all can tell from the fine examples they have shown us over the years with free agent signings, the owners will be unable to control themselves in bidding for top prospects out of college or high school. the only way they will be able to get around this is to change the very sctructure of the leagues.
